5 years, 5 rides, 5 hundred thousand pounds!!!!!  That's what we're aiming to have completed by the end of this year.  Now 2 out of 3 ain't bad and we can pretty much guarantee the 2......but it's that 3rd one that counts.  With 64 of us this year including a stronger than usual showing from the strategic supplier group we've got a chance.

My story is about a kid from a council house who never slept.  I'm told I was a nightmare by my mother, aunts, uncles - a claim which I have threatened to challenge in the supreme courts.  I can remember having a stone throwing contest with the girl next door and smashing an old lady's window (I got a lot of grief for that one); falling off a wall, out of tree, into a fire and trying to shave when I was 3.  All required hospital visits.  I remember playing in the family car, parked on a hill outside my grandparents house: letting the handbrake off then running round the back of the car (it was on a hill) to stop it rolling down the hill - using all my brute strength - I was 10.  (Luckily there was another car parked just a bit down the hill so I only got slightly crushed between them...I really really got a lot of grief for that one).  Of course there is so much more and everyone who knows any of it has been blackmailed into silence.

The thing is, what would have happened if those people hadn't been there to put me back together when i was a 'bit damaged', to tell me what a 'knob' I was, to cajole, coerce, berate and still believe in me.  Maybe I wouldn't have the wonderful wife and kids I have today who I know will help anyone in trouble or need.  Maybe I wouldn't have the opportunity to help influence a bike ride like this that will make a difference for hundreds of kids everywhere.  Kids that are massively worse off today than I, or any of you reaidng this page, ever have been.

Someone has to care, we ALL have to care.  The bike ride at Visa Europe is something really special.  It's a Visa thing through and through that has become a cornerstone of our value system and our efforts to raise money to support children.  This will be the fifth year in succession where the Visa Europe staff selected charity has been a children's charity.  Please help us to help the children who have never had what we all have.