Columnists

Welcome to my last column—at least for a while. I started writing this column five years and one month ago. I figure that’s gotta be over 100 columns where I had a chance to highlight the people, businesses, organizations, events and the beautiful place we live that makes up our community.

Last month I took a nice motorcycle ride through the great American Southwest. This trip allowed me to reflect on life a bit here in our little community.

I just returned from a solo motorcycle trip across the great Southwest. Traveling mostly two-lane blacktop, there were few distractions other than the iconic, beautiful countryside.

About three weeks ago a group of us were having a Friday dinner when we heard police car sirens passing by over and over again. A little while later we start hearing the chirps and buzzes of messages being delivered to our faithful little electronic tethers to reality. C’mon, on a Friday night?Seems that something was happening at the Britton Middle School carnival right around the corner. Details were kind of sketchy at the time, but apparently someone had a knife and then half the world’s police showed up and things got ugly. Or something like that.More information arrived in the news the next morning—on the radio. Police officers were injured by several minors, eight arrested, one youth tazed, carnival cancelled and $20,000 in fundraising to support classroom related projects lost.Once again, something bad happened in Morgan Hill and the entire Bay Area gets to dwell on it with us. Can’t we get a break?So, we had a student with a knife at a carnival where police intervened, a mob got ugly, some police were assaulted, some young hoodlums went to jail, and the carnival was shut down.Can you find the good in all of this? One of my friends pointed out some things that we, in Morgan Hill, should appreciate. So here I go.First, someone noticed a knife being exchanged between two young males and they called the police, two of which were already on site patrolling the carnival. When approached, the young male with the knife handed it over without incident. No problem.So then the guy who first supplied the knife is approached and wants to tango with the MHPD and a crowd joins in.This is the smart part of dealing with the stupid part.Instead of possibly escalating the issue with the few MHPD officers on site with any number of defensive and offensive weapons at their disposal they reach for their—radios.This is the part I needed made clear to me.The MHPD brought in neighboring law enforcement agencies not to overwhelm the riotous crowd with lethal force, to but to be in large enough numbers to use the least amount of force possible for the situation.But until all of those other agencies showed up, things were getting pretty dicey. This is about the time some other police departments haven’t done so well. You see it on the news with shootings and complete riots.Apparently our officers were very cool in the face of all of this. Whether it’s training or hiring the right personnel, this discipline and cool headedness is now, to me, the face of our police department: cool and level-headed enough to think of calling in greater numbers to avoid violence and then remaining cool until they show up. They were surrounded by a mob and some officers were actually assaulted.With the possibility of someone greatly harming an officer or grabbing a service weapon, there are some who might say that deadly force is appropriate here. I can only imagine that if you’re afraid and freaking out you might turn to the last resort, deadly force, and the courts have in some cases said that it was appropriate. Not in Morgan Hill.Some are hungry for headlines like “Carnival at Middle School Ends with Officers Hurt”.I like “MHPD Diffuses Escalating Situation with Professionalism”.

