River Forester rides Route 66 for charity

Ed Green marks the halfway point of his journey to raise funds for assisting Parkinson’s sufferers. | Provided photo

Provided photo

Edward Green is more than halfway home on a 2,451-plus mile trip that has become one of the most interesting adventures of his life.

The 53-year-old River Forest resident is bicycling the entire length of Route 66 — and then some — to raise money for the Davis Phinney Foundation, an organization that helps people living with Parkinson’s take more control of managing their disease. 

Green is riding in honor of his sister, Marian, has been living with Parkinson’s for more than 10 years. As of Monday, he had raised a little more than $23,000.

“It feels really good doing the ride for myself and raise money for a good cause,” said Green, the owner of a medical services company in Chicago. “This has been special, a neat experience, an eye-opener.”

Green started out on Santa Monica, California’s pier on April 24 with a 10-pound pack containing repair gear, spare inner tubes, clothes and accessories.

As of Sunday, May 15, he had gotten to Tulsa, Oklahoma. He usually rides around 60 miles a day, but the number of miles he actually goes each day depends on a variety of factors – from the headwinds, weather, the terrain and how he feels to whether he has to ride longer to find a town with a hotel (as was the case in the Mojave Desert in California.) Much of the time he sticks to Route 66; in some instances he rides on I-40, which runs parallel. 

Much of the scenery he has found rather bleak, and he’s had more challenges with headwinds than with bike mishaps. In Texas, the rear derailleur had to be repaired; in Oklahoma City, a bike cable had to be readjusted – but both repairs were done for free. 

The New Mexico part of the route was the most challenging, he said, but it also provided the most scenic part of the trip so far, especially the area from Albuquerque to Santa Fe with its rolling hills. He is expecting to see the scenery change through the rest of the trip.

“Now it’ll be green, there’ll be trees, water and foliage,” he said.

Green said that living his whole life in the Midwest he’d never expected to see the kind of country he had. It’d been an eye-opener, a real slice of Americana, including small towns and the Route 66 Car Museum in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. 

He ate Elvis’ favorite pie (chocolate cream with peanut butter and banana) at the MidPoint Café in Adrian, Texas.  

He’s come across some interesting people along the way. He met people from Germany and the Netherlands who were driving the route. He spoke with guys from Japan who were riding and aided a Korean man by giving him a spare inner tube. 

And he found the people living in the towns along the route some of the nicest, most generous people he’d ever met. 

At Russell’s Truck and Travel Center, an elderly man paid for his oatmeal and coffee when he learned what he was riding for. At the Rock Café in Stroud, Oklahoma, he mentioned to a waitress why he was riding. 

“These guys in the corner must have listened to what I told her and they paid my bill,” Green said.

An athlete who exchanged running shoes for a cycle after a double hip replacement eight years ago, Green initially wanted to do a fundraising ride not for Phinney’s foundation, but for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which raises money to find a cure for Parkinson’s.

Then last summer he took part in a cycling event sponsored by Phinney’s foundation and learned about the Victory Summit, an event offered around the world for free for people living with Parkinson’s, caregivers and family members. 

When he and his sister attended a summit in San Antonio in November 2015 he had an opportunity to sit down with Phinney and his wife, Connie Carpenter Phinney, also a cyclist. 

That tied it altogether for him, Green said. And he decided to ride for Phinney’s foundation. 

“They are heroes,” Green said.

He started thinking about making this adventure on a bike when he turned 60 or 65, “when I retired, sometime down the road,” Green said. 

Green said he had seen some close friends, people who were younger than he was become ill. So he decided at this point to take off a month now and do something like this and come back home with batteries recharged. 

He looks to be home before Memorial Day weekend and before June 1 when his son graduates from Roosevelt Middle School. 

“I’ll research the corner where Route 66 begins and hopefully meet my family downtown,” Green said. “I’ll have breakfast with the family, shower and head home.”

If you’d like to donate, you can do so online at my.davisphinneyfoundation.org/route66edward.