The Pink Ride with iRide

This year iRide is excited to announce they are supporting our local - St Vincent's Hospital, in raising money for their

Breast Care Nurse and the valuable work she does in supporting women during their treatment for Breast Cancer.  We have a couple of options for those people wish to join us in supporting St Vincent's Hospital:

1. Come ride with iRide on an easy 50km fully supported country ride.  There is no charge for this but a donation at the start of the ride would be appreciated.  Dress in pink and have some fun!

2. Come ride and then join us at 8.30am for breakfast at Gipps Restaurant for $25 per person.  Family and friends are more then welcome to join us there for breakfast too.

3. If you are not keen on the ride then you are still more than welcome to join us just for breakfast for $25 per person.

4. We have also organised a limited edition pink jersey for $75 each.  $20 from each jersey purchased will be donated to St Vincent’s Breast Cancer Nurse.

Dress yourselves and your bikes and come and enjoy a wonderful morning with us and raise some money to a worthy cause.  Contact the boys at sandy@bikesiride.com.au or darren@bikesiride.com.au and they will send you further information.  Please see the attached registration form for numbers for the breakfast and to get your limited edition jersey.

The Pinktober Bike Raffle

As well as The Pink Ride With iRide we are raffling a 2014 Trek Madone 4.3 worth $2 499.00.  Tickets are $10 each and can be purchased from several places around Toowoomba including St Vincent’s Hospital Reception, iRide, Queensland Discount Vitamins at Clifford Gardens.  Proceeds from this raffle are being donated to the Breast Cancer Nurse at St Vincent’s Hospital.  Please get behind this wonderful cause and be in with a chance to win an awesome bike.  The bike will be drawn at the High Tea at Gips Restaurant on the 19^th October 2013. 

Project 1 Competition

We have an exciting new product that no other bike company offers.  We would to introduce Trek's Project 1 - Trek's custom bike programme.  Customise, Personalise or sensationalise your Trek.  To celebrate this exciting product we are running a competition till the end of October 2013.  We would like you to design your dream bike on a Trek 4 series and the winning design will have their frame design created and displayed on the floor at I Ride.  The winner will receive a Bontrager Spector helmet valued at $200.  See the link to create your dream bike and email your designs to I Ride: info@bikesiride.com.au

http://www.trekbikes.com/au/en/collections/custom_project_one/

Women’s Friday Morning Rides

Starting Friday 4th October iRide will be holding a "Ladies Only" ride.  The aim of the ride is to encourage new ladies on the bike and for others to network and share their knowledge.  This will be ladies only with the exception of Sandy and Darren but I am sure we can find them a couple of skirts.  These rides will be held every Friday morning starting at 6am from the back of iRide and will run for about 1 hour at this stage.  All women of all abilities are welcome.

Carnival Of Flowers Ride

Thanks to all our customers who joined us for our Carnival of Flowers ride on Saturday the 21^st September.  It was great so see Jane, Sheridan and Adam dress up!  We hope you all enjoyed a different paced ride as well as seeing some of Toowoomba’s beautiful gardens.

Mike Hawley

The 1^st of October sees one of our wonderful customers, Mike Hawley (and father to staff member – Mitch Hawley) commence a grueling 590km over nine stages in five days in the 27th Simpson Desert Bike Challenge on his ‘Moonlander’ mountain bike.  Commencing from Purnie Bore, South Australia, on the western edge of the Simpson Desert riders take in some 700 sand dunes, salt lakes, vast cattle stations, gibber plains and even a potential creek crossing.  The course is weather dependent and subject to alteration which is why some people call it 'Satan's Velodrome'.  Mike is raising funds for the Royal Flying Doctors Service and donations can be made at www.everydayhero.com.au.  We would like to wish Mike the very best of luck in this challenge that will call on all his physical and mental strength to conquer.  We look forward to the report and pictures.

Noosa Triathlon

Preparations are well under way for those competing in the Noosa Triathlon in November.  Just a quick reminder that the workshop can get pretty busy around triathlons so get in quick and book your bike in for a pre-race service.

2013 Flight Centre Cycle Epic

2013 Epic Report by Damien Doran

Up early, I think around 5:00 am, birds chirping sun not quite shining, breaky, shower, shave and a nervous toilet visit (not necessarily in that order).  Then myself and my chauffeur Peter “The Mountain Goat” Higham head off to meet the rest of the crew at Darren “I’ll smash 50k and that’s it” Rolfe, Sandy “Salubrious*” Dolley..... (*my new word for the week) and Adrian Koelmeyer.  (Notice I don’t have a nickname for him, Mum said if you can’t say something nice about someone don’t say anything at all............)

Anyway words of Darren were echoing in my head “drink plenty of water before the race, it’s going to be hot” So as you do I started cramming for my exam, 3 water bottles before I get picked up, one on the way there, and yes you guessed it 10 MILLION pee stops all the way to the race, whilst getting ready for the race and waiting on the start line at the race, thank God there were some big trees around.

