A chat with Dan from CALM

So yesterday I had a lovely long chat with Dan Taylor, coordinator for London, about the progress we have been making so far with setting up the charity ride for next year.
Safe to say that Dan was very excited at the prospect of so much exposure for CALM and the vital message that they want to convey.
I filled Dan in on the Twitter account, blog and Virgin Money Giving site, with the only remaining social media tasks left being the setting up of a Facebook fan page.

I suggested that it may be a good idea to get an interview with Pat posted on their website as well as in their magazine, CALMzine.

The next step is to reestablish contact with the various media outlets that I have emailed and called recently, and to gauge their interest and respond accordingly.
After this it will mean phone calls to the bike manufacturers that I want to target, namely KTM and BMW.
Route planning and setting up calls to all of the bike dealerships/clubs on the way as well as military units that I want to turn out will come next.

If anyone does read the blog and feel that they have good contacts that can be used to further the challenge, please feel free to comment or drop me an email.

Just a short one today as I have been stacked out building an outdoor oven for someone this week.

Keep sharing and retweeting please.

Tweet Tweet

Got up early to bang out a quick loaf of sourdough bread and to get my brain into gear.
So a speculative Tweet to Sir Alan Sugar (@Lord_Sugar) to see if we could earn ourselves a retweet.

Not a whole heck of a lot I can do today, so I shall be contacting all of the local media to follow up on e-mails and phone calls from last week.

I need advice on planning a long haul bike trip, so if anyone reading this feels they have some good advice, please leave a comment below or email me at anicecalmride@gmail.com.

The weather looks pretty good, so may as well get a bit of cardio done, don't want to break the suspension on whatever bikes we end up riding to Italy, now do I.

See you all again soon.

Simon.

Setting up

Last night and this morning have been all about setting up our money giving page (www.virginmoneygiving/anicecalmride ) as well as Twitter @CALMRide and this blog.
The weekend will be about building up a following and getting some media and sponsor attention.
It will be nice when people start getting in touch.

Hello World

Hello all, my name is Simon and I make up part of a fundraising partnership. The other half of which is my good friend Pat.

The decision to set out on this venture came after Pat lost two close friends to suicide within a year of each other.

Both of these losses were so shocking because they were so unexpected, and in both cases the men involved were young and had families and prospects.

Pat and I spent the day out together, and by the end of it we had decided to find an appropriate charity that would help young men in particular deal with depression, and if possible avoid the end that Pat’s friends met.

I searched for and found such a charity in CALM www.theCALMzone.net(Campaign Against Living Miserably), who after a brief telephone call agreed to back our charity event, and to help promote it.

So now the challenge is to raise sufficient funds to make a memorial journey to the Moto GP race circuit in Modena Italy.

The reason for this is that both of the young men lost so tragically were keen motorcyclists, with one in particular who had long dreamed of watching the GP at Modena. So Pat and I intend to place a memorial plaque at the race track.

Any funds raised after this, and from other events will go to help CALM keep doing the vital work that they do.

So please visit our donation site www.virginmoneygiving/anicecalmride and donate what you can.