By a Bicycle Network life member.
6:00am – 8:30am: Good morning! Time to get up, have some brekkie and pack up your gear while riders will head out on the road.
8:30am: Team meeting at spokes bar
9:00am – 10:00am: Time to head to the next campsite! Most bar volunteers will be transferred to the next campsite via a coach that departs around 9:00. A few people can ride in the bar vehicles. Your luggage will generally travel with you in the coach/bar truck.
Once we get to the next site, there may be some downtime – most services are geared to be running in the afternoon/evening when the riders get in. The marquees will still be going up, and there will be trucks and people going everywhere to get the site ready. Best thing to do is to set up your tent, kick back and keep an eye out for lunch – which will most likely be delivered to the Volunteer area.
12:00pm on the dot: Campsite is open to riders. Watch whilst the riders flood into campsite and attempt to claim the best camping spot!
12:30pm: The first shift will start around now. Expect to be pulling stuff out of trucks, assembling the bar, setting up tables and chairs, stacking bottles and cans in the fridges, stacking chips, chocolates, glasses, jugs, and bins in the service area. The chiller units need to be filled with buckets of water, the dishwasher needs power and water, and the kegs need to be hooked up.
1:00pm: Service time! Once we’ve got an assembled bar, power, cold beer and a cash float, we’re open for business. Sometimes one or more of these things will run a little late, which is never a big deal.
Full-time volunteers can expect to work around eight hours a day. Everyone will get a day off, and people will experience both early and late shifts during the ride.
Riding volunteers can expect to do around four hours behind the bar each day. Your job is to relieve the pressure during our busiest service period (dinner time). You are not expected to be there for set-up or stick around for pack-up – we know how hard you’re working on the road!
4:00pm-ish: The riding volunteers and the late shift will start floating in. It’s time for some of the set-up crew to have a break. The afternoon crew will need to make sure that stock on display is being replenished and looking neat. You'll also need to do regular rounds of the tables to collect jugs, and be responsible for tidying up rubbish in the café area.
6:00pm: Now it starts getting busy as the place fills up for dinner service. We will get our change to go and eat as well.
8:00pm-ish: Time for the main bar setup crew to finish up and spokes bar to close and knock off. See you tomorrow.
10:00pm: Lights out on campsite!
10:30pm: Service over. The bar needs to be cleared, cleaned and packed into the truck. Registers will be cleared and need to be packed away. Unused stock gets stacked back in the fridge truck. Rubbish needs to be packed into bins and skips, empty kegs lined up for collection, tables and chairs stacked, glasses and jugs collected and washed.
The time it takes to pack up the bar will get shorter as the week goes on and everyone gets some practice at it. Each night we aim to pack up quicker then the previous nights. We do time some pack down and the pack up crew with the best and most efficient pack down time wins (this can be come quite competitive)!
11:00pm- 11:30: Good night pack-up crew!
*All times and events stated in this document are approximate.