Rides, rides, and more rides! Where would the AERC be without rides, and more importantly, those ride managers who take on the massive task of hosting them? It's a lot of work to manage a ride, and AERC wants to do everything we can to help the ride manager be as successful as possible.

Did you ever wonder how the ride schedule for a particular region is created? It's the job of the regional sanctioning director to create and maintain the schedule on a year-by-year basis. In regions like the West, where I'm the sanctioning director, sometimes it feels like a full-time job! We have so many rides out here that it becomes increasingly harder every year to maintain a ride calendar that keeps everyone happy.

It can be plenty tough for a sanctioning director to maintain a schedule of rides throughout the year. This article will describe some of the issues a sanctioning director faces, as well as try to explain how and why some of the decisions we make are made.

Types of sanctioned rides

Legacy rides. The first thing we have to take into consideration are the legacy rides. These are the rides that have been around for a long time and always fall on or near the same weekend each year, or on a particular holiday weekend. Every region has these rides, and the rest of the ride season is usually scheduled around them, since they are given first priority for their weekend.

Here's the first tidbit of difficulty for the West Region: we have about 20 different legacy rides. (There goes half the calendar year right there!) But it gets worse, since we don't have many rides between November and February due to the rains and muddy conditions. Subtract another 17 weekends for the winter, and we now have about 15 weekends available. Less one more for the convention, and now we are at 14. The 2006 ride season in the West has 53 sanctioned rides (so far). Do the math and you can see how difficult this can become. Then you throw in monkey wrenches like the Tevis ride -- the legacy of all legacies -- which falls on a different date every year no matter what, based on the full moon.

Multi-day rides. The next big "gotcha" is the growing popularity of multi-day rides. The problem here is that pioneer rides can span regions. It would be a lot easier to just schedule rides according to the desires of a particular region, but pioneer rides in the neighbor regions have to be taken into consideration as well, since the borders of these regions are just lines on a map. It is a goal of the national Sanctioning Committee to avoid having pioneer rides on the same weekends in neighboring regions.

Special sanctioned rides. Next are the specials. The National Championship ride comes along in the region on occasion. The special rides, like the XP cross-country rides, come into play. We also have potential new ride managers who would like to put on a new ride and ask for specific dates based on what they can and can't do for their park or trails.

Decisions, decisions, decisions

What is a poor sanctioning director to do? The best he or she can. The sanctioning director is the referee, the traffic cop, the judge and jury, and sometimes the whipping post. The goal of the sanctioning director is to try to satisfy everyone who has an interest in putting on a ride. The problem we face is trying to satisfy everyone, because in many cases it won't be a two-way consensus between ride managers.

Some ride managers are willing to work together to do what's right for everyone, and of course there are others who don't want a ride to take place within 300 miles and three weeks of their ride. I can understand the emotions that come into play here -- ride managers put their heart, soul, time, and of course their money into making sure their rides are successful. If they feel another ride nearby may reduce the number of riders that may attend their ride, of course they have the right to be unhappy.

But what should we really do? How close is too close in terms of weekends? How far in miles between rides is acceptable? Why can't there be two pioneer rides on the same weekend? How come there are in some cases? All very good questions that can and can't be simply answered.

Using perspective

Let's look at the problems from a couple of different perspectives. Say you are that new ride manager who wants to put on a new ride. You have a great new area with cool trails. You have the help, the time and, most importantly, the trails and base camp available, but uh-oh, you have very few possible weekends to hold the ride. You call the sanctioning director, and he or she tells you, "Sorry, too many rides on or near that weekend already." Is this acceptable? Is it really okay to keep any new ride from taking place because other ride managers don't want to take a perceived hit at their ride?

Of course this problem is different across regions: the West has plenty of riders to support even more rides, but in some small regions there are not enough total riders to keep from splitting the rider pool. This is probably the main reason that there are regional sanctioning directors to be able to help make these decisions, since what works for one region won't work for all.

