HostGator is proud to have presented the 2012 Tour Du Rouge, benefiting the Gulf Coast chapters of The American Red Cross.  The ride traversed five hundred and twenty-six miles, beginning in Houston on May 6th and ending in New Orleans on May 11th, at an average of 88 miles each day.  HostGator designed the awesome jerseys visible in the images below, as well as t-shirts and lots of other event graphics.  Allan, one of our Admins who participated in the ride this year, was kind enough to share some of his experiences with us.

The morning of the ride began with a performance of The Star-Spangled Banner, followed by a group prayer.  After the ceremonies, a police escort (complete with horse-mounted officers) accompanied the riders from the starting point in Northeast Houston through to the first major freeway, about five miles away.  Beaumont would be the destination for day one.  Allan completed this 88 mile trek in just under 5 hours, despite some rough patches of road along the way.  The image below is from the starting line, with Allan front and center, notice those stylish HostGator jerseys!

Day two would take the riders from Beaumont through Port Arthur and ultimately over the bridge, across the state border into Louisiana. The group stopped for lunch on Holly Beach before hitting the road again and enjoying the scenic Gulf Coast view; finally bedding down in the city of Sulpher, Louisiana.  Allan would traverse these 93 miles once again in just under 5 hours.

Day three held the longest single stretch of the tour; just over 100 miles, from Sulphur to Abbeville.  The day began around 6:30a, in order to get a head start of the inevitably blaring sun.  Unfortunately, Allan experienced a flat tire around mile 3 on a particularly bad patch of road.  This day would turn out to be his most difficult, as he also suffered a knee injury fairly early in the day.  Things began to turn around during the lunch stop in Mermentau, though and Allan was able to finish the day strong.  He made it to Abbeville in about 6 1/2 hours; 30 minutes before the pouring rain.  The weather would prove to be more of an adversary as the tour continued, though.

Day four would deliver the riders into Morgan City, Louisiana.  Breakfast at a local café that morning included an a capella performance of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by the café owner’s son.  Later in the day, the riders paid a visit to Avery Island for a tour of the famous Tabasco factory and it’s attached store, which reportedly had some rarely-seen, but absolutely amazing Tabasco chipotle raspberry ice cream.  Allan spent just over 4 hours on this 78 mile trek; by this point, the riders had now covered a total of over 360 miles.

Day five took the riders across the Mississippi River and into Gonzales, Louisiana.  All told, this would be the least eventful day for the tour.  The highlight was the lunch stop at St. Joseph Plantation that included some log cabin style, old-timey school houses.  In hindsight, it would be the calm before the (quite literal) storm that would rain down upon the riders on the final leg of their journey.

The final day of the ride would prove to be a fitting end of a long journey.  Destination: New Orleans, Louisiana! Following a slightly confusing (and last minute) re-routing of the riders’ path, Allan and the others would battle fierce wind and sudden downpours as the weather finally decided to let loose on the riders after many threats earlier in the week.  Allan would cross the finish line having spent just over 4 1/2 hours on the final 84 miles of the tour.

With the ride now behind them, and the riders now in dry clothes (at least temporarily), the group gathered at the New Orleans Police Department for an escort into downtown ‘Nawlins.  Despite the continuing wind and rain, the riders were warmly greeted by not only a cheering crowd, but also an impressive live band.

Clearly at this point, the only reasonable thing left to do was spend the evening on Bourbon Street in celebration of a ride well ridden.  We’d like to share a picture from Bourbon Street, but to be honest, they’re all a little bit blurry for some reason or another… All told, Allan’s GPS reports a total of 532.7 miles covered, with a total ride time of 29hrs 43mins 30secs over the course of six days.  The 2012 Tour du Rouge was now in the history books.

Our sincere appreciation to The American Red Cross and all those who took part in the 2012 Tour du Rouge, especially the riders themselves and our very own fearless Admin Allan who was kind enough to not only share his experience with us, but also the following pictures:

Toilet paper is serious business. It’s genuinely a severely overlooked and under-appreciated medium of information distribution; believe that! Fortunately, http://www.getshitter.com can assist in elevating toilet paper to a more appropriate level of respect, by taking your twitter feed and turning it into toilet paper. What you subsequently do with said toilet paper would then be completely up to you.

