Released: June 18, 2014

It's summer time, and our ADA bike ride was back on May 10th, so it's time to get our usual thank you letter out to riders and sponsors. We thank our sponsors for supporting the cause for which we ride, and we thank our riders for supporting our team in such a good manner ride after ride.

For this year's ride we had about 42-45 riders on our team, consisting, as usual, of a nice, and varied, social group of co-workers, vendors and biking friends. Some of our riders have family members or friends with diabetes, others work alongside people who suffer with the disease such as our own office manager Liz Netherland. Liz attended the ride to assist as a volunteer along with other members from team Dan-Gulf, in addition to the Dan-Gulf riders.

The day started off a bit iffy, the weather forecast really did not look too promising, and there seemed to be a lot of rain on the radar screen. At any rate all our 100 mile registered riders, who were set to start at 0630 hours, showed up ready for the challenge, in spite of the rain falling at the start time.The start kicked off more or less on time, and we had a seasoned group of riders mixed in with a couple of virgins (all males) for the century. In the first hour we experienced a lot of flats due to the wet roads, so that disrupted our momentum a bit, plus Mike Watson scored a hat trick with 3 flats, and I got one just from looking on while Mike fixed one of his!

At any rate the show had to get back on the road, and so it did, and our team managed to scoop up riders from all the other teams that had snuck in front, while we were fixing flats. We had a great ride with 2 quick stops to refuel and tank up, so all the horses were fit for duty, and we managed it to the finish line without any crashes or more flats, except Watson who experienced his third flat about half way through the course.

Our 50 and 58 mile riders also had a good showing. They started a couple of hours later than our 100 mile group, after the rain had stopped, and also had a good ride, including Mister Lowell Stewart who rode his first 50 mile ride in years. Lowell also raised a total of $ 3,500.00 for the cause and our team, so good going Stew, and keep it rolling please.

In total, at the time of writing, our team has collected $ 23,248.00. This is the most money collected by any team thus far for this specific tour based on the ADA website. The ADA Tour also had a party last week, at which they honored one of our riders, Keith LeBlanc, who was nominated as one of the Fathers of the Year for the ADA cause. I missed that party due to business, but heard that Keith made the best speech of all the nominees, so congratulations on that Keith.

After the ride we got our massages, cigars, beers etc., and most of us ended up at my house where Mike, Travis, Mark, Mignon and other helpers broiled 200 lbs of delicious mud bugs also known as craw fish. Mike actually has a pot that is soooo big that you can fit your mother in law in there, and all 200 lbs were cooked in one whack. My wife Mersedeh had also arranged for burgers, hot dogs etc., so we had something for most people with an appetite.

Again, many thanks to all our generous sponsors for making our team the number one fund raiser once again, and also thanks to all the riders/volunteers for participating in this ride, and showing such a good team spirit, no doubt we have the best team out there, and we already look forward to the next event which seems to be the Tour of Tangi September 20th followed by the MS Tour October 4/5.

Best Regards,

Niels Busse

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