i got a number of emails from people suggesting that we'd catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  i'm not sure what the hell that means.  people saw our recent drive for new members and seemed to want to tell us to tone it down a notch or two.  go along to get along, old chap, eh?  whatever.  read this post very carefully.  the times, well, they are a changin. 

we're standing tall with the will of the people as the wind at our backs.  where would we "move" to?  we're being inundated with *&%$ing ridiculous requests like this one.  mabra is not putting on the races, promoters are putting on the races. mabra is supposed to be an association of it's member clubs and promoters. i fail to see how promoting mabra is supporting these people.  it ought to be going the other way. seriously. How easy is it to find detailed data on the member clubs on the web site? how easy is it to find rides or articles of interest or anything that helps to indicate that there is some sort of community which the association is supporting?  in addition, this whole effort smacks of "branding", and i question the _need_ for mabra to assert it's privledge in this regard.

asking the racing union to advertise this kind of adminstrative oligarchy of plutocratic robber barons defies logic.  it would be like seeing hugo chavez wearing a baseball hat and t-shirt covered in dollar bills and doing advertisements for financial services companies.  communists for cool hard cash.  the reason it's so detached from reality is that it's predicated on the idea that movement towards their chosen position makes sense.  but that's just flat out wrong.  the social currents are with us, not with them. 

brothers and sisters, citizens and cyclists, now is the time to heed the call.  work to break the back of the car-based society.  work to bring the joy of cycling to all individuals and work to experince that joy yourself.  do you sometimes forget why you fell in love with the bicycle to begin with?  the union offers you the chance to rediscover that and more.  union brothers and sisters, onwards and upwards, never failing.  the time is now. 

- - - posted by scott