1. You should always check your tire pressure but especially as the weather gets colder. Your tire pressure can drop drastically when you have a day that starts off in the 60’s let’s say and it is in the 30’s by the time you get home.

2. Remember that even if we’ve had a couple of dry days that the leaves on the ground may have retained moisture and that they can be just as slippery as ice.

I would also ask that if you have any special concerns or suggestions to keep us all safe on the rides that you e-mail me. Remember the only stupid question is the one that we don’t ask!!!

*****Finally I have noticed a dangerous trend, with more and more of us having CB radios. We are getting away from giving hand or foot signals for road hazards when we are on the rides. We are radioing the hazards. (Here’s a little lesson in accident reconstruction). The average human reaction time is 1.66 seconds. What that means is that from the time your brain perceives a threat in the road it takes 1.66 seconds for you to react. So let’s walk it through. You see the threat in the roadway 1.66 seconds later you depress the lever on your CB then you give the warning. The person behind you has to listen to the message and has to decipher it and then start looking for the threat and then has to react on it. As you can see this adds at least 3 to 4 seconds, if not longer, to the whole process. This is not even taking into consideration the riders that do not have CB’s. So I would really like us to get back into giving good hand or foot signals when it comes to road hazards.