In 17 days the Penn Foster crew heads to Florida for the second Choose to Be More Bike Tour. Seems like almost yesterday since we made our six city Northeast (PA, NJ, NY) tour (in fact it was October 2012). We have been excited from the moment the last tour ended to get back out and meet more of our students in another part of the country. And so we will soon venture south and find out what it is like to ride 100 miles a day (for three days) in South and Central Florida. For those of you who are interested we have a few new riders (Carl and Melissa are joining Garth and me). And in keeping with THPL way, of practice, practice, practice, we have been training regularly to get ready for the Tour. Funny thing is that all of our training has been in the cool (cold) weather and we have spent 90% of our time riding up and down hills. From what I know Florida is flat and warm – I guess either this means we are over trained or will be in for a few surprises. Either way, as we all know, the tour is really about getting out to meet up with our students, to hear from them and to show them that we care about them and their studies. We are planning five “meet ups” where we will discuss a range of topics including talking about some of the investments that we are making to further bring the school to life - we are doing this with the Penn Foster community, our ever increasing use of social interaction tools like, Twitter, Facebook, email and chat and we have made a big push to capture lectures and create YouTube videos for learning We are also excited to introduce our students to the idea of THPL. We believe that there are many ideas and blog posts that have applicability to the challenges faces and lives of our students and we want to talk to everyone about how we can learn from each other to make our path forward, one that can indeed connect to the THPL principles in the areas of Life, Learning and Fitness. We often talk about the true reason to go to school is to get a job and the more well-rounded we are in these areas the better the chance we can get a job after school.
And so, we will ride again, and we will do the Bike tour again and again as we want our students to know that we are willing to put in the effort to meet them and show them that we, like they, will make commitments, make sacrifices, and go the extra mile to make sure that the task at hand is executed at the highest level of integrity. The great news for us is that THPL will go to another level as a result of the bike tour and we will all be better for it. We believe it is imperative that we meet our students, and over the next few weeks we will make sure we are ready to do so (by riding enough miles and doing the right level of prep and planning) – we are excited to see what we will find and we will write in this blog, about the journey on the way there, during the tour and afterwards. Stay tuned……
A good day - 9 mile run, 50 mile bike, Sally 3:26 + 20 seconds and 223 pushups on the 4:17 song.
Loving life after riding a lot of hills in Western PA
Ciao,
Joe