Let Rick Ride!!
With apologies to Levi Leipheimer

Rick Oberle is being outlawed from DALMAC 2008.  It seems that last year he was allegedly illegally flying his flag and now justice must be served.  What did he do?

In consideration of his fellow riders and the safety of the pack, he always flew his flag in his back pocket.  After all, the rules only said the flag had to be unfurled and on the bike.  It was!  Pulling into Morely-Stanwood among the earlier finishers,  the ride leader asked him where his flag was.  He pulled it out of his pocket and showed him.  The leader went apoplectic!  He ran for the rule book and realized that the law had not been broken.  Perhaps the spirit was bent, but the law was intact.  Rick tried to explain the reasons that a flag-in-the-pocket is safer than a flag on a sharp stick.  He pointed out all the other riders in the pack that had flag sticks at saddle height amounting to nothing but a hazard to everyone in the pack, especially the rider directly behind whose eye was likely to be impaled in the event of a crash.

Al Simons, the DALMAC Ride Leader, told Rick to his face at the February 28th club meeting that he was not going to be allowed to register.  YOU can send a message to Al right now:

Do you think Rick should ride? Yes or No  

Any other comments for Al about this situation or Flags on DALMAC in general?

   A message will be sent to Al's email (anonymously, unless you give your name in the comments)

Who is Rick Oberle anyhow?  First, he's been a TCBA member since 1989 and was the DALMAC Committee for the five years as the designer of the DALMAC data system.  

Rick and bikes go back to the 60s when he got his first English Racer.  He rode that on the 1971 TOSRV.  He then got into racing and rode team races (the ultimate test in bike handling) in Kenosha and Northbrook and rode criteriums throughout the Midwest with the best the USA had to offer.  He rode in the National Championships in 1973 (track) and 1975 (road).  Rick knows how to ride!

Why is it that he has ridden almost TWENTY DALMACS?  He was one of the founders of the Kal-Haven Trail and was successful in getting a large grant from the DALMAC Fund in 1985.  In gratitude and out of curiosity of what this event really was, he signed up to ride.  He's been back (almost) every year since and centers his summer around it.

Rick is the same guy who ran the League of Michigan Bicyclists after Lucinda Means' untimely passing two years ago.  He also is one of the originators of the Detroit Free Press Michigander and the Kal-Haven Trailblazer.

Tell DALMAC to let Rick Ride!!

What about this "NEW" flag rule? The first "new" thing in the rule book is that flags have to be unfurled and over the rider's head.  It doesn't say what kind of flag, how big, how high, or anything else.  it doesn't even say it has to have a pole, ie a sharp stick.  There will probably be a lot of smart@$$s (people with minds like Rick's) who will tape some little thing up on their helmet and call it good.  If DALMAC is going to have a serious rule about flags and safety, they really should have some guidelines.  Heck. they don't even offer a flag anymore!  Be sure to look at the DALMAC Discussion Board to see  a guy on a butt-scraper recumbent whose flag is perfectly within the rules of the ride.  Unfortunately, it's only about 3 feet off the ground.  What good is that???

If TCBA really thought that flags were a safety thing or genuinely made any other contribution, they would require them on ALL their rides.  And other events would do the same thing.....  Does this make sense to you?

The scene of the crime!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here is Al's position to the Committee: 

Gang,

During the 2007 DALMAC tour, Rick Oberle chose to disregard a ride leader’s request to properly install his bike flag.  Since then I’ve talked with several people about what to do about this and I’ve said I’d not allow him to participate in DALMAC-2008.  Regrettably he heard this news thru the grape vine and confronted me about it at the February TCBA General Meeting.  In our short conversation he said I didn’t have to send him a letter about it because he would make other plans.  But it seems he really does want to ride DALMAC and set up the following website.

I have received over 80 emails that I’ll share with anyone.  Several emails say Rick should not ride, most say he should, and some contain messages about where the flag should reside.  I have read over half of them but now I unconditionally copy them into a folder and leave them unread.  I had hoped that Rick would accept that we have rules and the fact that he deliberately broke them.  It also seems that any discussion with Rick will end with him explaining that flags are a hazard.  What he doesn’t seem to understand is that flags were part of the 2077 tour and will be again in 2008.

the letter that went out to him today.

Since he is making a lot of noise about this I’m sending this email to a number of volunteers and the TCBA Board, as you may hear about it.

I finalize this by saying that I get no pleasure from giving anyone boot.  But the safety and integrity of this tour is far more important than someone’s crusade against bicycle flags.

Al

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