So Adrian...  I think we’ll call him Mr Koelmeyer, is not feeling so good, all I could think was “do you want some cheese with that WHINE!!!!” I decided seeing as I’m a top bloke, I’ll ride with Mr Koelmeyer and look after him.  So we line up for the start (damn pee time) gun goes off and we hit the trails.  Darren has already taken off in the “I’m too sexy for my body” category, I’m behind in the “Top blokes” category and the “Old farts” Sandy and Hymie bringing up the rear.

It was a pretty leisurely pace picking our way thru the thousands of riders, you know the old story a few ups and downs, tree root here boulder there, logs, drop offs, then onto an open section of road, where I decide to slow down and wait for Mr Koelmeyer, we soon start climbing again, and like a rat up a drain pipe Hymie shoots past never to be seen again........  Nice one Hymie....  We head down a pretty knarly down hill section and onto a dirt road, I soon here the familiar sound of a motor bike roaring up behind me......... but wait it was no motor bike, it was dirty old Mike Hawley on his McFAT Tyre mountain bike, screaming past.  I made the split decision to jump on that wheel and hang on for dear life.  Within a short distance I could feel the soothing sensation of cold water splattering on my face....mmmmmm wait a second, it wasn’t water, it was the tyre sealant goo spraying out of a hole in Mike’s tyre slapping me IN DA FAAAAACE!!!!.  Not cool......

Whilst in the process of making sure Mike’s tyre was ok to continue and my eyesight wasn’t damaged by the copious amounts of chemical I took on board, Sandy and Mr Koelmeyer come putting along.  We hook up and form a very disorganised and outrageously wild pace line.  At one stage the pace line consisted of Sandy and myself with 20 others trying to work out how to hold a wheel.  Next minute old mate from the back decides, “that’s it boys let me have a crack at this”, jumps on the front and drives it, at that very minute we have to take a sharp right on to a gravel road.  Well it was nice to see the freight train on the front wash speed off whilst sliding on his butt thru the corner.  Nice one buddy, was a good bit of entertainment.  Anyway long story short we do a bit more climbing, stopping, drinking, laughing and make our way to the finish line, all the while Sandy and I are helping Mr Koelmeyer limp home.  We hit the last 200m of single track that brings you out about 50m from the finish line, both Sandy and I look around and realise we’ve dropped Mr Koelmeyer again, so we slow down look around...............

And the cheeky no good rotten son of a plumber comes screaming past yelling “I’m going to beat you”

So moral of the story, don’t trust a plumber who uses a rag to fix leaking taps, and brags about steeling his wife’s pink beach towel.......

At the end of the day it was a great ride, with good mates and great stories, Hymie proved he’s still as strong as ever on the MTB, Sandy proved that no matter what, you can always count on him to be with you to the end and there’s NO WAY IN HELL Rolfe can win an 87km mountain bike race with only 1.5 rides a week.  Having said that he still kicked a lot of backsides.  Oh and I forgot to mention Reagan, poor little fella was suppose to do the 87km but felt so sorry for Ado he decided to stay with him and pull the pin at the 50k mark.

Hope you enjoyed my story......

Regards. Damo.

We would also like to give a special mention to our staff member – Mitch Hawley who came first in the U19 Pursuit (50km).  Awesome effort Mitch!!

Up Coming Events

Road Events             Triathlon Events       Mountain Bike Events

28^th – 29^th Sept         TCC Road Race (Goombungee)

28^th – 29^th Sept         Gold Coast Festival of Cycling (Gold Coast)

29^th Sept                    Moreton Bay Triathlon (Redcliffe)

12^th October              Melbourne to Warrnambool (Melbourne)

13^th October              Gatorade Qld Tri Series – Race 2 (Brisbane)

14^th October              PUBLIC HOLIDAY

18^th – 20^th October    2013 Australian Masters Road Championship (Goulburn)

19^th October              The Pink Ride with iRide

19^th October              Pinktober Breakfast at Gips Restaurant

19^th October              Drawing of the Pinktober Bike Raffle

19^th – 20^th October   Bribie Island Series Race 1(Bribie Island)

20^th October              Ride Mechanic Maxxis BSMC 4hr Enduro (Mt Cotton)

26^th October              HPRW Track Carnival (Chandler)

26^th October              Grafton to Inverell (Grafton)

27^th October              Be Better Psychology Open (Crit Track)

27^th October              TTC Round 1 (Highfields)

30^th Oct – 3^rd Nov     Noosa Triathlon Festival (Noosa)

31^st October               Last day to get your designs in for the Project 1 Comp

2^nd November           2014 Qld Madison Championships (Chandler)

2^nd November           Subaru Noosa Australian Open Criterium (Noosa)

3^rd November            The Riders Club 4hr (Adare)

9^th – 10^th November 2013/14 Qld Omnium Champioonships (Chandler)

10^th November          Dalby Triathlon (Dalby)

17^th November          Darren Smith Classic (Nerang)

17^th November          Gatorade Qld Tri Series – Race 3 (Gold Coast)

17^th November          Gravitty Enduro State Champs (Toowoomba)

 Hope you are all enjoying this great weather we have been having.

From The iRide Team