President’s Message
We’re looking forward to 2025 as a pivotal year for PACA. The board is working on some internal changes with the goal of setting ourselves set up to provide our members with more benefits, programming, great trails and community-building opportunities in the years to come!
To that end, we will be setting up subcommittees, creating volunteers to join the club and help us round out our ranks. The subcommittees will include:
- Trails
- Road Cycling
- Urban Cycling
- Membership, Marketing & Communications
- Programming & Events
- Finance
We’ll be posting more specific volunteer opportunities here and on our social channels very soon, so keep your eyes peeled.
But if you can’t wait to get involved, feel free to jump the queue and email me at president@bikepenticton.com or send us your contact details at https://bikepenticton.com/volunteers-tracker/
Happy holidays to all!
Keep ’em spinning,
Skyler Punnett
President
Thank you, Stephanie, for six years of service
This month we say goodbye and a huge thank you to Communications Director Stephanie Atilano. Stephanie has decided to pursue other opportunities in the Penticton community.
In the six years Stephanie was with PACA, she started and ran our mountain biking programs for adults and youth, including the Al’pacas summer youth camps, adult skills camps and private lessons. She also planned and led weekly drop-in mountain bike rides.
She also led group road rides and taught road cycling skills. She’s a PMBIA certified coach and a CyclingBC Road Ride Leader, and is a member of Penticton Search and Rescue.
When she wasn’t on the trails or the roads, she managed PACA’s social media channels, growing our Instagram following to more than 1,600 and Facebook to more than 2,200. She also published the monthly newsletter, and planned mountain biking events and fun community events like the Halloween ride.
“Thank you to those who have been super supportive and welcoming all these years,” says Stephanie. “I’ve truly enjoyed (and will miss every) minute of my free time spent sharing and growing PACA’s social media and other communications.”
Get 30% off Trailforks Pro
Right now, get 30% off Trailforks Pro for the first year and get unlimited offline access to 550,000+ trails, global heatmaps, Garmin basemaps, and every feature in the app, anywhere you go.
Plus, feel good knowing $5 from your purchase goes directly to supporting our work on the trails—at no additional cost to you. Ready to roll? Claim your discount here.
Thanks for supporting our trails, and see you out there!
PACA members get 25% of Penticton Community Centre individual memberships
We’re thrilled to share that PACA members can now get 25% off 1 month, 3 month, 6 month and 1-year individual passes at the Penticton Community Centre (note family passes are excluded from this promotion).
Passes can be purchased for the fitness room, pool, fitness room and pool combo, drop-in sports and aquafit.
To claim your discount:
- You must be an active member of PACA
- You must show your PACA digital ID card at the time of purchase (see below), along with a second piece of ID
To find and download your PACA digital ID card:
- Go to https://paca.tidyhq.com/.
- Login to your account.
- Click on your name and choose Contact Profile from the drop-down menu.
- Once you choose Contact Profile, click Memberships.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page to your current ACTIVE membership.
Your membership may show as a 2023 membership due to an error in our membership system. Just be sure your membership is marked ACTIVE and expires 31-12-2024.
- Click on Add to Apple Wallet or GPay Save to phone. Click Add.
- Open your wallet app on your phone to ensure your digital ID card was added successfully.
We recommend you upload a photo to your profile. You can do this in Contact Profile > Profile Photo.
Six local kids get free bikes and new skills
Thanks to the big hearts of a local philanthropist family, the Penticton & Area Cycling Association (PACA), the South Okanagan WheelHouse Society and the Bike Barn, six local kids are the proud owners of some sweet new bikes and riding gear and have the skills to enjoy them!
The youth were selected by referral from local community programs or self-referral for a free multi-week cycling program. Once they had their bikes (which they didn’t yet know were theirs to keep) they were teamed up with a local cycling coach.
We held five sessions in total and these ranged from learning the fundamentals of mtn biking, basic bike maintenance and foundational skill building. Our riders showed amazing progression from our first day on the field to our last day in the Three Blind Mice. Their joy was contagious.
The finale was a shuttle ride in the Three Blind Mice followed by a pizza wrap-up and the gifting of the bikes.
Gear’d Up (formerly called Radical Riders Mtb) has run annually since 2017 (except 2021 due to COVID) with cohorts of two to seven youth. All of the youth that participated in the program have been gifted bikes, safety gear and knowledge.
We encourage anyone interested in supporting similar community projects to reach out to geareduppenticton@gmail.com. For families interested in participating in 2025, sign up for news and updates on the PACA website at www.bikepenticton.com/contact-us/, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Applications will open February 2025.
“Thank you from the very bottom of my heart. To be able to offer this to my son this summer has been life-changing. We appreciate the lessons learned. The friends made and the little things this program has done to spark the ‘just maybe’…part of us again. My son gained confidence, appreciation and more than anything the possibility of all the trails out there that he could tackle. He is so excited. Thank you, Gear’d Up. He is still in awe of the generosity and thank you ….so are we. It’s an incredible course. We truly appreciate all of you.”