2008 ReDiscovery Tour
Day 36 - July 2 - Køge to Copenhagen
Today is the last day of long biking. And it was a
beautiful day. I am sure we have had days with as much
sunshine as this, but I don’t think we have had one
with the combination of complete sunshine, warm temperatures,
and a following wind for most of the day; a perfect biking day.
Today was special for another reason too. We had a fabulous
group of guest riders who rode with us virtually all day ;
business leaders from AmCham, the Danish American Business
Forum, Iron Mountain, and our Foreign Commercial Service at
the Embassy; Embassy Colleagues from America’s law
enforcement services; renowned Danish entertainer Lotte Heise,
my friend Henrik Ørnfeldt and his daughter Anne Sofie who is
Danish Junior Champion in squash, and our first two international
diplomats, Jan-Erik Enestam, Secretary General of the Nordic Council
Secretariat and Paula Blomster, his secretary, and wife of the Dean
of the Diplomatic Corps in Copenhagen, Dr. Ricardo José Alvarado
Noguera, the Nicaraguan Ambassador. The entire group
made it virtually all 66 km from Køge to the Copenhagen Gates.
Our day started in Køge on the Main Square where Team Rediscovery
gathered for press interviews and photos and the send off on our
36th Day. Our first ride was 25 km to Ishøj, on a great bike path
that gave me good opportunity to visit with all the guest riders,
one at a time. In Ishøj I was met by my old friend Seyit Özkan, the
Deputy Mayor who I had met soon after my arrival in Denmark, and
who hosted me at my first visit to a Mosque in Denmark, in the spring
of 2006. Seyit, Gunnar, Carol Anne and Charlotte gave me a wonderful
tour of three different integration projects in the
community. Ishøj is home to 21,000 people, mostly of non-Danish
ethnic descent. There are 81 different nationalities here, but
around 75% is of Turkish origin. At the local Youth Center I met
Ray who is an American who has been living in Denmark for 18 years
and runs a great program to provide young people a place to gather,
network on the internet, play games and do their homework after school
and on weekends. (Ray went to college at North Carolina, my home state.)
The Center reaches over 1,500 young people each year. I enjoyed playing
table tennis and foosball with them.
We stopped at a kindergarten and learned how children ages 4 to 6 are
nurtured in this community (EMU got some great photos). And we stopped
at the House for the Street Teams. These are 9 teams of men and women
who travel the neighborhood on bicycles serving as “ambassadors” for
the community, and intervening, providing guidance, and mentoring where
needed. It is a great program that was started about two years ago, and
Gunner believes they have some good leads for recruits for our Taking
the Lead summer camp program.
We then continued another 8 km or so to the Vestegnens Police Station,
one of the largest Police district headquarters in Denmark. We were
welcomed by Police Commissioner Henning Thiesen and his senior
colleagues. The station covers 11 cities, and its population is 25%
from ethnic backgrounds.
We were briefed on the very impressive new Command and Control Center
which is equipped with the state of the art GPS location technology and
provides instantaneous response. The commissioner and his colleagues
briefed me on the implementation of the recent Danish police reform
legislation, and their recruiting challenges. Unfortunately, though the
district is 25% ethnic background, only appx 2% of the police force is of
ethnic background, and only 10% are female. We spoke about the nature of
criminal activity in Denmark vs. America and I found it very interesting
that in Denmark, a nation of 5.6 million people, with 10,900 policemen,
last year police drew their guns only 300 times. (I expect the corresponding
per capita figure in the US is much higher.) The district experienced its
most spectacular crime a few months ago with the dramatic robbery of a
money storage warehouse where the heavily armed bandits escaped with a
reported 62 million Dkr. ($13 million).
I was honored at the Police Station to meet and be briefed by Sargeant
Michael Storgaard. Sargeant Storgaard just recently returned from duty in
Iraq where he was training Iraqi police for the Coalition. While the
Sargeant was in Iraq, he received word that his son Anders had been killed
by an IED while on patrol with the Danish Army in Helmand Province. I had
sent Michael and his wife a letter of condolence when I heard the news a few
months ago. I think the ReDiscovery Coin I gave Michael was the
most meaningful to me of any I have given on the Tour.
Our next stop after 7 km was the Idrættens Hus in Brøndby where the Danish
American Football Associaton was having a clinic with six coaches from
USA Football, teaching coaching strategies to sixty Danes who are coaching
American club football. It was great to see my friend Henrik Ørnstrøm,
who heads DAFF and who has done so much to bring football to Denmark, and
meet with the guys, share sports stories, and talk about our efforts to
bring the World Championships to Denmark in the summer of 2011, and to
bring an NFL Regular Season Game here soon thereafter.
After meeting with the coaches we rode a few km down the road to the
Avedøre Gymnaisum where the Danish Under 19 national American Football Team
was practicing for the European championships. I watched their drills with
three American coaches and was impressed with the team, and was pleased to
learn that three of their players are playing in high school in the US. I
also got to see Prime Minister Rasmussen’s nephew run a great play from
scrimmage for a touchdown. After the practice the Coach invited me to
address the squad, and then we ran three pass plays. I overthrew the first
receiver, who maybe didn’t know I could really throw the ball, but then
the next two were long passes for touchdowns. (How I wish my two brothers
had been there to see that! Ok, the defense may have let up a little bit,
but they were giving double-coverage!)
The last official stop of the day was the offices of Iron Mountain, where
I had had the pleasure of visiting a few months ago. Iron Mountain is an
American-owned company that is the market-leader in paper storage, and we
were all impressed with the huge stacks of boxes in their remarkable
secure and efficient warehouse. (Emu had fun riding on the forklift).
I had hoped the last 12 km of the day would allow for a vigorous ride
into Copenhagen, alas road construction, intersections and traffic
prevented us from getting much speed, but I was grateful for the slow
pace, because if I had not been going pretty slow, I am not sure I
would have seen the Harley Davidson Dealership passing us on the
opposite side of the road. “what an appropriate symbol for my last
stop on the last long day of the ReDiscovery Tour’, I thought, so we
came to a stop and dashed inside for the obligatory photo perched
in the saddle of a giant Harley ‘Hog”.
Riding into Town Hall Square was almost a little melancholy. The
weather was great but I was a little sad that the 2500 km ReDiscovery
Tour was just about over. When I pulled up with the other members of
the Team there was, I thought, only One Way to cure the melancholy …
To Tivoli we went!!
Everyone agreed it was a fitting way to end the day so we grabbed
tickets and hopped on the Red Demon. It was the first time for some,
so the experience, and the photos, were priceless. But there is only
one really fitting way for Team Rediscovery to end a day like this,
and it isn’t on a hair-raising Tivoli ride; it is to get … Ice Cream!
So we headed to our favorite place, Cold Stone Creamery, where I had
had the honor only a few months ago to cut the ribbon on this, the
first Cold Stone Creamery in Europe, and all agreed it was one of the
best decisions we have made in the past 36 days of Biking!
Next stop … July 4, and the Final Day of the ReDiscovery Tour.
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