An Open Letter to the Adventure Cycling Board and Past Leaders

[jamawani]

Dear Adventure Cycling board members and past leaders,

The single most important goal in the coming 6 months is to reach out to former members.
Although the disagreements of the past year may appear to be a net negative, the vote against the sale and the recognition by the board that they have been off course may yet be a positive factor in regaining past members. Regaining half the lost members - if possible - would largely offset the income from the sale of the headquarters building.

However, there also has to be a willingness to listen. I believe that ACA’s leadership has been in an echo chamber for the past 5 years. That’s easy to do in this electronic age because we can seek out confirming views and block any opposing ones.The echo chamber is part and parcel of our media. Also, when most people leave, they simply leave without saying. Very few take the time to share the reasons for their departure. But remember, the largest pool of potential members is the 32,000 people who have left ACA over the past 5 years.

That leads to the second goal - an effective survey of current and as many past members as possible. That is increasingly hard to do. Most people ignore the constant bombardment of surveys. Even the New York Times surveys rarely have a response rate larger than 1%-2%. I have a background in surveying. I no longer am startled when clients want specific results. Which underscores a reason for nonresponse - that it is useless to try to respond and be heard. To have an effective survey, past and present members need to be convinced that their views - and not just their money - matter.

Whether or not the survey is done in house or by consultants is debatable. Given the very specific nature of bicycle touring and the likelihood that survey consultants may not have the knowledge to ask the right questions in the right manner, it may be preferable to do the survey internally. It can be designed as both a short and longer survey depending on the time and interest of the respondent. Also, it can be either anonymous or with contact information. But most importantly - - now is the time to do a survey.

The third goal is far more difficult. Bicycling is in serious decline in the United States. A recent Atlantic article pointed out that childhood bicycling has dropped 50% in the past 25 years, frequent riding even more. For boomers, the bicycle racks at school were full, 6 or 8 racks overflowing. Now, there is a single rack with 2 or 3 bikes. People are unlikely to go bike touring if they have never even ridden to school or the store. Gravel bikepacking may appeal to the dramatically reduced population of riders, but young adults with little experience riding will most likely prefer pavement - empty pavement - but pavement. It’s a both/and proposition. Gravel and pavement.

The opportunities presented now will be short-lived. It will be tough. It will require a significant change in approach. Be it can be done.

Sincerely,
John Egan, Buffalo, Wyoming

[DW]

John,

Excellent suggestions all.  The board and staff need to know what the members think and want for the years ahead. 

If you haven't yet done so, I think you'll stand a better chance of getting the BOD's attention by contacting it directly at: board@adventurecycling.org.

As for past leaders, I presume you mean the members of the Save ACA Committee, reachable at: info@saveacahq.org.

However, if you'll recall board chair Flavia Chen's email of January 30 announcing the results of the second vote, it's clear she was unable - at least then - to let go of the nonsense, distortions ("...made in good faith..."; "...concerns raised by members as primarily procedural."; ...what we treated as technical issues..." {in reality, both are legal issues} and irrelevancy "...94.7% supported the proposal.") {of the first, illegal and cancelled vote} continually sold to the membership in the months leading up to and during the second voting process. 

Yes, she acknowledged the board's mistakes and its responsibility for loss of trust, but the attitude of "We were right" communicated in those comments permeates her message.  Why they were included at all is beyond comprehension.   

Now that the board and the Save ACA Committee are in negotiations under the guidance of a professional mediator (and ACA member) as to ACA's future path - and the search for a new executive director - hopefully a more positive attitude of cooperation, rather than distrust and misinformation, is taking hold for the benefit of the organization and its members.

If you happen to recall in which issue of The Atlantic that article about the decline in childhood biking appeared, I'd appreciate your passing it along.

[jamawani]

07-2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/07/kids-biking-decline/683377/

[george]

John,

Thank you -- very cogently presented. I hadn't realized the extent of the drop in youth cycling. More crowded (and thus more dangerous) roads than when you and I were young is probably part of it. I'd hate to think that cycling as an activity has seen its day.

[DW]

Thanks for The Atlantic article link, John.  One point not mentioned is that since the 1960s, the U.S. population has grown from some 190 million to over 343 million today.  More people, more drivers, more roads, more cars.

