Photo by Kathy Quirk

Andy Dressl andAnne Banda on their bicycle built for a two-week ride around Lake Michigan.

Lots of folks ride around Milwaukee’s lakefront on summer days. Anne Banda and Andy Dressel are biking around the lake – Lake Michigan, that is –on a tandem bike.

Banda, a regular biker who’s never done a lengthy tour before, decided to take the 850-mile, 10-day ride—June 25 to July 4—to raise money for the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s two community nursing centers. She is the administrative director of the Institute for Urban Health Partnerships, which coordinates a number of College of Nursing education, research and service experiences, including the nursing centers.

The centers, located at the Silver Spring Community Center and the House of Peace, provide primary and preventive care services to uninsured and underinsured clients. Banda says her interest in doing the tour grew out of her love of biking and an opportunity to test out the “Firstgiving” website as way of raising money for a good cause. “The community nursing centers are doing great work in reducing health disparities,” she says. The centers are supported through grants and donations. Banda is aiming to raise $2,000 or more through her bike ride.

She and Dressel will start from Shorewood and ride counterclockwise around the lake. “We wanted to get Chicago out of the way first,” says Banda. They figure they’ll ride about five to five-and-a-half hours a day at approximately18 miles an hour to achieve the 100-mile daily total, leaving some time for sightseeing. They’re hoping to take a day off during the trip to visit Mackinac Island, says Banda.

Banda, who is also director of the College of Nursing’s Center for Cultural Diversity and Global Health, has been riding for more than 10 years. She’s competed in races, including Ironman 2008, which Dressel also completed, but hasn’t done a long tour.

She and Dressel are training for the Lake Michigan tour on their individual bikes, riding the 75-mile route in the recent Miller Lite Ride for the Arts and entered in the June 20 Horribly Hilly Hundreds. She’s also continuing her regular triathlon training with biking, swimming and weight work. 

“We’re not really doing anything special to ramp up for the Lake Michigan ride,” says Banda, “but right now we feel fit to go…remind me I said that when I’m three days into the ride.”

Banda and Dressel have ridden tandem for long distances previously. “Our first ride on the tandem was August 2007, when we did the Cream City Century ride (100 miles). We figured if we survived that for our first ride together on the tandem, we could survive anything,” says Banda. They averaged 20 miles per hour on that ride, putting them with the leaders, she adds.

Dressel, a teaching assistant who’s in the UWM engineering doctoral program, is an experienced tour rider. So he’ll help with the logistics involved in biking approximately 100 miles a day and camping out, says Banda. “He’s had experience with schlepping all the stuff you need when you’re on a bike tour.”

The fund-raising website for Banda’s tour is at firstgiving.com/annebanda.