Today, Andrew and I to visited @karenmorris (from Inscriptions Media), who works with Paul Boxall from The Printing Company. They are based in Sydney’s first ‘eco-friendly’ building at 23 Narabang Way, Belrose NSW.

Support

Karen and Paul had a conversation last week about one of the boys from Paul’s sons’ school, who recently committed suicide. The topic of depression came up, and Karen (whom Andrew and I met through Twitter), told Paul about our project, Riding4aCause & the work we’re doing to raise the awareness of Male Depression.

I received a short email that day, saying, quite simply:

Hi Guys,

Could you please let me know how we might be able to assist?

Regards Paul

The Printing Company Pty. Ltd.

As The Printing Company has a huge range of products they can print, we didn’t know where to start! We decided to visit Karen & Paul in Belrose top have a chat about the project and how they can help.

We had a lovely chat with Karen & Paul (complete with coffee/hot chocolate [+ marshmallows for Andrew]), hearing about personal experiences with depression and suicides. We all have sons (11 between us!) and discussed many topics related to raising boys – anger, stress, anxiety depression and suicide. We discussed opportunities for speaking engagements with schools, especially with the HSC coming up for senior school students, there’s a good opportunity to reach out to teenagers. We also discussed the motivation behind this project and how it all started with ‘a single tweet’ and blossomed from there. We accepted Paul’s offer to provide printing and promotional products for Riding4aCause, and Karen also offered to manage our breakfast send-off event at Deus Ex Machina on 5th of September!

Testing equipment

During the ride, Andrew and I tested our new Scala Rider system (Sponsored by Strike Group) – Just AWESOME! The moment we turned them on we were talking with each other very clearly, with virtually no setup – it just worked! Very clear communications during commuting speeds (up to 80km/h), minimal background noise, and acceptable range (150-200m). We’ve chatted most of the way (about 20 minutes) until we lost contact when the distance was too great.

At faster speeds (90km/h+) it is difficult to hear a complete conversation due to the wind noise (most likely from our helmets), but we found by sticking together and talking in short bursts it was OK. It was a great addition to the ride because we could share observations about our trip, the traffic, which direction to take, etc. We ended up chatting almost the entire journey! It’s an absolutely fantastic device! Thanks, Chris Ryan!

To top this all, a Bartercard directory arrived in the mail today, courtesy of @waynemansfield, as he donated $5000 in Bartercard money. I’ve already contacted some people from the directory, who can help us spend the Bartercard money along the way

That’s it for one day – how was yours?