Many riders started riding seriously because they signed up
for a distance charity event and needed to train to get ready (think Team in
Training, MS etc). Being able to
support a cause that you believe in is certainly
a great way to start, but I find I don’t want to override my welcome on family
and friends more than once every two years or so to do fund raising and get
pledges. Although, I do my share of
donating to people I meet that are really pushing themselves to train for an
event that is outside of their comfort zone.
However, there are many smaller charity rides that can be
fun to do as a group. Many of these are
sponsored by a local bike shop. During
the summer many of us did the “Ride 2 Recovery” (ride2recover.com) that was put
on by A Road Bike 4 You bike shop. It was a great day and they are a great
organization.
More recently a group of the chicks (and their supportive
men) decided to have a fun Sunday
ride and participated in Rock ‘n Road
Cyclery’s “Poker Ride” benefitting Bikes for Boobs
(Bikesforboobs.org). They are a
non-profit organization who provides funding to breast centers globally through
their Mammograms in Action Grant Program as a "last
resort" resource for thousands of people who do not qualify
for government funding or other charitable resources in the detection of breast
cancer.
The event fee was only $25 and the full registration went to
Bikes for Boobs organization. Some of us (ok, four of us) had done the Hill
Climbing ride the day before but we were up and ready to ride at 8 a.m. on
Sunday. (Some team members who will
remain nameless decided to stay home in bed). We decided to don our pink club jerseys which
did get the attention of other riders getting ready. Rock ‘n Road actually has a pretty active
Women’s group (Rock ‘n Road Divas) and I heard one passing comment saying,
“Hey, where are our Divas?” I did notice
there was a very few women that showed up to do the ride.
The goal of the Poker ride is to visit all four of the Rock
‘n Road Cyclery shops and draw a playing card at each stop. The person with the best poker hand at the
end of the ride is the winner. We had
called the shop prior to the ride to get important details (like, what are they
serving for lunch? – Mexican) and were told that there would NOT be a route/cue
sheet. Julie Morey took that as a challenge to create our own route. It turned out the day of the ride, the store did
have some slips which were full 8 ½ x 11 size, a separate one for each shop to
shop portion, but we were eager to try out our route.
The ride started at the Rock ‘n Road in Mission Viejo and
our first trek was up through Santiago Canyon to the Anaheim Hills Store. This was the hilliest and longest part of our
ride and some riders, Kat Liem, Paul and Cyndi Nelson, decided to do Cannon (both ways) to cut out a little
mileage and take on the challenge.
Steve Nelson and
I met up with Kurt Richardson and Chris Carrier at the Anaheim Hills
store and decided to wait for the rest of the “Pinks” to finish our ride. Lisa
Fair, who had finished her very first century, Amtrak, a few weeks before,
rode up passing the other girls even though she had started late at 8:30. Since Sheryl
Malkin along with Gordi and Julie Morey had stopped for a quick
“comfort break”, Pat Herold was the next
to arrive. The comfort break must have
been needed since Gordi decided to
attack Modjeska Canyon grade, the back way, on his way through the canyon. Pat
was having shifter problems. I think it
was contagious from Terry Kessler’s
bike the day before. We warned them not
to park their bikes so close to each other.
The bike shop put Pat’s
bike on the work stand and adjusted her cables while we waited. Then the rest of the group arrived in time
to put Sheryl’s bike on the work
stand to work on her bent back derailleur. All the employees were very
welcoming and helpful. They had water
for refilling bottles and wonderful much needed restrooms, for the ones that
hadn’t taken a comfort break along the road.
While waiting on the bike adjustments a lady had parked her car and came
running over to us after noticing our Pink Jerseys very exciting asking, “Are
you woman’s group who rides?” I told
her about our normal Saturday rides and provided her information on the “Ride
Like a Pro” program when she seemed a little concerned about our average speed
and ride distances.
After drawing the next cards for our hand, we took off
together in search of the Irvine Rock ‘n
Road Store. This trek was a little
shorter and only had the small grade along Irvine Blvd which seemed easy after
Saturday’s hill climbing ride. The
Irvine store had more water, and frosted sugar cookies to enjoy before we were
off to the next store – Laguna Niguel off of La Paz road.
We had some great down hills on this trek but I kept
thinking we were going to have to climb back up all of that to get back to
Mission Viejo. After the Laguna Niguel
store with 55 miles under our tires, we still had another 8 miles left to get
back to the starting point (and our Mexican food lunch). It turns our Kat had the best poker hand with a Flush and went home with the top
prize of a brand new Garmin 810 bundle.
So for a small registration fee which went to the charity
(they raised over $2000) we had good fellowship, promoted the club, got
stronger riding and had lunch. It made
for a great day.
During the month of October many stores that carry Trek will
be having fun family oriented charity rides for Breast Cancer Awareness. Some of us will be attending Two Wheel One Planet’s ride on October
12th which has a 10 mile and 25 mile option. Again the full registration fee goes toward
Breast Cancer Awareness. Jax’s in Long Beach is sponsoring a ride
as well. These are great events to
introduce to new riders or friends who “think” they might want to start riding.
OCW also supports the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
as part of our annual Spring Metric.
Instead of just cranking out miles every week, why not give
each crank a purpose by riding for charity. Maybe it’s time for you to think
about finding and signing up for an event.
The next evening we did another round through the Jeffrey open space. The chicks were challenged with a very quick fast pace which helped increased average speed and everyone continued to work on accelerating off of a stop. This is a great ride with a bid of steady up hill but some great downhill fun. Irvine Boulevard construction has been completed and road was much smoother than our last time on this route. 
Sandy who has only just started cycling in the last couple of months and Becky who has missed her ride training for the last couple of weeks were able to maintain a great pace and were never far behind.
We made a big circle down Portola Springs to Modjeska and then back along Irvine Boulevard, where we headed South through the Jeffery Open Space trail. Steve and I talked about how even 5 years ago many of these roads and certainly the trail weren't even there and definitely not paved. There was minimal traffic and some pretty rolling hills. The trail wound it's way through a nice green welcoming park. Then we completed our look west on Trabucco and joining up Yale down to catch the Walnut trail back to Harvard.
