Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Jason and myself (Garry) would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Hopefully yours and your family's wishes all came true over the festive season. Now it's time to party into the New Year.

But before I / we go, a quick recap of the year that's about to pass and some thank you's. Bring on the visual blur and music as we reminisce of times past. If you have some of those funky incense sticks now's the time to light them:

2010 was an interesting year to say the least for The Long Road. Jason went and hit me up with this grand scheme of travelling the world and it all began (ok, he didn't need to ask, I actually put my hand up).

The name we chose for this trip, The Long Road, has certainly lived up to itself. What was thought to be easy has been a real hard slog with setting things up, hunting down what we will need, trying to spread the word of what we are doing and attempting to get sponsors on board. But we have progressed through with the simple thought of why we are doing this and, as I'm sure, all Parkinsons and Cancer sufferes have done it tougher. We remain positive that this will be a success.

By the way we are still looking for sponsors and equipment suppliers so if you know anyone that can help out please pass on the good word and our details or let us know and we will send through our sponsor pack.

Now to the "Thank You's":

To everyone that has helped us so far, a big thank you. Cycle City Ballarat who jumped on board from the start, Sam from Tour De Cure who helped at the beginning in guiding us to and through places we had never been to previously or even thought about. To those charities we are supporting, Parkinsons Australia (NSW), Cure Cancer Australia, Livestrong (The Lance Armstrong Foundation), and Team Fox (The M J Fox Foundation), thankyou for your time and patience. We are slowly but surely getting to our goal start date. To all our followers on this site, Face Book and Twitter, thank you for simply being there and watching as we bumble our way through.

Last but not least, thank you to our families. You have supported both Jason and I through this hairbrained idea and pushed when we needed to be pushed, even if you think we are stupid to be doing it. We've not left yet so the stupidity hasn't even started.

In closing I hope everone has a great New Years. Stay safe but most of all have fun. 2011 here we come.

Cure Cancer Australia

Welcome to the first, of a series of posts all about the charity organisations we will be supporting on the tour.

“I’m sorry, you have cancer”…1.4 million people a year unfortunately have to hear this news as the search continues to improve prevention, detection and treatment outcomes for people with cancer.

115,000 Australians will be diagnosed with cancer by the end of 2010.  As we all know only too well, this is someone’s Mum, brother, husband, child or best friend.  Cancer impacts all of us.

Mission:  we champion innovative researchers in their quest to cure cancer.

Vision:  A world without cancer, nothing less.

Cure Cancer Australia has played an important role in advancing cancer research in Australia over the last 42 years.  Many of Australia’s leading cancer researchers today had their start with Cure Cancer funding.

Since 1967, Cure Cancer Australia has provided over $14m in seed funding to Australian researchers at the start of their careers.  Close to 400 researchers have been supported across over 60 different institutes, hospitals, universities and centres throughout Australia, in all areas of cancer research (non cancer-type specific).

We thank all of our donors, supporters, stakeholders and volunteers for their support in making our vision a reality. With your help, we will win the fight against cancer.

Every dollar donated brings us closer to a cure.

To donate, visit "The Long Road" donation page or email us at donate@thelongroadtour.com

To find out more about Cure Cancer Australia visit: www.curecancer.org.au

The cure starts here.

Quick Update - 15th November 2010

What a last couple of weeks. Excitement plus. But I'm sure it's not going to stop as we start to move closer to the start date.

So what's been happening?

For starters we made our intentions known to the world. Facebook has been going mad and "The Long Road" website has seen steady traffic. We reached 1000 hits the other day which is a great start. Thanks to all for your support so far but keep getting the word out there.

We finalised our partner agreement with the Michael J Fox Foundation and setup our Team Fox portal. This adds to our existing partnerships with Cure Cancer Australia and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong). You can head to our Charities section for links to each of these excellent institutions and the donations page if you wish to donate to any of these charities. We will also be completing a highlight piece on each one of the charities over the coming weeks so stay tuned for those.

Cycle City Ballarat has come on board to help us out with bits and pieces for our bikes. We welcome them to the team and thank them for their support. Check out the sponsors page in the coming days for a run down on what they do. In the mean time go to www.cyclecity.com.au.

That's it for now.

Hello world

Welcome to the online home for "The Long Road Tour". A journey to help raise funds and awareness for Parkinsons and Cancer, and maybe have a little fun on the way.

Located on this site, version 1.0, you will find a number of different things. You can read more about Parkinsons and Cancer or the charities that are supported by this tour. See what Jason and Garry, the journey men, are up to in the blog. Look at some of the upcoming events that will be organised. Or most importantly take a quick look at the ways you can help out by going to the donation page, because passion for the cause will only get us so far.

Thanks again for dropping by. Hopefully you will be a regular.