I'm crewing as well - team 2011 :)

What's your pit stop theme?

team is called team 2011 - we register people for next year :)

Hi Carolyn,

The people who do the Ride also put on the Walk and I was just in the office yesterday and they're still wrapping some things up from the Ride.
Give them a bit.
I know with the Ride, I didn't know what I was doing (crew) until two months before the Ride event.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,
Ashley

Ashley... thanks... I figured as much... I will continue to wait patiently

SSM... I am totally with you on that... I had no idea they were doing the Crew signups online this year. I was 100% focused on the Ride and doing my fundraising for that. It was an email from my Walk team leader (I'm with the Trade Secrets team) that prompted me to take a look at the Walk website to see if there was any Crew related news. It was then that I stumbled on the Crew signups... ugh... I have no idea how long that had been up before I found it. I was told they do the team assignments on a first come, first served basis, so I am probably too late to get assigned to my #1 choice (again) but I'm still hopeful...

Caboose...

Last year I was on Camp Conseirge, so after we helped take down all the little blue tents, I was released from duty so that I could take my bike and ride the route (I had the Crew chief Natalia's permission to do that). One of the crew team leads gave me a copy of the route turn instructions from the master book, which was much needed, as the very efficient signage removal team had already taken down a lot of the signs. So between that and the pink feathers on the road (they make awesome breadcrumbs...  ) I finally caught up with he last of the walkers shortly after the second pit stop. 

I had a great time performing my unofficial role of "cheerleader on a bike"... I was the crazy girl with the Winnie-the-Pooh backpack on... I had him all decked out with cheering bells and pom-poms... if I bounced up and down on my bike seat just right he would shake the pom poms and ring the bells. I actually ended up in quite a few photos last year... some at the lunch stop with Winnie... and then there were the photos from the Bra Contest (our Crew team had an entry)... it was such a great weekend!

Motorcyclemohawk,

That's so awesome! I the motosafety team... you guys do such a good job of taking care of all of the intersections on the route. You had such great coverage this year too... it was pretty rare to come upon an unmanned intersection(and those were the really safe/simple ones). It really makes such a huge difference for the Riders. It's amazing how long you can get stuck at a busy crossing trying to make a left turn when you are doing a training ride... it is blyss to be so well taken care of on the event weekend

Four or five people from my RTCC team (IBM/OCI) did the 200 mile route. If you saw anyone wearing a yellow starfish bath toy attached to the back of their helmet, then that was one of my teammates... that's assuming they didn't remove it as soon as they were out of range of their kookier 200km teammates that decided "helmet decorations" were a "must" this year  I was the chief instigator there, as I admired some of the inventions other teams had from the previous year which included Tim Horton's coffee cups, golf balls of various colours, flowers, and pink helmet skins, to name a few. It sure helps you identify your team mates at a distance (tough to do otherwise, with 95% of the people wearing the same cycling jerseys)... and it almost guarantees an official picture or two! After much debate over choices... our serious male bikers (the majority on the team) ruled that it couldn't be "girly", "pink", "flowery" or "feathery"... and there was a lot of concern over wind resistance (which ruled out placement at the top of the helmet), our team co-captain made her selection. She brought them to us at the start, so no one had a chance to "forget' theirs at home It worked out well... we had lots of people commenting on them on the route... it helped us find each other... and yes, our team got its picture taken this year... in fact, if you go to the Ride homepage and click on tab #4, that's four of my team members, including my captains Liz (holding one of the mascots) and Dr. Igor Jurisica (on her left) who is also one of the leading researchers at the Ontario Cancer Institute.

So, I say... bring on the decorated motorcycles for RTCC 2011!!! The serious bikers may wonder what on earth you are up to, but you will put big smiles on the faces of the recreational bikers   I loved checking out the van decorations as they passed me by... it's something different to look at, which is helpful when you are grinding it up some of those lovely hills (every year I tell myself... I need to do more hill training next year!).

hmmmm.... maybe I should crew next year for the ride. I'd love to try it but don't think I can ride that far. But crewing would be a nice way to give back....