What to do in November …

This one is nothing to do with Adaptec, but I’d like to share with you what I spend a lot of my “spare” time doing (culminating in November each year) …

I play a small part in the organising of “The Snowy Ride”. This is an event we run each year (this year being the 10th Anniversary). The ride is a fund-raising event raising money for Children’s Cancer Research in Australia. The main beneficiary of this money is the Children’s Cancer Institute of Australia (CCIA). We split the money between cancer research and the caring of children in the wards at the Royal Children’s Hospital (Randwick).

While starting small, this event has grown to a massive 3200+ riders attending a weekend of fantastic riding (in the Snowy Mountains in southern NSW), entertainment and fundraising events of many different kinds. It took us 4 years to get to $750,000, while this year we have already raised that amount and are heading for the $1 million mark before year’s end.

So while I’m sitting here suffering arm pump from riding a total of 1500km in two separate days, typing solidly for two days and doing a whole stack of other menial administrative tasks, I’m one of the lucky ones. I have three kids, all healthy and happy, while others not so fortunate have the incredibly hard lot of having a child suffer from cancer. These children and parents are an inspiration to all of us, and are the reason we keep doing this work.

I’m very proud to say that the original 12 or so people who started this work 10 years ago are all still involved, with many of us having our children now step up and get involved in this massive operation. There are well over 70 volunteers who work on this event, with a small band working all year round to make sure this event keeps growing and keeps raising money for this worthwhile cause.

So if you ride a bike, come on down to Oz next November and join the fun. Even if you don’t ride a bike you can get involved in some small way by making a donation (there’s bound to be something on the websites for that). Hopefully if the boss reads this he will start to understand why this is the one time of the year that I absolutely, positively and definitley won’t be travelling for Adaptec … this is far too important an event for me to miss.

No, I don’t ride a Honda - I ride a Ducati, but I’m very proud to promote this event and Honda’s involvement. This company is a excellent example of a company that has a fantastic corporate conscience/heart, and have supported us from the very beginning. Honda proudly announced a $100,000 sponsorship for the next 5 years ($500K in total), which along with Snowy Hydro (the electrical generators in the Mountains) sponsorship of $100,000 for the next three years ($300K in total) ensures that we are well on our way to financing the research whose aim is to eliminate childhood cancer in the coming years.

Just so you can understand the structure … we started the Snowy Ride, then created the Steven Walter Foundation to manage both the ride and other fundraising activities we do throughout the year. Steven Walter was a young man who rode dirt bikes with us years ago, and whose dying wish (yes, Steve succumbed to cancer at 19 years of age) was that we do something to raise money for research so that no other person would have to suffer the terrible ordeal he endured before he died. That’s a hard request to ignore (and thankfully we haven’t).

If you’d like to find out more about the work that this organisation does please look at the following links …

http://snowyride.org.au/
http://www.stevenwalterfoundation.org.au/

Ciao
Neil