Working on wishes
At 9am this morning, much like almost any other Saturday morning I rolled out and met Anthony for our usual two hour spin. Gauging the wind direction normally decides our route so we decided to head for the Old bridge and continue on for Ardfinnan and Clogheen. However, as we approached a set of traffic lights a green and yellow train passed by with a support van behind and our plans quickly changed. It’s always good to be open to change as you never quite know where the next adventure may lead.
The back of the Tec7 support van was emblazoned with the ‘make a wish’ foundation logo and this caught my attention as I knew that Jones Engineering were cycling from Mizen to Malin this weekend to raise money for the charity but I also knew that Clonmel wasn’t on that route. Time to investigate further.
Tagging on behind the well organised group it wasn’t long before I found out the purpose of this cycle. Last weekend I was in the local Woodies DIY store and donated a euro for an upcoming cycle. It turned out that this was the actual cycle. 1500 km in 6 days throughout Ireland with the aim of raising €250,000 for the charity.
For the past while staff in every Woodies outlet have been cycling stationary bikes, shaving heads, selling second hand books and doing just about anything that they could think off to raise money for the charity cycle. The two groups of cyclists, one covering from the midlands down, the other from there up, are calling to every Woodies outlet to thank the staff personally for their fundraising efforts.
Each group of twelve cyclists has four leaders from Lucan CC and Shanonside CC who generously gave their time to help out. The rest are all Woodies employees or suppliers. Some experienced cyclists and some not so experienced.
A few only started cycling in June and now just weeks later are riding stages over 180km, and getting up the following morning to do it all again. It takes something special to motivate anyone to take an a challenge of that magnitude, and I’m sure that the awareness of helping 8000 children and their families to have a wish granted is a huge motivating factor.
If you see them on the road give them some encouragement for putting in great effort for a great cause.
Barry
1 COMMENT
Jim
Nice report, Barry, and great to have such accomplished road men come along and add to the good company. You certainly managed to pick up plenty of detail on the event while you were with us. Thanks for the kind words. Along with all the store people, customers, HQ staff and suppliers, these Woodie’s men and women showed true grit overcoming 5,000+ metres of climbing, 800kms of road and lots of downpours to help make miracles come true for wonderful kids.