Day 1 - London to Portsmith

September 8, 2011

After 5 months of prep the big ride from London to Paris finally gets underway.

Overall there ar 33 riders:

We have just completed our first day of riding. It was fabulous, gray and 20+ MPH wind, BUT no rain!!

Length: 68.9 miles
Total riding time: 5 hours 51 minutes
Elevation Gain: 4,096 ft
Calories burned: 5,210 (So I suppose we can eat what we want for dinner.)

You have to admit the English countryside is beautiful.

Mike Hennel in Route, note the cool cover shoes!!



The hardware store in Haslemere, England very near to where Simons cottage is,

and where he has gone since childhood.

Note there is also a fish store:

We finally arrive in Portsmith

And now on to dinner and tomorrow the ferry to France (and 67 miles through Normandy)



Simon Posting the days activities on Facebook

London Prep before the big ride

September 5-7, 2011

Prep for the big ride involved each of us biking around Hyde Park in London. One spin around the Park was 2.7 miles, so needless to say we did many spinns. Not bad when you can still get your miles in when you are staying in a major city. And the good news is there are a number of concession stands that sell ice cream. Ground rules for an Andrew Grene Foundation Rider is that for every 20 miles you ride you get an ice cream.

Hyde Park London

Kensington Palace - Hyde Park London

note people are still putting up tributes to Princess Di.

The Andrew Grene High School OPENS!

Unbelievable, the Andrew Grene High School opens right on schedule.

And the class of 2014 begins!!!

...and checkn out the Microsoft solar powered lab

here is a classroom

The Ribbon Cutting

A very good day!





Wraping up to go to London

August 31, 2011

Well the bikes have all been boxed up to go with us on our various planes. Mike left last weekend and will hit Denmark and Germany on business before getting to London next week. Simon left yesterday and will see family in London this weekend, but he will also hit France and Italy on business before getting back to London on the 7th and be ready to ride on the 8th. And I leave on Saturday the 3rd, and will do a few days of business in London before the ride.

Let's all hope we make it to the Kingston Upon Thames Central Travelodge some time on the night of the 7th! For we ride on the 8th.

We become Centurians

Well we finally did it on the 3rd weekend in August. We rode 100 miles in one day. Took 6 hours and 23 minutes and we averaged about 15 MPH. But, we did it! It was a beautiful ride up and down the Fox River valley about 50 miles outside of Chicago. Sammy's bike shop sponsored the ride. We don't look to bad after doing 100 miles!

The guy on the left is Sammy.

If you look carefully you can see Mike has managed to mount a video camera on his handlebars. But he is still getting used to working with video. He and his son tried to speed up our 100 mile ride. Here is the result if you are brave enough to look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u19wFG1YM0w

For us this was a big milestone, and gave us some confidence we might actually make it through the London to Paris ride. It is a good feeling.

Mid August training and training accidents

Well training seems to be progressing. When we committed to this ride about 4 months ago it seemed like a no brainer. But the closer we get to the ride the more we are starting to question what we were thinking. The hills keep looking bigger and the distances further!!  Needless to say fear of failure has each of us hard at work!

Chicago Training

August weekends have involved a number of 60 and 75 mile runs from Evanston to Great Lakes Naval Training Center

And Lunch is usually at Einstein Bagel in Lake Forest about 34 miles into the run.



Hot Weather Training

I am not sure we need hot weather training for a September ride in England and France, but we are sure getting some here in Chicago.

Note the temperature gage on Simons bike computer.



San Francisco Training

I was in San Francisco on business and managed to get some miles in. I rode about 45 miles through Golden Gate Park and down the Pacific Coast. Here I borrowed a vintage Schwinn that is about 3X heavier than my bike. I only wiped out once on the run. Fortunately I did not hurt my shoulder. Long story but I have a full tear in my rotator cuff and will under go surgery in October.

Hood River, Oregon Training

Then I made it up to Oregon and the Hood River.

Unfortunately one of my cousin's convinced me I should do some cross training, and go mountain biking. Small problem, I had never been mountain biking and had no idea what I was getting in for. These are not just dangerous trails they are purposly made that way. Say what??????? In any event I managed to to a head gainer over the handle bars on the way back down the trail and I cracked 2 ribs, smashed my thumb, and got one hell of a black eye. Oh yes and totaled my sun glasses. The good news...I get new sunglasses. The bad news, its a real pain to train with cracked ribs. I took the next wek off.

Microsoft joins the Andrew Grene Foundation project

July 22, 2011

This morning Microsoft committed to providing a solar powered computer lab for the school!!

This is a very big deal that the students will have access to computers and more importantly to the Web. But it is also very cool that it can be done at all. You see there is no electricity at all into the school. That is because there is no electricity in Cite Soleil. So through the use of solar power a tech labe becomes possible.

Thank you Microsoft

So...we step up our fundraising too

We have just about raised the $20,000 to fund the first year and we know we still have some pretty good runway with additional supporters, so we are raising out target to $30,000. Tim Perutz had a talk with the Principal of the Andrew Grene High School and asked what they would do with additional funds. The suggestion was made that a piece of property next to the school be purchased so te students could grow vegitables, etc... and help the school to become more self funding for te long term. So, now we will go for getting the property as well.