As we all learned from the classic Pauly Shore cinematic masterpiece Bio-Dome, the most effective means of instituting change, or raising awareness, is to think globally and act locally. The month of April contains both Earth Day (April 22nd) and Arbor Day (April 27th).  As you may already know, back in 2008 HostGator took the initiative of becoming a Green webhost, which you can read even more about here.  With environmentalism in the air this month, we thought it would be appropriate to discuss toilet paper and the trees that make toilet paper possible. Because like toilet paper, trees are also serious business.

I’m going to stop beating around the bush, not because a bush could potentially make for decent TP, but because toilet paper conservation is something that deserves significantly more attention than it presently receives.  At least once per day, you hold in your hand a number of 4.25 inch squares that could change the world, if you held less of them at a time.  Twenty-seven thousand trees give their lives daily to supply the world with toilet paper.  That is not a typo; that’s a 27, followed by a comma and 3 zeros.  Don’t take my word for it; go ask National Geographic.

Thinking globally may lead you to discover General Sherman, a giant sequoia tree located in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in Tulare County, California.  The General is one of the tallest, widest, longest-lived and most famous trees in existence, therefore unlikely to ever become toilet paper.  Another unlikely TP candidate would be a certain White Cedar located in the Great Lakes area of Canada: it’s 155 years old and less than 4 inches tall.

In acting locally, we began here in our own offices by purchasing GetShitter toilet paper for our restrooms to further educate all HostGator employees on trees and toilet paper conservation. To see the twitter feed we used for this purpose, click here, and please be sure that you are not easily-offended by juvenile bathroom humor… after all, Gators can be found in the sewers from time to time…

Now that we’ve appropriately addressed thinking globally and acting locally, we’re on a roll (so to speak)!  How though can we thus act globally?  Our thoughts turned to our HostGator India office, India being widely known for having a culture that does not utilize toilet paper.  In the spirit of educating, enlightening and raising awareness about environmental issues, we present this series of photos to explain how that culture accomplishes this goal:

How is showing you those pictures acting globally, you ask?  Well, it’s not.  But encouraging you to adopt the same behavior is!  Because if we want to change the world, and save some trees, then we need to take action; one ply at a time!  Interestingly, the above-pictured method is considered even more sanitary than using toilet paper.

The Arbor Day Foundation began in 1972 and now plants and distributes more than 10 million trees annually. Earth Day began in 1970 and is largely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. Please visit both of their websites to further educate yourself about potentially making a difference that could impact the entire world. What’s been around longer than both Earth Day and the Arbor Day Foundation, combined? Toilet paper, which dates back to the 6th century AD, in early medieval China. Feel free to print that fact on your roll of GetShitter.com toilet paper! Happy Earth Day and Happy Arbor Day from HostGator!

Snappy here with an important announcement!

HostGator.com has sent me a company memo this morning confirming that they are once again participating in National Breast Cancer Awareness Month this October and I wanted to pass the good news along to you.

Memo:
“In 1985, the search for a cure for Breast Cancer was gaining headway and AstraZeneca founded National Breast Cancer Awareness Month to raise awareness of this growing cause. Thanks to the establishment of NBCAM, in October of each year, organizations across the nation focus on the fight, helping to promote mammography as the most effective weapon in the race against breast cancer. HostGator.com is proud to join these organizations in their support for a cure.

So it looks like I’m going pink for October! For those of you who have loved ones who have experienced or are going through this, please give them a Snappyrific hug for me.

Have a great day and think pink.

We have all known someone in our lives, either close friends, or family who has suffered from some form of cancer. AstraZeneca, which manufactures breast cancer drugs Arimidex and Tamoxifen, founded the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 1985. The aim of the NBCAM from the start has been to promote mammography as the most effective weapon in the fight against breast cancer.

