I think anyone dong a pre-ride is doing a service. I did a pre-ride once and discovered that the route wasn't passable at one point because some ******* took a big truck across a covered bridge. They _really_ didn't want any pedestrians on that bridge, but I did it anyway. I was pretty close to the end and didn't know a detour. As far as when someone does a pre-ride, it is nice if they do it at the time and day of week as the ride will be held. There was one route that really needed a change due to traffic and road conditions. The RBA had someone check out an alternate route, they did it on a weekday. It turned out that the traffic on Saturday was much worse, so that was a failed experiment.

Apparently RUSA is again looking for insurance.