[jamawani]

Yes, U.S. population has grown, but it has been highly concentrated.
A third of U.S. counties have lost population since 1975.
Nearly all of these countries are rural - where the ACA routes are or could be.
More moderate traffic roads have shoulders than in 1975.
Plus rail trails - which didn't exist in 1975.

Speeds, however, are faster. As is distracted driving - i.e. phones.
Of course, 8-track tapes getting caught was a serious problem back in 1975.

[DW]

Yes, U.S. population has grown, but it has been highly concentrated.
A third of U.S. countries have lost population since 1975.
Nearly all of these countries are rural - where the ACA routes are or could be.
More moderate traffic roads have shoulders than in 1975.
Plus rail trails - which didn't exist in 1975.

Speeds, however, are faster. As is distracted driving - i.e. phones.
Of course, 8-track tapes getting caught was a serious problem back in 1975.

Make that counties and I'm with you!     And I'd put distracted driving as the single most dangerous driver behavior on our roads today.

[BikeliciousBabe]

It's a shame that it is a shame these days for one to admit that one was wrong.  I don't put much faith in people or organizations who don't have the integrity to do that.  Hope ACA can change my mind.

[ray b]

From John Baldoni in Forbes a few year ago. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbaldoni/2019/04/03/what-john-wayne-got-wrong-about-apologizing)

“The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death,” Plato wrote in Apology of Socrates, “but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.”

When a leader makes a mistake, he or she must own it. Doing so is more than a matter of accountability; it is a sign of responsibility. It signifies ownership of the problem, which can lead to solutions and remediation.

Owning a mistake, therefore, is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength.

[jamawani]

I just received the February ACA Newsletter from Jessica Zephyrs.
It is not encouraging. The tone suggests little has changed in management's attitude.
Here are two paragraphs:

Leadership transitions and the lost opportunity to access capital from building sale proceeds to rebuild programs have real impacts. But as staff have been meeting the last few weeks to discuss how to pivot, I’m reminded of what we’ve accomplished, how resilient we are, and how passionate our community is.

Flexibility and durability are both attributes of an adventure cyclist, so maybe it’s not a surprise that they’re also attributes of this small but mighty team. Time and time again, I’m impressed by my coworkers: their ideas, their follow-through, their commitment to meeting the current challenges (and there have been many!).

"Lost opportunity to access capital" ?
One would think that after the drop-kick that the board and staff received from the second vote that they might realize the entire sale project was a fiasco - not only a poor decision, but one that alienated a majority of members - even after 32,000 members had departed.

"Flexibility and durability" ?
It sounds like the marketing spiel that was so prevalent during Jenn O'Dell's tenure. When bombarded with language like that, most people simply ignore it, at best. The reality is that staff and board have failed ACA members over the past five years, especially during the past year.

This newsletter suggests to me that management has not learned much from the recent sale vote.
Nor does it appear that there is any desire to do a serious inventory of the errors that led to the two votes.
Rather, it seems that the goal is damage control and further messaging.
Which does not portend well for Adventure Cycling.

[DW]

I just received the February ACA Newsletter from Jessica Zephyrs.
It is not encouraging. The tone suggests little has changed in management's attitude.
Here are two paragraphs:

Leadership transitions and the lost opportunity to access capital from building sale proceeds to rebuild programs have real impacts. But as staff have been meeting the last few weeks to discuss how to pivot, I’m reminded of what we’ve accomplished, how resilient we are, and how passionate our community is.

Flexibility and durability are both attributes of an adventure cyclist, so maybe it’s not a surprise that they’re also attributes of this small but mighty team. Time and time again, I’m impressed by my coworkers: their ideas, their follow-through, their commitment to meeting the current challenges (and there have been many!).

"Lost opportunity to access capital" ?
One would think that after the drop-kick that the board and staff received from the second vote that they might realize the entire sale project was a fiasco - not only a poor decision, but one that alienated a majority of members - even after 32,000 members had departed.

"Flexibility and durability" ?
It sounds like the marketing spiel that was so prevalent during Jenn O'Dell's tenure. When bombarded with language like that, most people simply ignore it, at best. The reality is that staff and board have failed ACA members over the past five years, especially during the past year.

