First PALM Applications

I got my first 24 PALM applications to process for 2009 yesterday. I'm using these to check out the programs and the confirmation letters for the new year. As I expected most of the people were former PALM riders, but there were people who were added to the mailing list this year and a couple of people who have never been on PALM. I'm wondering how many first time riders we are going to have who aren't on the mailing list. Since we put the application on the web site a week after we mailed it out, these people would have had only one week to (maybe) find PALM, discover that the application was on the web site, download it, and mail it in. Not a lot of time.

I checked the applications, programs, and confirmation letters after I entered first 24. Sure enough, there was a bug in the confirmation letter if you got the bus to Whitehall after the ride and a small formatting problem. I fixed them and the first confirmations have been mailed. This leaves me with 700 to go. But the way I look at it, since we got our first applications two weeks ago Saturday, I'm only 2 weeks behind. This will work up to Wednesday. Two weeks ago Wednesday we got the applications for 181 riders. I'll be working on Wednesday's applications for a while.

I got another batch of 67 applications on Saturday. We've been helped by the rain in Florida. When the sun shines, Vickie rides her bike, otherwise what's the point of being in Florida? She's emailed me that she already sent me another batch after the Saturday applications. It looks like we have the registration machine stoked up.