Election Results: Congratulations to Bill Bryant who has been re-elected to the board and to Don Hamilton has been newly elected to the board. RBAs - vote for your RBA Representative.

American Randonneur Award: Who deserves RUSA's highest honour? Think about it and submit your nominee's name.

PBP Results. Of the 458 American starters, 400 finished. (Donna Kuehn guessed 385 to win the contest and a PBP Board game.) Our PBP Finish rate was 87.5%, making the DNF rate 12.5%. Mike Fulton of Colorado became rider #852 by being the first American to cross the PBP finish line, Wednesday August 20 at 5:20pm. Jerol Harrington was the last. Melinda Lyon from Massachusetts was the first female finisher, and first woman in PBP history to repeat as the Premiere Feminine in consecutive PBPs. Evelyn Buchwitz, through the kindness of strangers, became the last American female finisher. Lois Springsteen became the first American woman to finish four consecutive PBPs. PBP 2003 marks the 20th 1200k event that RUSA member Stig Lundgaard of Denmark has finished since 1995. The USA repeats as the foreign country with the most amount of PBP Finishers. See all the PBP 2003 results starting on page 21.

PBP 2003 Video: You can pre-order the PBP 2003 video from RUSA by using the Souvenir Order form found on page 70 of this issue. Order the video at a special pre-production price of $45. (The price of the PBP 1999 video has been reduced.)

PBP 2003 Yearbook: RUSA will produce a PBP 2003 Yearbook as a bonus publication provided free to every current member of RUSA at the time of publication. Bill Bryant and Lois Springsteen will be the Yearbook editors. To submit a PBP article for consideration, email your submission before January 1, 2004, to scrandonneurs@prodigy.net.

Adieu. Oh my gosh, look at the time. I've got to go. This is my last newsletter as President of Randonneurs USA. With close to 2000 members, 34 RBAs, and 12 administrative directors, RUSA is now a force to be reckoned with. I leave the organization in good hands, with a solid foundation, and a budget surplus. It was an honour and a pleasure to serve as your President for the past five years. It has been an enjoyable, emotional, enlightening and entertaining journey.

Thanks for the ride.


Jennifer