The Amgen Tour of California, the biggest bicycle race in all of these United States, is almost here! ARE YOU READY?It’s now May, which the League of American Bicyclists has declared National Bike Month. They have 57 million members, so they win—it’s Bike Month.Next, we are about to venture into our own Morgan Hill Bike Week. It’s the first time we’ve done it here and it’s being done right—with a little help from our friends. Bike Week officially starts May 9.To get an early start on Bike Week this Friday, May 4, you’ll want to mount up and head to the corner of First and Depot Streets. A no-host ride is planned to gather at 7:30pm and it promises to be one big party—a Bike Party to be exact. Bike Parties are popular in other cities, so let’s see how much fun we can have and make it a Morgan Hill style event. I’ve heard this bike event may include dancing…On Wednesday, May 9, you can ride to school with your children to celebrate Bike to School Day. Many of our local school children just learned about bike safety from the folks at Specialized Bicycle Components and AEG (Amgen ToC event organizers), so let’s practice safety and fun.Then next Thursday morning, May 10, is “Ride to Work Day.” Stop at the Community Center and get “energized” with refreshments and some goodies so you can leave the car at home.On Friday, May 11, head down to the Downtown Amphitheater for the Amgen ToC kick off concert. Specialized got involved, allowing the Chamber of Commerce to bring in some great musical acts. Specialized helped sponsor the concert, bike inspections and a bike rodeo that will take place in the parking lot with local bike shop partner “Bike Therapy” involved.Wanna try something different for Mother’s Day? Come out and ride with the Mayor and other community leaders you’d like to see sweat, and show that spending a few quality miles with mom is the way to spend the day. After the ride, sit down to some well-earned pancakes at the Morgan Hill Grange.Specialized is a friend to the Morgan Hill community, and what do friends do? They invite you over to their place on Tuesday, May 15. Specialized will open up their headquarters and “Windtunnel” to our community for a rare look around their digs. You must see all of the cool stuff they have in their museum, check out some custom bikes (like a chopper and hot rod bike) and maybe have a beer or glass of wine while you’re at it.To cap off our Bike Week, on May 16 we will host the world of international bicycle racing—that’s race day! I think I’ve already said enough about that.FYI:  a community meeting on street closures and details on the event will be held May 8, 6pm to 8pm, at the Community Center, 17000 Monterey Road. This is a great opportunity to hear details about the event so don’t miss it if you’d like to know more about getting around on race day.Enjoy your Bike Week!For detailed information, visit https://www.morgan-hill.ca.gov/1679/Events-and-Activities.John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].

It’s probably pretty apparent that two of the things I feel quite passionate about are our downtown and our local wine region. So my excitement about the upcoming Wine & Food Week and the April 28 Wine Stroll shouldn’t come as any surprise.The Morgan Hill Downtown Association and the local wineries of the Wineries of Santa Clara Valley wine association have been working on promoting local wines in our downtown businesses, and our downtown businesses in the region’s wineries.That pairing between local wineries and restaurants is a work in progress. The recent March Passport Friday Night Kick-off Event put on by the wine association and upcoming Wine & Food Week are great examples of just that work.That Friday Night Kick off event featured 10 of our downtown restaurants and 24 wineries in a collaborative event that brought in more than 200 guests on a rainy evening. It was a smashing success.Starting this upcoming Monday, April 23, we will celebrate our local wines in our downtown with a mixer showing our appreciation for the winemakers. The rest of the week, we’ll be featuring events where a business will host a winery for that most important personal contact.Having attended several winemaker dinners and food/wine tasting events, I can tell you that short of sitting at a winery with the winemaker and a wonderful meal, this is the best way to get to know and learn about our local wines.It’s also one of the best ways to get to know our fine local restaurants and drinking establishments.Most of the winemaker dinners feature custom designed menus that really allow our restaurants to show how creative they can be with a special menu.I’m not one to continually break out my smartphone to take pictures of the food, wine and the festive setting of the meals and tastings, but I have a hard time not wanting to share these experiences.We’ll have dinners and tastings at Bubbles Wine Bar & Bistro, Granada Theater, La Nina Perdida, Odeum Restaurant, Prova California Table, Rosy’s at the Beach and The Grapevine. Most of the downtown restaurants won’t charge you when you bring in your favorite bottle of local wine too.  This will be the region’s best example of fine food and wine served up in one week, and it’s all right here in our downtown!On Saturday, April 28, our Wine Stroll caps the week of celebrating food and wine. This event continues to break new ground with a focus on local wines and bringing in fun new features like an art competition to create the next year’s event poster. Of course, the focus will be our local businesses with our local wineries pouring tastes.Wine & Food Week starts Monday, April 23, and culminates with the Wine Stroll on Saturday, April 28.For more information, visit morganhilldowntown.org. John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].

A few months back I got an email from a friend who said she would like to talk to me about the Poppy Jasper Film Festival. I kind of thought, “Poppy Jasper Film Festival”—didn’t that film festival kind of fade away a year or so ago?

I think it’s time for another update about the Amgen Tour of California (ToC).

