Thursday, November 20, 2008

Xmas Alleycat *update

Dublin Messengers plan on throwing an Alleycat on Dec. 19th this year. The final alleycat of the year followed by a nice little shindig somewhere.

No concrete details as yet, just something to throw in your diaries.
We're going to re-use the Golden Pages race that was dreamt up by 5Jive, who never lived to see his race actually happen. We ran the race for a couple of years in his honour, but that somehow slipped last year so I'd like to bring it back again.

I think it's important to have something like this at one of the darkest points of the year, both literally and emotionally, for many people. 5Jive(Ciaran), seemed full of life and was always great fun to be around, but, as we found out, this was not the case. His tragic death was a stark reminder to us all of how important it is to have friends, talk to people, and be there for others.

Couriers are a bunch of misfits, it's always been the way. Many are not from this country, many have little family, other couriers are in a sense the family unit, however dysfunctional that family may be. So come along to the race, have fun, and remember how important the group of people you are sharing that fun with is.

Sorry if that sounds all a bit serious, the race will be a blast, I just think that at least once a year, we should look inwards a little bit and have a think about what this community means to a lot of us, and how lucky we are to be surrounded by such good people.

I need help organising this so please get in touch if you would like to help out. I think it would be nice to donate the proceeds of this race to a charity like Aware, an Irish support group for depression.

On another note, don't forget to come along to the Dublin Cycling Campaign's Christmas Party. Thursday Dec 18th in the POD. A good chance to mingle with some of Dublin's other cycling groups, and strangely enough, they don't all hate us!

*It appears there are 2 Irish guys cycling around the world to raise money for Aware. You can follow their progress here.

You will need a copy of the Golden Pages in your bag in order to complete the race, so start trying to lay your hands on some copies now.

4 comments:

Toisenlainen said...

Spot on, Graham! Hope all of you have a great time, and hope we can make it back to Dublin. St. Pats, maybe?

messedup said...

Please come over for St. Paddy's!!! You Finns would be guests of honour! I miss our drinking...

Toisenlainen said...

I sure wish we're able to make it. Miss you too;)

Anonymous said...

aware helpline: 1890 303 302
depression sucks, but it's an illness and you can get better, or at least learn how to deal with it.
'depression - the commonsense approach' by tony bates is a really good book. short and to the point. published in ireland, you can get it in eason's. helped me a lot.
jc