What’s happening . . .

The 2024 individual accomplishments of NMTS members will be recognized in an Awards Ceremony, planed for April 2025. To prepare for this, the NMTS Awards Committee is seeking nominations for the awards listed and explained in the NMTS Awards policy (available on the NMTS website in the Members Only area – link [here](https://www.nmts.org/Documents/NMTS_Policy_NMTS_Awards.pdf)):

Ride Leader of the Year

Volunteer of the Year

Tour of the Year

Lifetime Service Award

Special Recognition Awards (both serious and humorous)

The Awards Committee is asking for assistance from all members in identifying those who best deserve these awards. Please send your nominations to the Awards Committee chairperson, Bill Thompson, at thompsonw50@hotmail.com.

After an initial review of all award nominations, the Awards Committee will send each member an email in February with a link to an online Survey, which will allow you to vote for your selection for Ride Leader of the Year, Volunteer of the Year, and Tour of the Year.

Contact Bill Thompson with any questions or comments. If you have an interest in serving on the Awards Committee and participating in the discussions about award winners, please contact Bill.

The touring society discontinued the total miles challenge at the end of 2024. This optional challenge allowed us to record all of our riding, whether on club ride or on our own. Results were reported in the Freewheel newsletter and awards issued at the end of the year. Few members were participating and the board decided to discontinue it. But, we received enough inquiries into continuing the function that we have set a new challenge for 2025 on the Ride With GPS website. Visit the [2025 Mileage Challenge](https://ridewithgps.com/challenges/30180?privacy_code=2WKSokel2d0lyt05hHB06lYzfkFeWxos) to sign up or view the current leader board. If you are not already a member of Ride With GPS it will prompt you to sign up for an account at this point. The free basic account is all that is required.

While I was at it, I created a climbing challenge. Sign up for the [Mountain Goats Challenge](https://ridewithgps.com/challenges/30337?privacy_code=gp4e45kwnTAB6ctIfBqdKPL6ss4qPgiM) to see and share your altitude gains over the year.

The 2024 Mileage Report is now available at the "More Information" link below. In addition to the usual breakdown of rides, trips, and miles for the year, this report includes a listing of Career Miles. This is all the club miles we could find for every member covering the years 1996 through 2024 (23 pages of listings). If you want to find your entry I recommend using your browser's search function (Ctrl-F in most windows browsers) to find your name. Data for the earlier years is pretty sketchy. Gathering it involved a lot of manual entry from old newsletters. If you think your data is shorted, let me know and I will update it.

Finally, this is the last report that will include total miles. We will no longer be collecting and reporting miles outside of those reported for club rides.

More information