It seems that it’s all about events this time of the year. We’re planning for them and talking about the coming year, all in terms of events.By events, I mean the plethora of fun happenings you can all attend whose co-function is to raise money for some worthy cause. Fundraising events are one of the great “win-wins” of life: you get to have fun, and someone makes money and does even more good for the community with that money. It’s kind of like the “law of conservation of energy,” only here it’s the money you spend that doesn’t lose energy and will come back to the entire community with no noticeable loss in effectiveness.I’d like to take a break from the Amgen Tour of California for a moment and turn your attention to one of my favorite events of the year, and it’s usually the first one too.The Wineries of Santa Clara Valley puts on two major events every year supporting the local wine association and bringing joy to those that appreciate fine wine: the Spring and Fall Wine Passport events.The first one starts this weekend (March 2-4), and it will be the best one yet. Of course, that’s what they always say but what if a two-day event got extended to 30 days, and the kickoff evening event just increased from 16 wineries and 12 restaurants to 22 wineries and 15 restaurants? I would say we have a bigger and better event!This Friday, March 2, that kickoff event will take place at the Coyote Creek Golf Club clubhouse. Since I’m usually working the event I probably pay more attention to the people than most, and all I can say is they have a lot of fun and I wish I could join them.The finest in local wines will be poured, and this is where you can get up close to so many of our local heroes of wine. I’m going to call them heroes because so many aren’t making wine for the perceived fortunes to be made (there is a joke about how to end up with a small fortune in the wine industry: start with a big one…). They are working hard to express their passion in winemaking and help promote this wine region. I can only hope they are feeling rewarded for those efforts.Friday night will also find some of the finest restaurants in the South County showcasing their fine foods. Here too you may get to meet many of the people responsible for bringing their fine foods to you. Regardless of who is serving up the food, it is always impressive and I hope that you’ll find something from a restaurant you haven’t yet tried that inspires a future visit.The wine association is aware that many passport holders tried to visit all the wineries in the old two-day period. It could be a bit much for some so now you have an entire month to make all those tasty visits, because the spring passport event goes from March 3-31.I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it again: make a plan of what wineries you want to visit, and then venture out and enjoy yourself. You can do it often now, so be safe.Kick off a year of fun events and a month of wine tasting this Friday!For more information about Passport Month and the order tickets, visit the Wineries of Santa Clara Valley website at santaclarawines.com/passport.html.

I am on a real Amgen Tour of California tear here. Even though I already thought it was a big deal, my eyes keep growing wider as the significance of this event continues to unveil itself.I have been speaking with some people that have hosted events in the past, and they just can’t say enough about how the world really does come to town the day of the race.This is a big deal, a really big deal!Last week, we announced to the world that we too are a part of this world class event. We had local dignitary interviews, Amgen sent Ambassador Freddie Rodriguez and we had a Seriously Fun Trike race. Our own Mayor, Steve Tate, came in second place overall but first in the “amateur” race class.The buzz is starting right now. I’m committed to providing you with information and inspiration for the upcoming bike race. To that end, I plan on a regular series of columns dedicated to the event. Here is the first one, authored by an avid local bicyclist and dentist who has attended many previous Tour of California races:The TOC is America’s premier cycling stage event and will be broadcast on NBC Sports, featuring many of the same cyclists participating in the Tour de France later this summer.This is the first time Amgen has selected Morgan Hill as a race site, and the course will cover approximately 24 miles of our beautiful countryside.  Because the event is a time trial—which begins and ends in downtown Morgan Hill—spectators will have the opportunity to see each rider as they start the course AND cross the finish line, making it an all-day event rather than a peloton (close group of racers) flying by you for five seconds going 35 mph.A time trial event is often referred to as the “race of truth” because each cyclist must ride the course on their own, without the benefit of drafting other racers, while competing against the clock for the best time.  For those adventurous onlookers wanting more scenery, I recommend bringing a lawn chair and finding a shady spot out on the course. Be sure to bring an ice chest with cool drinks and your camera to get a chance to see the riders in action speeding down winding curves or pushing their hardest up a tough climb.In our downtown Morgan Hill, you will see many of the cycling teams and be able to participate in the ongoing health fair and merchandise/wellness booths that follow along all the Amgen Tour stages. This is a family friendly event with something for everyone.  Spectators from all over California follow the tour and will provide a steady stream of customers for our Morgan Hill hotels, restaurants and local businesses.During the event, you will notice TV crews on motorcycles, cars and helicopters following the riders and showcasing our City of Morgan Hill on national and international TV.I hope to see you at the event!   -Robert Shorey, DDSLet’s get excited.John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].