Update: January 28

Hello Synergists,

I believe most of you know me, but for those who don't my name is Reid Dalgleish. I was elected President of Synergy Racing Cycle Club at the AGM held in the fall. I've been a member of the club since 2002. You will be hearing from me on occasion throughout the year by email with crucial or personal communications, however these days we post most general information on the Synergy blog, so I encourage you to make a habit of checking the site on a regular basis.

First of all, the 2008 season is looking to be very good with a great balance of racing in all disciplines. The Synergy Executive has submitted a request to host and run a track race in July (a resurrected Bikeshevik) at the Glenmore Velodrome, so that will most likely be the one main volunteer contribution you will all be expected to show up for in addition to the next scheduled casino in late 2008, of course.

*****We will be discussing all of this at the Synergy Team meeting, to be held on Wednesday, February 13th at 7pm in the IBM Canada Building, 227-11th Ave. SW - Rocky Mountain 'A' Room. Doors are on the northeast corner of the building. Since the meeting is afterhours, either I or someone from the team will be at the main door to let you in. I strongly encourage all present and future members to attend this meeting.

*****Membership forms for the 2008 season are still in draft mode, but will be on the Synergy blog site by the end of the week for download so you can have them pre-filled for the meeting on the 13th. You will have opportunity at this meeting to pay your 2008 fees which will be the same as last year. I also encourage you to pre-fill out your 2008 ABA license applications for the meeting and get this all done and out of the way all at once. As mentioned, all forms will be updated on the blog by the end of this week.

*****Camps: I have been told that a number of the U22 team members are planning on attending the Oval training camps in Victoria, Penticton or both. For all U22 members and parents of members who are planning on attending these camps, we require two action items from you. The first is to ensure that the Oval/U of C accounting department is invoicing Synergy Racing Cycle Club and not you directly. We do not desire going through the chaos that developed from dealing with this last season. As with your Oval fees, any camp fees should be assigned to the same account in the U of C acccounting department so that Synergy gets invoiced for all charges from a common account.

In order to use AGLC Casino funding to pay for these camps, we will require that the athletes/parents fill out the AGLC Travel Itinerary form that is available on the blog, or at http://www.aglc.gov.ab.ca/pdf/gaming/gaming_forms/5443.pdf. It is mandatory that we get these forms sent to Edmonton for each U22 athlete attending an out-of-province event that we are paying for, no matter where or when. The form is pretty basic - athlete/support staff information, expense estimates, event details and personal contributions. The President and Treasurer need to sign the forms before they get sent to Edmonton. If you are not going to be at the Synergy Meeting (apparently Victoria camp is occurring this same weekend), please mail them to the
team mailbox so we can merge them all and send them all together as soon as possible. Your cooperation in these activities would be greatly appreciated. If you have difficulties filling out the forms, please contact me.

*****We received a stack of free passes to public skating on the Olympic Oval for the remainder of the 2008 season. If anyone is interested, please contact me and we'll arrange a way to get them to you. I will have them at the meeting as well.

*****Clothing order is proceeding. We are going with a local manufacturer instead of Italy this year called Jos (http://www.jos.ca) based in BC. We have been in talks with the owner over the past few weeks attempting to get sizing and order numbers figured out. We are supposed to be receiving more samples this week to determine proper sizes for the order. We are now considering buying two styles of jersey this year - the race cut style and the club style. The race style fits close to the body while the club style is more loose. There was concern that the race cut wouldn't be appreciated by some team members so we're trying to best address this issue by providing an alternative. Things are still not confirmed yet so we will provide an update at the meeting on the 13th.

*****Colin will be taking orders for a team jacket, possibly warm-up pants at the meeting on the 13th. Costs haven't been established yet, but Colin will provide more detail at the meeting and will take orders for those that want the jacket. It will be a basic color poly-blend jacket with a simple bold Synergy embroidered on the back, or something similar. If you have any suggestions, contact cp for discussion. This is a flexible activity -- if we get agreement that we want to go with something different at the meeting, then that will be the way we'll go.

*****Umm, I think that's it for now. Please attend the team meeting if you can. If not, please let us know that you won't be able to attend so we can arrange to receive paperwork (membership and license applications, AGLC funding requests), payments and whatever else from you at a later date.

Thanks and regards,
Reid