HostGator.com is proud to announce it will be participating in Breast Cancer Awareness Month this year by turning “Snappy The Gator” pink on our website. We have also setup a special coupon code “PINK”, the coupon code will allow 20% off the first month of any hosting account we offer and we will donate the first month from every signup that uses this code to breast cancer research. …

Chances are that you have almost certainly heard of the recent and very tragic earthquake that has nearly devastated the Caribbean nation of Haiti. In the wake of such a sudden and severe tragedy, it can be hard to see hope.

The American Red Cross, along with thousands of other support and aid organizations, has been making a huge effort to get things as close to normal for people in Haiti. To support that relief effort, HostGator is making a $100,000 donation to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development fund.

The press release announcing the donation is below:

HOUSTON – Shared, reseller, and dedicated web hosting company HostGator announced on Monday that it has donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development fund.

The donation, which is the fourth six digit charitable donation HostGator has made in its eight year history, will help the American Red Cross provide support for the relief efforts in Haiti, which will likely include mobilizing additional aid workers, sending supplies, and providing financial resources for what is certain to be a long recovery for the government and people of Haiti.

“What happened in Haiti is a tragedy,” said Brent Oxley, HostGator’s founder and CEO. “I’m glad to be in a position where we’re able to help those in need. It’d be wrong to do nothing in light of what happened to the people. Their lives are going to be forever changed in a way that most Americans can barely fathom.” …

Many of us at HostGator were curious what the ‘nerd vote’ looked like so we went ahead and ran our own poll amongst employees. We limited the choices to either Mccain or Obama in order to keep the results realistic.

Here’s a breakdown of the results:

98 Texas employees participated
55 nerds voted for Barack Hussein Obama II
34 nerds voted for John Sidney McCain

The remaining 9 votes were disqualified for failing to follow the strict directions of selecting one candidate or the other. For the sake of being democratic, here are the results of the 9 votes that were neither McCain nor Obama:

1 vote for “in your moms box” – Whatever this means….
3 votes for “neither”
1 vote for “ray” – Ray, you’re a loser if you voted for yourself.
1 vote for “Ron Paul”
1 vote for “cocktail party” – If you voted this, please come see me for psychiatric help.
1 vote for “Brent Oxley” – Your vote may have been disqualified, but you will still be getting a raise for having such wisdom.
1 vote for “Cbar” – I think this vote was an attempt to spell “brent”, but got mixed up on the spelling.

Obama dominated with 62% of the votes versus McCain’s 38%. This nerd vote took place at the HostGator office in Houston, Texas which is one of McCain’s strongest states! I can only imagine what these results would have looked like had HostGator employees been from somewhere more liberal, like San Francicso.

I personally voted for McCain with the belief that he is the lesser of two evils. I disagree with McCain on a few key issues such as withdrawing from Iraq, and having preconditions before meeting with foreign leaders. This, of course, seems much better to me than Obama’s relying on the United Nations and resolving issues in a “diplomatic” way. The U.N. is a joke, which is why major atrocities and genocide are happening in places like Darfur and Burma. The diplomatic route is the best way to go, but you can only talk so long until action is necessary if the talks are fruitless.

The Iraq war is costing Americans roughly 147 billion a year. This is a ton of money, but when you consider our current deficit is at $438 billion, you can quickly understand the war isn’t the main or only problem in America. …

HostGator has a history and tradition of giving back. In the last year, we’ve donated over $125,000 to charity, actively worked towards offsetting and reversing our environmental impact, and given free or
discounted web hosting to a countless number of web sites.

Today, we’re moving forward with our commitment to the communities and the people we serve with the launch of the HostGator Technology Grant.

Recipients of the HostGator Technology Grant will receive one year of completely free web hosting with our Swamp Plan, which offers 1,000 GB of space and unlimited bandwidth. If the Swamp plan does not fit the needs of the particular recipient, they can opt to take the grant as a $180 service credit to any other HostGator product or service. After the one year of free service, grant recipients can re-apply and if accepted again, continue to use HostGator web hosting completely free.

The HostGator Technology Grant’s goal is simple and straightforward: provide free web hosting to organizations and projects that serve the greater good.

Obtaining legitimately free web hosting for nonprofits can be an arduous process. Organizations should be spending their time doing what they believe in and what they set out to do, not hunting for
affordable and quality web hosting. …