Warwick The 12th annual Country Roads Bicycle Tour, a festival on wheels, returns to Warwick Sept. 10. The Orange County Bicycle Club organizes this charity event, giving cyclists from across the Northeast a chance to take a self-guided tour of Orange County’s quiet roads. The club has mapped out four graded, non-competitive bicycle rides designed to show off the best of the county’s cycling gifts. The shorter routes (10 and 20 miles) are for occasional cyclists, and longer rides are for the experts. Along the way, all riders will get plenty of refreshment, support and entertainment. It ends with an outdoor banquet, valuable raffles (bikes, books, and wine are on the raffle table), and live music. Proceeds will benefit the Orange County Land Trust, the Sanctuary for Animals of Westtown, and the Warwick High School Scholarship Fund. A portion of funds from this year’s tour will also be donated to the National Kidney Foundation in honor of Frank Colace, a club member from Vernon who died last year. The list of sponsors for this year’s event is headed by Soons Orchards, McNeilly Wood Products, Loughran’s Irish Pub, and Prestige BMW. “Country Roads is a carnival,” said the rider known as “The Big Zipper,” of Montgomery, who is in charge of organizing the event. “When we set up our refreshment areas along the routes, we try to put some theatrical imagination into it. One year we dressed as Scottish Highlanders, another year we were Polynesians. We set up a desert oasis one time, complete with belly dancers. Serving home-baked brownies to hungry cyclists while disguised as a Foreign Legionnaire can be a very uplifting experience.” The Choppers in Orange County have been so successful that the word “bike” now evokes a 500-pound screaming hog, loaded with machinery, almost as wide as it is long. “It is one of the glaring failures of language,” said club president Richard Lawrence, of Warwick, “that what we cyclists ride and those big hogs are called by the same name. The aesthetics are completely different. Our bikes weigh one tenth our body weight. We carry nothing extra. Our power is in the beating of our hearts. We slip through the wind as subtly as kayaks through water.” The festival, which may draw as many as 1,500 participants is based at Warwick Valley Senior High School, 94 Sanfordville Road. Most riders should arrive before 10 a.m. or earlier for the longer routes. The registration fee of $40 ($15 for children under 12) is inclusive. Helmets are required. For more information, visit www.ocbicyleclub.org, email the Zipper bigzip@frontiernet.net, or call him at 457-5758.