Sunday, September 20, 2009

Day 1 - Augustana Rocks!!!

We had an awesome day today.
We hit the road very early at the Wisconsin border and headed south into Galena. It was really spectacular coming through the hills into Galena. Several hot air balloons were up as the sun rose. Unfortunately, what goes down must come up, so to speak. This hills up and out of Galena were very, very tough.
Once we made it out of the hills, we had a great ride down to Savannah, IL and again started making some good time. Had a good lunch in a small Chinese restaurant there. The daughter of the owners was hovering around our table. She was very cute and interested in us and our bikes, but at 4 years old, she did not speak much. When she did it was not very clear. Funny how your mind works, but I was thinking, this girl clearly has some type of speech issue.
About 20 miles from Rock Island, we had our first flat. Got it changed and going again, but the rain came too. It was a cool rain and we were pretty cold by the end. There was however, a great crowd of Augustana students and faculty there to meet us at the end. About 25 folks walked us to our hotel, we got cleaned up and they took us to a picnic near their clinic on the campus.
We had a great dinner there of food provided by the students. Afterwards we had a really moving presentation and discussion. The students made a tremendous donation to CASANA, and the family of Collin, a wonderful young man receiving therapy at the clinic did as well. We got the chance to visit with a great group of young men and women who are the hope of families facing Apraxia in the future. Augustana and Illinois have a lot to be proud of in these students and teachers. We played a mean game of bean bag toss with Collin and then headed back to our hotel.
Tomorrow we have our longest day, 120 miles. It will not be the hills that we had today, and the rain should move off. We’ll try to have some pictures up tomorrow as well.
Stay tuned and keep the positive thoughts and prayers coming!

1 comment:

  1. Tom,
    What you are doing is so amazing! The publicity, news stories - all of it is such an inspiration! Can't wait to see pictures!
    best,
    Sharon

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