Team up to 30 riders

With two months to raise money to fight MS, the Main Street Mashers are up to 30 registered cyclists. Last year, 25 rode.

The team roster to date includes:

Cyclists:
John Coomer
Luly Elizondo Coomer
William Coomer
Trish Coy
Robert Di Girolamo
Janice Dunn
Zoe Dunn
Mike Fogel
Chris Grimmer
Bruce Hay
Steven Hay
Steve Hunter
Jason Kelly
Art Krzyzewski
Max Krzyzewski
Steve Leininger
Beth Lizarraga
Dario Lizarraga
Gary Meier
Robert Michel
John Piggott
William Rubasch Jr.
Al Steinberg
Allee Steinberg
Bill Treder
Lawrence Wharton
Marcee Wharton
Leigh Wilcox
Cynthia Victoria Williams
Tony Williams

Volunteers:
Gail Buckley
Jessica Carbajal
Jim Donner Sr.

Click on any rider name to make an online donation to his/her account. All donations are tax deductible and go directly to the Arizona Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.


Go to mainstreetmashers.org for more team information. For more information on Bike MS or the Arizona Chapter of the National MS Society, go to bikeaza.nationalmssociety.org.

Camp Masher to locate at Heritage Park

The "Home Team" will base at Heritage Park for Round Up Ride 2009. This is significant as most cyclists camping in RV's must park at various other locations throughout Florence. This puts the Mashers right in the middle of the event.

We camped last year in the parking lot of Main Street Family Practice and Desert Springs Water & Ice, about a mile south of Heritage Park. We had access to rest rooms and 15 amp power service for RV's. However, the road noise on South Main kept several riders awake at night.

Out of town riders will benefit from us locating at the park. The Mashers will staff a "local information" table and have agreed to help organizers when local resources are needed. We want our visitors to feel welcome and have easy access to local resources. If visitors have a good experience, they will come back for visits and recruit other riders.

Although we won't have access to three restrooms, we will be near the bank of portapotties and have toilets in RV's. In addition, after ride showers will be more accessible.

This is a good thing!!!

Mashers earn coveted "cut-in-line beer passes"

January's "Shifting Gears Newsletter" from the National MS Society just hit email boxes and it confirmed what we hoped for! On Thursday, the Mashers registered more new team members than any other team and were awarded the "coveted" passes.

This means that members of this team, after riding up to 100 miles on Saturday, March 28, won't have to wait in line for one of New Belgium Brewing Company's great handcrafted brews. Yes, the recovery drink of champions will be waiting for us once again.

The Mashers earned this privilege in the 2008 event as well. It just goes to show what is important in life to our fun-loving group!

In addition to winning Thursday's contest, with 20 new members signing on all week, the Main Street Mashers registered more riders than any other team for the entire week. With that distinction, the team again earned a team tent in the team village as well. Hopefully, a team member will take on the task of decorating the tent and making it homey for visitors.

Congratulations Mashers! It's time to start raising the big bucks to help eradicate MS!

Main Street Mashers on Facebook

The Main Street Mashers are now on Facebook. Any donations sent via the Facebook cause will go to the Arizona Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. I encourage you to join this group, but for now, prefer donations to go through our website and/or team page on the Bike MS site. Even if we don't get credit as a team, however, please feel free to donate via Facebook.

Team underwriters almost set

All of our last year's underwriters have come back including Main Street Family Practice, Advanced Billing Consultants, Affinity PT, Signature Technology Group, Desert Springs Water & Ice, Yuma Insurance, PassTimes Publications, and Anthem at Merrill Ranch. One new underwriter is confirmed and we welcome and thank the Rotary Club of Florence, AZ. I hope to announce at least three others in the next few days. If you would like to help (or know of others), please let us know.

Team Week Highly Successful for Mashers

On Monday, January 12, the Main Street Mashers had eight official members. By Sunday the 18th that had grown to 28!!! We don't know if we won any team contests for the week, but hopefully we'll learn shortly. Thanks and congratulations!

Welcome to our blog

We will use this blog to keep team members, donors and volunteers updated with fund raising information, new team members and other data. Feel free to subscribe and make entries. I will initially moderate all posts just to be sure they are relevant and appropriate, as I'm new to this game. Please feel free to post feelings, ideas, and thoughts that can help us be the best fund raising group possible, have the most fun doing it, and attract lots of folks to our cause. We may add additional causes if this takes off! Thanks for looking.