Yesterday was another sad day for bicyclers in our area. I happened to ride upon the accident and saw firsthand just how tragic an accident like this can be. I woke up this morning thinking about what we can do as a club to make our area more bicycle friendly. A few suggestions are: have more frequent meetings with programs, outreach to local civic clubs to provide speakers for club meetings, try to get to speak at small towns along our regular bicycling routes so that we can communicate to the farmers and ranchers who we share the secondary roads with. The terrible accident yesterday won’t stop the national trend of having more and more bicyclers on the nation’s roadway. OTC will continue to grow and we need to grow our programs to meet the needs of our membership. We’re about to be put on the map as Adventure Cycling completes the Route 66 bicycle route mapping. By next summer, we should start seeing “thousands” of bicyclers coming through the Panhandle on the Route 66 tour. This means the road that is the scene of yesterday’s accident will see a huge increase in bicycle traffic within the next few years. I just recently completed the Southern Tier from San Diego to St. Augustine and road many miles on roads not nearly as bike friendly as our I-40 access roads normally are. We had a map and safety meeting every night and were required to have a safety triangle and flashing light on our bikes. We could get these and make them available at our meetings. We need to have OTC along with Share the Road's educational and safety efforts, become the advocate for all bicyclers in the Panhandle. We also need to be ready to welcome the bicycle tourists who are headed our way and help make their trek across the Panhandle as friendly as possible.