Assume now you are that ride manager of an existing ride, and a new ride is proposed the weekend next to yours. The West Region is big, and has three mini-regions: The Bay Area/Sierra Nevada, Upper Northern California, and Nevada. When the new ride is in Nevada, for example, and yours is near the ocean, it's pretty obvious that the two rides won't really be drawing from the same crowd.

But where do you draw that line? What if the new ride in Nevada was the coolest ride ever designed, on perfect, soft, loamy trails, and the ride was giving out new horse trailers as completion awards? My guess would be that a lot of riders would head over to the Silver State. Does this mean that the better the ride is, the more riders it may draw? Yes, it actually does.

I know for a fact that many riders will choose their rides based on which ones they like best. I drive the 400 miles to Death Valley every year because I love the ride. I select rides based more on the quality of the trails, the ride management, and the distances available rather than where it is located (but obviously the closer to home the better).

There always has been and always will be competition between rides for riders. A ride manager needs to do everything possible to make their ride the best they can in order to attract riders. But should they be able to keep another ride from taking place in the same region because they are afraid of losing riders? I don't believe so. I feel that the more rides we have the better off we are as an organization, and we have to allow new ride managers the chance to put on new rides.

Of course there are practical limits. It would be silly to have two different rides in the same park on the same weekend. (Don't laugh, it has almost happened!) It would be silly to hold four rides on the same weekend within 50 miles of each other. But at what separation in miles does it become okay? 100 miles? 200? We do have weekends in the West with three rides on the same day. It's hard to make rules that can be fair to everyone.

When you are that ride manager who is complaining that another ride is taking place too close to yours in time or miles, think back to when you held your first ride. Sure, there may have been way fewer rides available, but put yourself in the shoes of that poor ride manager who is running into brick walls because of others. Is it really going to put you in the poorhouse if a few riders go elsewhere?

What about emergencies?

What else can go wrong? It's hard enough to maintain a ride calendar without Mother Nature throwing the ultimate monkey wrench at it. It's an absolute disaster when a ride gets canceled at the last minute due to weather or conditions beyond the manager's control. Of course the ride manager would like to be able to reschedule it to avoid the loss of time and money, but they are also trying to help the riders who have signed up attend the ride.

Imagine what happens when you try to do a quick re-schedule of a ride in a region where there are no weekends available. Should you just cancel the ride without even trying? The poor ride manager who may have to cancel his ride sure does not think so. But some other ride managers who have rides scheduled may say yes, cancel it, it will hurt my ride! This situation calls for creativity, but more than that, it calls for some understanding and sympathy between ride managers.

My goal is to keep the ride alive if at all possible. I'd like to think other ride managers would feel the same way, since they may some day be in a position where it is their ride that is being forced to change, and they will be the ones calling to see if they can reschedule. My personal feeling is that in a pinch it is preferable to have two rides on or near the same weekend rather than have to lose an entire ride, even if it may mean another ride may lose a few riders. Again, if you are a ride manager who has a ride that you think will be impacted by an emergency decision, put yourself in the shoes of that other manager. We are all in this sport together, and the more we do to help each other, the better off all rides and riders will be in the long run.

Please understand the obstacles the regional sanctioning directors face. They are doing the best they can for the good of all ride managers, riders, and the organization as a whole. Cut them slack if they make a decision you are not happy about. Think of the situation from the other ride manager's point of view, because it may be you next time that needs your ride date changed.

Want to know how to make your regional sanctioning director happy? Just do what West Region ride managers Laura Fend and Ruth Waltenspiel did. They both manage rides in June -- 90 miles apart -- and last year both had to be on the same day due to park conflicts. What did they do? They called each other on the phone and jointly agreed that darn it, this isn't good, but what can we do? They decided it was much better to hold both rides at a slightly lower attendance than try and cancel one. They came to that conclusion and then notified me. Know what happened? They both had great rides with good attendance. Take a lesson from these two pros -- this is how it should work.