On Sunday July 13 at 7:00 a.m., 600 athletes will challenge themselves with a 1000-meter swim, 18-mile bike and a five-mile run.   If you aren’t racing, sit on your front porch and cheer these athletes as they push their limits on the streets of Montclair!  There are a couple of things that you should know about this event as it will affect the flow of traffic on Sunday July 13.  

The streets affected by the bike course include:

    Spillway, Dolphin, Ashgrove, and Waterway.

The Montclair Lions hope every Montclair resident, their family members, and their guests had as much fun at Montclair Day as we did.  Congratulations to this year's winners of the Montclair Lions Scholarships, Delaney Tomczak and Ben White.  Delaney plans to attend JMU and Ben plans to attend Virginia Tech in the fall.  Thanks to Lion Kathy Grover for coordinating this year's scholarship program.

On Sunday night, May 11-12, a spring storm stalled over the Montclair area and pelted the community with an unforecast amount of rain. On the Friday before the storm, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted rainfall for the weekend of one-quarter to one-half inch per day; however, when the storm slowed and then stalled on Sunday night, Montclair experienced a rainfall accumulation of 6.5 inches. The impact of this storm on Lake Montclair was substantial but could have been far worse but for the efforts of Montclair’s management and maintenance staff.

General Information
•    MPOA maintains and operates three beaches on Lake Montclair—Dolphin Beach (off Dolphin Drive), West Beach (off Spalding Drive), and Beaver Landing (off Silvan Glen Drive). 
•    The beaches open for the summer season Memorial Day weekend (Saturday May 24, 2008) and close Labor Day weekend (Monday September 1, 2008).

The Montclair Triathlon, coming up on July 13, 2008 is now just two months away.  With a great race so close to home, why not race yourself?  The Montclair Triathlon consists of a 1000 meter swim in Lake Montclair, a three-loop 18 mile bike ride on Waterway Drive, and a two-loop, five-mile run on the sidewalks and paths of Montclair.

Your history committee is hard at work gathering information about Montclair in preparation for publishing a book next year – in honor of our 40th Anniversary.  We’d love to hear from you too, especially if you lived here in the 1970’s.  I recently spent many hours looking through back editions of The Potomac News and The Washington Post.  You may have heard that 2009 is considered our 40th Anniversary, but what a turbulent start we had!  And while 1969 is indeed the anniversary of our property owners association, the rest of the story is pretty fascinating.

As you plan to work in your yards this month, keep in mind the following suggestions from the Landscape and Facilities Management Committee:

•    The first week of June - set your lawn mower as high as it will go and keep it there all summer.  This will choke out weeds without using chemicals and will minimize the amount of water your lawn will need.  If weeds are present then bag and throw out the clippings.  If no weeds, you should set your mower to mulch the clippings to feed the lawn.

With oil dependency costing more and more every day, solar power seems more responsible and cheaper.   PELT has recommended to the Covenants Committee that a “Fast Track” for Solar Shingles be established.  The envisioned covenant would give the Covenants Director authority to grant provisional approval for a property owner’s PIR asking to:

1.    Replace regular shingles with Solar Shingles that, within a manufacturer’s offerings, has the closest color match to the existing shingle color, or which matches the existing structure’s color scheme;