This is the story of Team Give’r and our wicked mean logo.

In 2009 our Give’r Cycling Team was sponsored by Alberto European Extreme Style for the Ride to Conquer Cancer.   Last year we raised over $90,000 and this year we are already at $65,000 and growing every day.

Our super-talented designer in residence Dean put together a beautiful blue and red kit (shown below) to represent for the brand, and we found room for the Team Give’r logo on the shoulder. 

To go back to the beginning, our group of friends had dubbed ourselves “Team Give’r “ after we had lazed our way through the first few days of the Juan de Fuca trek.  We awoke late on the final morning with the realization that we were in danger of missing our lift out of the bush.  When asked how the hell we were going to make it in time, the answer came pretty easily…Just Give’r.  The name stuck.

Since we have some new riders and countless new supporters on the team this year, I thought it made sense to explain the genesis of the logo and what it means…beyond the fact that it just looks mean and cool, of course.

The logo is an original cancer survivor symbol that I explained to Dean in the form of a story, which he then built. 

The skull and crossbones, commonly found on your household cleansers, represents the life-saving poison of chemotherapy.  It’s also been used for centuries as a symbol of resurrection, with the crossed bones being a nod to the cross of Christian origin. The eye patch is a symbol of Wisdom from legend, coming from the old tale of the Norse God Odin who is said to have plucked out an eye in return for a sip from the well of knowledge  (you’ll have to come up with your own conclusions for why it is over the left eye…that’s a tightly held secret that I will only share over several drinks).  The eyepatch is there because my own experience with survivorship is that it forces wisdom on you…pushing aside the things that just don’t matter and bringing priorities into focus.

And finally the wings.  I could say that they represent freedom, or the soaring feeling of surviving a deadly threat…but the truth is that Dean thought they looked cool.  And that’s hard to argue with.

Team Give’r was made to channel the athletic, creative and compassionate energies of our wonderful network of friends into a way to give back.  We’re in year 2 now and as of this writing the team has raised $160,000 for the BC Cancer Foundation and the Ride to Conquer Cancer.  Not bad.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us…our caregivers, family, friends and sponsors.  We ride so that some day no one need fear death from a cancer diagnosis.

For more info on the Ride and our ride from Vancouver to Seattle, check out my Ride page here:  http://bit.ly/AndrewRidePage  and the Team Page here: http://bit.ly/extremestyle 

Hope to see you on the roads!