November 10, 2004
MnHPVA Meeting 		Meeting Report: Tim Dunsworth
Photos & HTML: Mark Stonich
Meeting Notes Below
Show-N-Tell Pages
 Click thumbnails to read details and see more and larger images.

This was the first meeting after daylight savings time went off, so it was pitch dark (and cooling down rapidly) outside and we gradually accumulated inside and schmoozed until a critical mass was reached. We eventually got a pretty good crowd, but a little thin on show and tell (especially complete bikes). Mark Stonich reported that mnhpva.org web host DotEasy.com just raised their base web space allowance for customers from 20 MB to 100 MB, so much of the money raised at the previous meeting won't be needed for more web space.

We now have 10 mail accounts if anyone would like to have a semi-permanent address (ie. dave@mnhpva.org) they can have messages forwarded to, from whatever their current ISP happens to be.

Carl also threatens to have a business server at his new bike shop “soon” that will have several Gigabytes available for club use if we want it, so our space crunch seems to be over for now.

Carl Gulbronson brought in a couple of bags full of Lance Armstrong Foundation “Live Strong” wrist bands in kid's and adult's sizes for anyone to buy for a buck if interested. Proceeds go to the foundation for cancer research and patient support.
Jon Sharratt showed a sheet of home made water slide decals he produced for new or restored bikes. They say the frame is made of 4130 Chromolly tubing and they use the same colors and typography as the old Reynold's 531 stickers. It took a lot of time to make them, so he was not inclined to give them out but will sell them (or consider making other such stickers for others). What should we do with the extra cash contributions for web space?
  • Print business cards to hand out to people who stop us on the street to ask about "those funny bikes".
  • Buy warm drinks at the ice races.
  • Keep it as a slush fund until some really good idea comes up.
New guy Greg ???? showed up partly to get ammunition to entice his uncle into driving in from NW of St Cloud. His uncle has already built three quite different recumbent tandems, a sociable, a back-to-back bike, and a back-to-back trike! He is on the web and has seen our site, but so far that hasn't been enough to convince him to come down. Mark also suggested that some volunteer might want to use part of the increased space to run an archive of all the messages we get on our list serve about bike trail news (analogous to the message thread archive at the BentRiderOnline site). It could have links to the Hennepin county site, the Midtown Greenway site, the state trails and waterways unit, and any other sites with useful news and/or trail maps.

Someone else suggested a wish list item of having an electronic base map with annotations about new, closed, or modified trail sections (assuming we could get our hands on such a base map and had someone who knew how to electronically edit it).

We were given a tip about an industrial dumpster that is often loaded with miscellaneous steel tube pieces (from wheelchairs and exercise bikes) that could be useful for frame builders. It is behind the Minneapolis Enamel plant in Jordan. Take hiway 169 south to the light in Jordan, then go right until Irving Industrial Drive.
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