Angry Animals you may see on the ride

Animal 1 - The Honey Badger

An angry animal indeed, some say the angriest

Anger rating 9/10

Chance of sighting on Ride it 2/10

If you do come across one of these chaps take great care, he'll have your arm off if you look at him funny.

Animal 2 - The cassowary

Definitely a contender for angriest bird category

Anger rating 8/10

Chance of Ride it sighting 1/10

This colourful fellow likes to disembowel his victims with a flying kick and his razor sharp toe nail.

Special advise incase you do come across a cassowary...

Animal 3 - The red squirrel

Perhaps not classically angry but I have seen a red squirrel on one of our rides. I think it could prove angry if provoked hard enough.

Anger rating 4/10

Chance of Ride it sighting 7/10

He appears to have fallen foul to his grey cousins but I believe old reddy is bidding his time.

Please feel free to leave documentation of angry animals you may or may not have seen on Ride it rides.

Exposure Joystick Winner - Dorking

Congratulations to John Robinson who won our Exposure Lights prize draw at the last night ride event in Dorking. John walks away with a limited edition Ride It! Joystick Light worth over £150.

There's still a chance to win one for yourself as there's a prize draw at each Ride It! night ride event and to be in with a chance of winning all you have to do is turn up and ride. That means your next chance is at Chieveley on 10th January.

Next years Dates

Here's the dates for next year so far. The venues are provisionally booked but may change to fit in other events. The dates will stay the same.


March 21/22 Woking
March 28/29 Milton Keynes

April 18/19 Hatfield
April 25/26 Possibly Gateshead

May First weekend TBC (My Dad has decided to get married on the weekend we'd planned!!!)
May 30/31 Brighton

June 13/14 Stokenchurch
June 27/28 Peak District

July 4/5 Gatwick (Evans Head Office)
July 18/19 Thursk (York)

August1/2 Great Missenden (Provisionally booked)
August 8/9 Bristol TBC
August 22/23 Dorking

September 5/6 Leeds TBC
September 26/27 Lakes TBC

October 10/11 Nottingham
October24/25 Cliddesden TBC
October 31/1 TBC


Hope that allows you to put some dates in your diary, see you next year.

Dean

Dorking Rider Times

Sorry for the problems getting these together, they should be on the main Evans Cycles site soon, in the meantime you can download them from the link below.

Dorking Rider Times - Road

Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas...

Well that's pretty much it for this year from the Ride It! Team, we'll be back in early January for the first event of 2009 that's taking place in Chieveley with road, off road and night riding options on offer.

For a bit of seasonal fun, click on the picture and have a listen to the Christmas Greeting from Specialized Bikes. They've cleverly put together a festive tune played on a selection of bike parts.

Keep up the riding over the christmas break and remember cycling burns around 200 calories every half an hour so that's an extra guilt free mince pie for every half an hour you do :-)

Some of our favourite shots...

Here are some of our favourite shots from the North Downs Ride It! event that took place on the 6/7 December -

High resolution copies of these and all the photos from the event are available to buy from -

Phil O'Connor Photography

Rider times - Oh No!!

Well, we've had our biggest event so far and all went great. Course stayed up, weather was perfect, ground conditions were good for the time of year. All was going well untill I went to send the Road Ride times to the web site and found that we've lost all the data. This is input into a speedsheet on the day as you come back and hasn't saved for some reason.... Still, not too bad as we have all your cards. Or so I thought. The cards are somewhere at our Head Office with all the rest of the equipment. I live some 40 miles away and no one there can find them. This means that I have to offer a grovelling apology and as soon as we get the cards and re-enter the 600 odd bits of data back into the spreedsheet, the results will be put up.

The Off road results should be up soon, please check on the main site. www.Evanscycles.com/rideit

Thanks
Dean

Smile for the camera...

As many of you noticed there was a photographer out taking pictures at the Saturday off road and Sunday road rides this weekend.

To see the photos click on the link below and select the Ride It! event gallery -
Ride It! North Downs Event Photos

Lots of the Sunday road ride photos were taken on Box Hill so hats off to everyone who managed to smile for the camera whilst riding up the hill.

Saturday's Off Road Ride Preview

We've just finished the course set up for tomorrow's off road ride - well almost finished as Dean's out checking the night ride route this evening.

The first loop of the route takes you down towards Leith Hill then it's up onto the North Down's before returning back to the event centre. You're definately gonna get a bit muddy but that's half the fun of mountain biking and if you make use of the Gore demo gear you can let someone else worry about the washing.

GPX files are now available to download, click on the links on the right.

Dorking Today - Thursday

Well, that's the Road route up! (GPX routes on the right). Whilst Tony and Mark were off pounding the tarmac, I went off to check some of the off road route. The ground's held up pretty well despite all the rain, in fact it's washed quite a bit of mud off the routes. This does mean that sometimes its better to ride in the puddles than through the mud either side!!!

A couple of tips for novice riders:-

• Make sure you have a spare set of brake pads - I went through a rear pair today!!
• Go carefull when going downhill - it can get a bit slippery.

Our pre-entry numbers are the best yet, so please get there early. If we fill up the car park then you'll have to park on the surrounding streets.

See you there.
Ta
Dean

GT Catch and Release

Check out GT Bike's new "Catch and Release" viral marketing campaign, it's a bit off the wall...