Update for the Ladies Only 11/26/07

You can spend your time, waste your time, or invest your time. It's your choice.

The next 2 Ladies Only Track Sessions will be on Saturday December 8th and Saturday January 5th at 12-2pm at the LA Velodrome.

The Ladies Only Track Sessions (LOTS) are not just for beginners! In addition to new rider certification, these sessions are a great opportunity for independent (beginners and advanced) riders to participate in a semi organized group warm up and workout much the same as the Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Sunday open sessions.

During the first hour of each 2 hour LOTS there is a certification class available for new riders to attend. This is the perfect opportunity for experienced track riders and established women’s teams to get in some great time on the track for only $10 per person per session plus a FREE bike rental if you need it! All other regular co-ed sessions charge a $20 session fee PLUS $65 for certification PLUS $10 to rent a bike.

Many of the Women’s road racing teams are now planning various skills clinics for the winter months. You may consider utilizing the LOTS at the LA Velodrome for a skills clinic or two for your Women’s Racing Team. Coaches & Team Captains, Please ask me for more information and plan to attend the next LOTS!

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Saturday December 1st at 3PM ~ Training Races. If you haven’t been able to attend the first few training races, then you missed a lot of info and a lot of fun!! However, you are all invited/encouraged to join us this Saturday for more of the same. Our Elite Sprinters have all left for Sidney, Australia for the first of 4 World Cup Track Races. The remaining Training Race Sessions will be focusing primarily on Endurance events. So make time on Saturday to join us and learn to race the track! The fee is $10 each session plus your track fee. No rental bikes.

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Sunday December 9th @ 7:30am ~ Encino Velodrome Winter Challenge ~ Need some hill free base miles to round out your off season training? There will be a 100 lap/25k “Bike Messenger Race” and a 400 lap/100k “Scratch Race” at the Encino Velodrome on Sunday Dec 9th. The $$cash$$ at the finish line is HUGE!! $5000 to the winner of the 400 Lap Scratch Race. For complete details and registration information, please visit the Encino Velodrome’s Website.

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Sat Dec 8th ~ So Cal Half Marathon. I know that many of you are enthusiastic runners. If you are planning to run the SCHM please let me know. I'd love to meet up w/you on the start line and run some or all of the race with you! I'll be the one in the Santa Skirt.

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The 2008 SCNCA Racing Calendar is now available. From Eric Smith: www.scnca.com/2006calendar.asp “I am sure there will be some changes as some races are still negotiating race dates with their cities (SLO and West LA). We will announce the junior road race/time trial and elite criterium championships soon.

The 2008 SoCal Cup guidelines will be announced later this month. Last race of the 2008 SoCal Cup season will be August 31st.”

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The next 2 Ladies Only Track Sessions will be on Saturday December 8th and Saturday January 5th at 12-2pm at the LA Velodrome.
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Telephones invaded the back woods a century ago

By Wayne ReillyMonday, October 1, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
Mainers were finding a growing number of uses for telephones a century ago. Take funerals, for instance. What may have been the first (and quite possibly the last) funeral conducted over the telephone occurred in Auburn during the winter of 1907. The Rev. Arbor J. Marsh murmured words of consolation over the telephone wire to Mr. and Mrs. Pliny W. Sturtevant on the death of their 2-year-old son from diphtheria. The house was under quarantine, said the Bangor Daily News on March 27, so the Rev. Marsh was unable to attend.

Most telephones were still confined to cities and large towns, but they also were being strung to isolated logging camps, islands and farms. Great Northern Paper Co. had routed phones to such remote places as Pocwocamus and Sourdnahunk, in the heart of the Maine wilderness, reported the Bangor Daily Commercial on March 12, 1907. These phones often were located in wooden boxes spiked to big trees attached to miles of wire. Imagine what a shock it must have been to encounter one of these while trying to retrace the trail of Thoreau.

During the log drive, an employee could run along the river for miles, reporting jams and other problems to his boss on the phone. But, alas, these phones were one more hindrance to experiencing the "glamor and fascination" of a trip through the northern wilderness, the newspaper writer lamented.

Farmers also were rapidly recognizing the value of telephones to summon physicians or to "spread the gossip." "[T]here are many villages in this state with not over 200 or 300 inhabitants which have telephones installed in as great a proportion as some of the cities," said the Commercial on July 21, 1906.

Sometimes, however, it was necessary to overcome the suspicions of rural folks. One farmer angrily ordered linemen to move his new line from over his chicken house after his hens laid fewer eggs.

Islanders were another group interested in telephones. The inhabitants of Sutton’s, Little and Big Cranberry isles had just had a "submarine cable" put down on the ocean bottom for 2½ miles, the Commercial reported on June 14, 1907. Before it could be installed, the heavy cable reel fell through a wharf at Mount Desert Ferry and had to be salvaged. "There will be pay stations on each of the three islands that the service may be available to all the inhabitants," said the newspaper.

Meanwhile, expansion of telephone systems in cities was truly impressive. Subscribers to New England Telephone and Telegraph Co. in Bangor and Brewer had tripled in four years from 1,200 to 3,600, the Commercial reported on Sept. 7, 1907.

There was then room for 30 operators at the "operating board." Fourteen handled local calls and the rest did long distance. The exchange was handling 26,000 local calls a day and 1,400 to 1,500 toll calls. At peak times, more than 2,000 calls an hour were processed on average. The company planned to add 15 operators and a new board just to handle toll calls, leaving the big board for local work, said the newspaper.

The operators also were improving their speed and efficiency. The average time of a call from the moment the subscriber removed the receiver until the operator answered was exactly three seconds for day calls and 2.8 seconds for night calls, an improvement of half a second since the last inspection was made, the newspaper reported.

Of course, it took longer to actually make a call. The phone user had to turn a crank to get an operator’s attention and, after she plugged a cord into the switchboard, would ask her for a number. Then the operator had to test the desired line to see whether it was busy, before plugging in a second cord to create a circuit and ring the number manually, sometimes repeatedly. After the caller hung up, he was supposed to signal the operator to pull out both cords to disconnect the circuit. Long-distance calls took much longer, requiring contacts with multiple phone exchanges.
Operators averaged about 230 calls an hour. The Bangor exchange had the distinction of having the fastest operator in New England Telephone and Telegraph’s service area, a young woman who could handle 400 calls an hour, said the Commercial.

The telephone company was doing everything in its power to convince people to install phones. Large advertisements ran in the newspapers offering free trials. Newspaper infomercials taught telephone etiquette. One piece was titled "The Art of Telephoning." It offered this rudimentary advice: " Look up numbers before calling ‘Central’; be prompt about answering your own telephone bell when it rings [an operator was waiting as well as the caller]; take pains in speaking." That meant don’t shout.
But the original telephone needed no more selling than the cell phone would years later. It had been only 27 years since the Bangor Telephone Co. was founded. A Commercial reporter figured in 1907 there was one telephone for every eight residents of Bangor and Brewer. Today there are probably eight telephones or more for every resident of some communities, if one counts the extensions and the devices such as cell phones and computers used for instant communication in homes and businesses.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net Thanks to the folks at the Telephone Museum in Ellsworth for providing a demonstration of how a switchboard worked a century ago

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Have a super week Ladies!!

Julia