The Kalamazoo Bicycle Club sponsors, helps organize and run, and provides funding for three events for KBC members and non-members during the bicycling season. Through these events KBC enacts its mission to promote bicycling; to encourage and facilitate touring, races, bicycle outings, and all forms of recreational bicycling activities; and to help everyone recognize bicycles as vehicles used for pleasure, fitness, and transportation. Because KBC members live by the words “Life is better on a bike!”, they volunteer their time, talents and efforts to stage these events.
Bike Camp, the first KBC event of the bicycling season, is a user-friendly introduction (or re-introduction) to skills and benefits of bicycle riding. Bike Camp runs through May and into early June and includes group rides that prepare campers to participate in KalTour.
KalTour occurs on the last weekend in June and is a supported tour that takes riders through some of the most beautiful bicycling routes in southwest Michigan. With five well marked routes ranging from the 13 mile Family Ride to the Century (100 mile), KalTour is a wonderful way to enjoy Michigan roads on a bicycle.
The third event of the bicycling season, occurring in early July, is the BTR Race, a criterium on a 1.1-mile circuit around Western Michigan University’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Business Technology and Research Park. Bicycle racers at all levels and from throughout the region come to Kalamazoo to compete in this challenging race. For more information, please see the BTR Race website (http://www.wmich.edu/btrrace).