This newsletter suggests to me that management has not learned much from the recent sale vote.
Nor does it appear that there is any desire to do a serious inventory of the errors that led to the two votes.
Rather, it seems that the goal is damage control and further messaging.
Which does not portend well for Adventure Cycling.

John,

I read Jessica's piece but once before consigning it to the trash bin, having sensed not an iota of substance or anything beyond continuing along the same pre-vote path of emptiness and, by the by, asking members for even more and larger donations just to stay afloat ("rebuild programs").  How about rebuilding trust?  Once again, Jamawani, you nailed it.

Of particular note is her comment "But as staff have been meeting the last few weeks to discuss how to pivot..." (as in basketball or is that a pet term taught in MBA classes?) is, still, the strident unwillingness to even mention the Save ACA Committee, which, by the way, is engaged in mediated negotiations with the board to develop and hopefully agree upon realistic plans for ACA's future.  In her world apparently, only staff meetings count. 

The propaganda continues.

[ray b]

Do have to remember, without the benefit of an interim director (maybe a past director could step up), it's a rudderless ship of dispersed employees, who don't eat or ride together, just trying to hold on while looking for other work.

I also caught the emphasis on "lost capital," as if a million dollars or two will make a difference, and the assumption we need to give blind financial support to the nameless programs they think they need to reiinstitute....

Also, noted the bikes to be given away to lucky drop-in rided registrants. I'll say again - instead of giving away donated bikes to folks signing up for free, on an expensive, 3rd party platform to register their future rides on ACA routes (as if we want to let everyone know we will be away from our homes for weeks at a time), I recommend putting those bikes up for donations - Raffle them off - $25/ticket and 5 tickets/$100. (One of the two-wheeled organizations to which I belong has made millions through the years in this manner for an educational, training, and outreach foundatiaion.) 

(Still don't understand who's making the money and how they're making it off the drop-in rides through Bikereg.com, unless Outside^TM provides it for free in exchange for data of participants who sign up..., and then the number of folks signed up somehow gets turned into advertising money on the ACA website? (I know I'm going to be way off on track, but as a guy with a personal interest in funding non-profits, would love someone to tell me how the money makes it back to ACA.)

[davidbonn]

Speaking from some experience here with both for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises.

The hardest thing you can deal with is when you have a successful operation for a long time and the world changes around you.  You will probably see the writing on the wall long before any of the other stakeholders (be they employees, shareholders, members, or customers) see it.  And persuading anyone that things need to change is a thankless task.

What I see is that bicycle travel, especially in the United States, has changed on multiple axes.  Those axes include demographics, the type of trips people take, their preferred routes, and even the kind of bikes they ride and the stuff they carry.  Given all of those changes it is unrealistic to expect ACA to carry on doing the same things they did in the past.

You also need to ask questions about what they are doing currently and how that supports their specified mission.  You also need to ask questions about whether the mission needs to be updated or refined.

I will say, that for myself, the very best single thing that ACA is doing for me is publishing their magazine.  The ACA Short Route effort of a few years ago was a good idea that appears to have fizzled out. 

[John Nettles]

To me, the biggest issue is the perception that ACA has become irrelevant.  While I agree they have mightly missed the boat in places, i.e. look at Bikepacking.com's website vs. ACA's and which gets you more motivated to ride/tour.

However, they CAN compete in other places by offering value and benefits to its members.  I would think if they seriously pushed the discounts (hotels, restaurants, campgrounds, etc.) along ANY major route (including Bikepacking), the discounts received would pay for the membership. 

I also wish they would actively start pursuing Short Routes and/or Member submitted and peer-reviewed routes (short or long).  It would be nice if they could start coordinating local/regional "touring groups" that are cultivated only amongst ACA members, i.e. all ACA members in X state are invited to a 3-day tour in that state that the members arrange themselves and you must be an ACA member to participate. 

Finally, they could significantly increase the touring-specific advocacy (no turn away camping policy, rumble strips, etc.).

As a side note, I was encouraged they are looking to add 3 Board Members.  I would volunteer but I have very little non-profit experience.  I think they need a wide variety of Board Members though.

Just my 2 cents.  Tailwinds, John

[BikeliciousBabe]

All great comments/observations above.  I fear that they will fall upon deaf/stubborn/myopic ears.