Hello Everyone,

In less than 36 days, many of us will be reunited in Burlington for this year’s event. We are in the final planning stages and are looking forward to seeing you. Since we are only 5 weeks away and there’s a lot of information to share, let’s get right to it.

2012 Event

The 2012 event is from Burlington, VT to Portland, ME. It will be held from Monday, August 13 to Friday, August 17, 2012. Onsite registration will take place on Sunday, August 12 at our host hotel, which will be the Sheraton Burlington Hotel.

If you are planning to attend but have not yet registered (and we know there are a few of you), please take the time to register now at www.charitytreks.org.

This will help us for the planning and accommodations on the ride.

Host Hotels

Our host hotels have blocks of rooms reserved for us.

However, our blocks of rooms will be released at the end of next week (on July 12th).

The hotels are sold out for our dates, so if you don’t reserve your room before July 12, there will be no room.

After registering for the event, please make your reservations for hotels and don’t forget to mention Charity Treks when making your reservations in order to get the rates quoted below.

Sheraton Burlington Hotel & Conference Center
870 Williston Road
Burlington, VT 05403
802-865-6600
$142.00 per night + 10% tax = $156.20

Holiday Inn By the Bay
88 Spring Street
Portland, ME 04101
207-775-2311 or 800-345-5050
$178.00 per night + 7% tax = $190.46

Bike / Gear Transport / Pick-Up

Once again this year, there will be a bike & gear drop-off in the DC area for interested riders. Your bike & gear will be driven to Burlington on the gear truck and driven back after the event, all for the exceptionally reasonable price of $75.00.

The drop-off point is Elaina & Bert’s house. For details and directions, e-mail Elaina at elaina@charitytreks.org.

Drop-off times are as follows (may be subject to change):
Sun. Aug. 5: 3 – 8 pm
Mon. Aug. 6: 6 – 8 pm
Tue Aug. 7: 6 – 8 pm
Wed. Aug 8: Not Available
Thu. Aug. 9: 3 – 6 pm

The gear truck will be leaving at 7 pm sharp from Elaina & Bert’s house for Burlington.

Schedule for Onsite Registration

Onsite registration (Day 0) will take place between 2 – 5 pm. Please remember to bring your printed medical forms with you to registration. There will be a short safety discussion once you have registered, and an ice cream social after registration so you have the opportunity to meet some of the people you will be spending the week with.

The crew meeting will take place at 4 pm. If you have signed up as crew, please be sure to attend this meeting.

You are free to do as you please in the evening, and there is usually a small contingent who make their way down to the waterfront in Burlington for a nice dinner before the event begins.

Ride out on Monday morning will be at 7:30 am.

Donation Update

We have raised over $16,000 so far for the event. Remember to keep up the fundraising efforts, and let people know when you are leaving for the event and encourage them to visit the website.

If you have checks that you have been given by donors, you will be able to hand them off at registration. We expect to surpass $1 million of cumulative funds raised this year, and look forward to making the official announcement.

Registration Update for 2012

The latest registration update numbers: 44 riders and 23 crew.

For those of you who attended last year’s event and got the know the crew from NCCC, we are pleased to announce that another crew of 8-9 NCCC volunteers will be joining us again this year.