Good question, Rod - the membership "update" has been on the to-do list for a while.

In the short term, we are keeping the basic membership at $15 and the easiest way to pay is to mail it to KyMBA at PO Box 5433, Louisville 40255-0433. One significant change however, is the "renew dates". If you join in 2008, your membership will be up for renewal in January 2009 - regardless of what month you joined. This streamlines the books and makes it much easier for everyone to remember. We looked into a system similary to Louisville Bike Club's, but it takes a lot of time and we are already pretty short on help.

In the long term, we are going to basically overhaul the membership standards. One of the most common suggestions we received in years past is for more swag as part of membership, with a close second being too few updates for members. The new system should take care of that. While still just a draft, here's how it goes:

Basic membership: Free. Come to the website, sign up (provide name, mailing address, email address and phone no.) You'll be entered into the database and get updates and messages emailed to you each quarter. Ultimately, mountain bikers compete for the limited trail space we have in KY, so having a larger membership base is key. Not everyone can afford to donate, but we'd at least like them to be counted.

"Supporter": $20. Same sign-up protocols, but at the $20 level, you will get a membership letter, possibly a membership card and a sticker pack.

"Enthusiast": $40. Same sign-up protocols and at this level, but you get the membership letter, possibly a membership card a KyMBA sticker and either KyMBA socks or a kymba tee shirt.

"Trailbuilder": $60. Same sign up protocols, but the big difference here is that you will get a combined IMBA and KyMBA membership. $25 of those dollars goes straight to IMBA and the rest stays here in KY and gets applied to our trails. You'll still get swag (from both orgainzations), but we have to dial in the costs, etc. Probably something like a pint glass, tee shirt and a combo sticker pack.

"Above and Beyond": $80 or more. Same as the trailbuilder, but more swag and - if we can work this out - your name will be included in an annual raffle for a gift certificate to the shop of your choice. Not a little one either - a real gift cert that will buy you more than just a pair of gloves.

Overall, we are hoping to push a new membership and donation effort that works around a very simple question: "aren't great trails close to home worth 1%"

Basically, we are asking people that enjoy mountain biking to donate 1% of their total investment to an advocacy organization - in our case - to KyMBA. So for example, if you ride a $2500 bike, wear $60 shorts, a $40 jersey and a $100 helmet, your investment would theoretically total around $2700. In a perfect world, you would donate 1% of that - or $27 bucks - to KyMBA so that we can keep working for more trails and better access to existing land. Obviously, larger donations are always welcome, but we are hoping the sliding scale will encourage more of the smaller contributions.

Again, this is quite a bit of administrative work so it's more of a long term project (like a late 08 roll-out) In the meantime, though, we'll keep the old membership programs in place and when we get it all dialed in, we'll give folks that joined at the $15 level a chance to pay the extra $5 bucks (or more if you want) to get the additional member perks.

As far as the list of members - it's something we've wanted to have for a long time. Hopefully we can get it up this summer, but basically, it will have everyone's name, what "chapter" of KyMBA they affiliate with (like NKY, SE KY, WKY, etc) and a link to their inbox so you can quickly contact them if you need to.

I hope this helps clear things up and please feel free to send me thoughts or comments. It's a challenging system to get in place, but I really believe it will make us a much tighter organization.

Thanks for your patience, everyone.

Dulin