PresidentialRovings
Crank It Up!
Hello fellow Roverphiles! The season has gotten off to an early and great start this year. As you will see in this edition of the Xchange, club members have been spending a lot of time in Moab having fun this winter and spring. But there has also been a lot of time spent working out the kinks of our recent merger and making the new club something to be proud of. Evidence of this is now readily available in the form of the new SolihullSociety.org website as well as the great new look of the Rover Xchange. Kudos to webmaster Josh White and newsletter editor Nathan Hindman for their efforts to make sure we have strong and professional looking forums for distributing info to our club members and showing the Rover community how much fun we have here in Rocky Mountains. Your rally committee has been making a lot of progress on this year’s National Rally planning and we are very excited for another great show in the Moab desert on September 14-18. Pat Bickford and Pam Haigh have been working hard to iron out all the details while Norman Hall has done a great job of signing up numerous vendor sponsors this year to ensure the expanded vendor day is chock full of expertise on Rover equipment and 4WD adventures for all. This year’s rally will be full of great Moab trail rides and all the Rover camaraderie you can stand, so send in your Rally Registration forms as soon as you can. (forms are in this newsletter and on the website) As a note to all planning to attend, the lodging and Saturday night BBQ will be held at the Aarchway Inn this year (special rate for rally attendees), so please make sure you book your reservations early! In other news, the club sponsored a trail-leader training event in March led by Bill Burke and 4WheelingAmerica. This was a 3-day course in Moab designed to enlighten its students on the finer points of off-road safety, good spotting techniques, safe recovery techniques, and tips on helping the neophyte off-roader feel comfortable and confident on the trails. You will see several of Bill’s graduates leading trails throughout the summer and during the rally and we are all very appreciative of the time devoted by Bill and the students to improve the off-road experience. During the May Executive Committee meeting, we were paid a visit by Park County Commissioner, Don Staples (out of Fairplay), who asked for our help and involvement in an effort that could greatly affect trail access in that area. More and more public land parcels are being bought by private parties, and in some cases existing roads and trails cross through these now private properties. In many cases, easements to grant through access to these roads and trails do not exist. A private citizen has approached Park County for financial assistance and approval in purchasing these easements (one of which is for our new adopt-a-trail – Mosquito Pass). The problem is that this person has written the proposal for the easements such that it would eliminate motorized access, but luckily, the Park Co. commission has told her that they will not consider the proposal without inclusion and involvement of the motorized off-road community. That’s where we come in. So, Pat Bickford is trying
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RoverXchange
to work with both the proposal owner as well as the Colorado Association of 4WD Clubs to ensure we have representation in this process so that the overall result of the proposal ends up being a win-win situation for all involved. We’ll keep you posted on our progress. One item of business that we need your help with concerns the ratification of the new Solihull Society’s bylaws. Bylaws serve as the club’s outline for its rules and procedures and are a necessary administrative evil. A sub-committee was formed to create a new and updated version of bylaws that utilized both of the old clubs’ documents as well as included changes that better reflect our new club. We have included a copy of the proposed bylaws for review as well as a self-addressed and stamped ballot card for your vote to approve the new bylaws. It is important that you send us the ballot card with your vote as our rules require at least 51% of member ballots to be returned in order to make the vote official. Even if you don’t care about the bylaws, please at least mark the ‘Proxy’ box on the ballot card and SEND IT IN which tells us that you are good with what the majority decides to do with the bylaws. (Look at it this way, if we don’t get your participation, we will be doing this again and again until we do, so please help us out! ) One last organizational announcement… There are a lot of great things happening within the club today that demand and command a considerable amount of time in order to produce the end product that we all want in the Solihull Society - a club that is the envy of all. Between the Rally planning and increased exposure of that event, the extra work brought on by the merger (newsletter, website, bylaws, accounting, membership, etc), a spurt of land issues work, and the fact that none of us wants our new 4wd club to be viewed as a halfhearted effort - the role of the president, at least for now, can’t be done by one person alone. All of us are busy professionals that have limited time to devote to our club efforts. So, Pat Bickford and I have talked about and agree upon sharing the role of president through the rest of 2004 to ensure proper focus can be placed on getting the Solihull Society rolling gracefully in the direction we all want. If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please feel free to contact either of us. Now for the fun stuff! The event calendar is packed with fun trail rides of all levels and the trips have been fun and well attended so far this year. So pick some trails you want to do, pack a picnic lunch, crank your Rover up and come out and play. And don’t forget to mark your calendar for the club’s annual summer BBQ to be held on Saturday August 7th at Matt and Cat Schulze’s farm in Parker – details will be mailed out this summer. I hope to see you on the trails soon! Cheers, Marc 303-733-7169 marcrrr@msn.com
A Newsletter for Land Rover Aficionados
RoverXchange The Rover Xchange is a quarterly publication of the Solihull Society 4-Wheel Drive Club, Inc. All material in Rover Xchange, unless otherwise noted, is the property of Solihull Society and may not be reproduced without permission. SOLIHULL SOCIETY CONTACTS Co-President – Pat Bickford (303) 526-0780 Co-President – Marc Richardson (303) 733-7169, marcrrr@msn.com VP – Mark Stolte marks@alliancecp.com Secretary – John Alden Membership – Carl Padgett (303) 932-7090 Treasurer – Pam Haigh chaigh@boulder.net Event Coordinator – Ali Vali avali@mho.com Newsletter – Nathan Hindman nathan@pangaea-expeditions.com Website – Joshua White webmaster@roverriders.org Website – www.solihullsociety.org Newsletter Articles and Photos – The preferred format for articles to be submitted is in either Word (.doc) or text (.txt) format. The preferred format for photos is for a digital picture to be emailed or maild on CD in either a JPEG, TIFF or EPS files. The articles can be submitted either via email (webmaster@roverriders.org) or mailed on a CD to Nathan Hindman at the following address: Nathan Hindman, 3800 Pike Rd, #3-203, Longmont, CO 80503. Materials will be returned upon request Advertising – $25/issue or $100/year (4 issues– get 1 add’l issue free) for 1/4 page ads. Payment must accompany all camera-ready ads. Make check payable to Solihull Society; mail it to the address at the bottom of this column. Free classified ads to members. $5/issue to non-members. Club Membership – $60/year includes membership in the Colorado Association of 4-Wheel Drive Club, their newsletter, the Rover Xchange newsletter, and all the trail rides you can take! Make check payable to Solihull Society and mail it to the following address: Solihull Society PO Box 480864 Denver, CO 80248-0864