It’d be a rubbish game of Guess Who:
“Is it a man?”
Yes.
“Are they white?”
Yes.
“Are they bald?”
Yes.
“Glasses?”
You have to start getting pretty precise in your guesses before you got closer to finding one of our committee. And we’re very aware of that. Can you help us out?
We’re stretched at Peak District MTB. The 10 of us on the committee work hard to push the voice of mountain bikers across the peak and improve the image of our community. We’re digging, we’re talking, we’re stopping councils in their tracks.
But it all takes time and effort. We’re all volunteers bringing our individual, specific expertise to make things better for you all. And we punch hard. On the committee we have industry experts, academics, bike business owners, conservation experts, developments experts and more. And in our ten years we like to to think we’ve changed things for the better, or at the very least, stopped things getting worse than they could have been.
But one thing we all have in common is that we’re all mountain bikers. We care – deeply – about where we ride. Oh, and the aforementioned baldy middle-aged white fella-ness. (Sorry Greville, Alastair, Jeff – our more hirsute members.)
We’re different flavours too, though. How so? Well, I bought some mountain biking boots to suit my hike-a-bike scrambles up rocky paths. An obvious choice. One of our committee didn’t even know MTB boots existed. But he then went off the next day to take flight off some three metre gap jump while I’ll never leave terra-firma.
It’s not enough though – although we do represent the whole range of mountain bikers in our discussions, do we actually represent them? No. We’re currently missing women on the committee for a start. And there are other groups we’d love to have shape our work.
So what can we do about it?
We know ‘joining the committee’ can seem daunting, but it’s really not as demanding as you’d imagine. The value comes from your voice in shaping what we do – not always in the ‘doing it’ yourself; although if you are passionate about something MTB in the Peak District, having Peak District MTB backing for that is never a bad thing.
We’d love to hear from you if you feel you could bring something good to the committee. A fresh perspective and ideas are always welcome. If you’re a member and you think you could help us, we’d be happy to have you along on a committee meeting to get a taste of what we do and how you can play a part. Call it a Taster session.
Fancy it? Let us know (info@peakdistrictmtb.org). We might even have a game of Guess Who. Though I much prefer KerPlunk.
(These days our monthly committee meetings are held online on a weekday evening.)
