Well here we are entering the last quarter of 2008 and the last quarter of my 2^nd year as President of the POC.  The older I get it seems to accelerate and this year seems to have attached itself to a rocket ship.  Never the less it has been a fairly good year for the club.  Every weekend has had an event and in some cases two and three events.  John Motz has reported that our trail maintainers have logged in 150 hours and as of this publication there are two more trail care events scheduled.  By the time this quarterly newsletter is published the club will have participated in a parade and two community events for the purposes of soliciting new members.  This year the Keystone Trails Association (KTA) is holding their annual meeting and hiking weekend at the Pocono Environmental Education Center (PEEC) and our club was asked to support and lead the local hikes (17 of them).  So I think it’s safe to say we have had a good active year so far.

Some time ago I had a discussion with the Executive Director and he asked me how active our club was?  My response was as follows: “We are basically a small club of approximately hundred members, never the less we manage to have an activity scheduled every weekend, but of course unfortunately these activities are carried out by 10% of our membership getting involved”.  His response was: “Based on his experience 10% was in fact above par”.  Well I was wrong, I looked over this year’s records and in fact the number is 20%.  GREAT job to all of you.  On behalf of myself as President and the Executive Committee and the other 80% of the club we thank you.  It is you who make the POC so great.

Having said all of this I got to thinking how really great this club could be if another 20% would step up and participate.  You may have noticed that most of the weekend hikes are led by the same leaders to be exact 14 of us.  Now there are 52 weeks in the year, consequently a good many of us are doing three or more hikes per quarter.  Tom Miller has asked that more people step up and volunteer to be hike leaders.  This is not all that difficult - schedule a hike your familiar with, publicize yourself as the leader, define a specific meeting place and time, collect the names and phone numbers of the participating (in case of inclement weather, etc, requiring a change of plans) one or two days prior to the scheduled hike.   Pretty simple, right! So give Tom Miller a call at 570-992-1321 and schedule your hike for the next quarter.  Another area that is in need of more volunteers is our trail care, coordinator, John Motz.  While we logged 150 hours so far this year it was all done by 12 members, some putting in 12 to 15 hours and more.

It is important to realize that the trails we use require constant care and the DCNR, while they do their best to maintain them, cannot keep up and therefore rely on volunteers, yup hiking and outdoor clubs such as ours.  Remember we use those trails extensively and if we want to continue to have so many available we better step up to the plate.  The alternative could be some favorite trails eliminated.

November 23 is our next Quarterly Meeting and the time of the year to elect new officers.  In accordance with our by-laws, this year we are to elect a Vice President and Secretary.  Roy Kleinle has accepted the nomination for Vice President; however Judy Zarach, our present secretary, has declined the nomination.  Therefore we are in need of a Secretary Candidate.  The position requires someone to take notes and publish them a minimum of four times a year (Quarterly Meetings) and two or three executive meetings as required.  I asked Tony Gatto to put the slate together, so if anyone has the desire to step up please contact Tony at 570-646-0673.

Previously, I mentioned how much better this club could be if we had another 20% participation, what I had in mind was weekend camping trips (hiking/bicycling) rafting the Lehigh River Canoeing/Kayaking the Delaware or Susquehanna rivers.  Maybe some weekend ski trips (down hill or cross country).  Basically there is no limit to where we could go other than some of your active participation. So please step up, use your imagination and become part of the next 20% of participants.

Your President

George Singlemann