'Hosting Warmshowers Hosts' Come to Teretonga for the Heart Kids Bingo Ride 23 November 2019

Warmshowers hosts are some of our favourite people.  Lorraine and I have found them to be interesting, welcoming and generous to a fault.  In 2015 we noticed our guests enthused about their last host, who usually lived barely 40 km away but who were strangers to us.  We decided to organize a gathering where hosts could get to know each other.  It was a great success.

Today, I’m proposing a gathering of hosts in Invercargill to:

1) Support of a charity cycling event that my cousin Ismay Howden is organizing. for the families of children who have had heart surgery.

2) Meet the other hosts from Warmshowers Hosting community in Otago and Southland.

3) Encourage more Southland people to become Warmshowers hosts.

For 9 hours 'Heart Kids' and supporters will cycle around Invercargill’s famous motor racing track as individuals or relay teams . Nine hours is the average length of the heart surgery these children have had. Ismay’s son Ryan (aged 10) and a bunch other 'heart kids' and adults will ride and funds will be raised through sponsorship and a $40 entry fee.

I’m invitinging all you interesting Warmshowers hosts to stay over at Otatara camping ground to meet, greet, BBQ, and otherwise misbehave while cranking in a few kilometers for the Heart Kids.

A side benefit might be to encourage some more local people to become hosts and fill a serious host vacuum in the deep South.

Warm regards you stalwarts of the Warmshowers Community I’m looking forward to meeting you and riding with you – 9 hours! We should be able to embellish a few stories in that time.

Neil (Nzeil)