More responses

After watching England save the first test of the ashes against Australia at the weekend I felt like this week could be a good one. Hopeful on replies from the 92 letters I sent out, I waited with baited breath for the postman to arrive on Monday. Sure enough, he brought with him a letter from Port Vale along with another from Tranmere Rovers.

Both were rejections unfortunately. Although Tranmere's letter held me in suspense for a little longer by asking me to call them on an 0871 number to be told the bad news. To give them their due, Dawn (the Tranmere secretary) was actually very polite and apologetic about it. It's a shame though because the weekend that we're in the North West, they have a game on the Saturday and with no staff in on the Sunday we have no room to manoeuvre. It'll have to be a quick stop and go.

Port Vale's response was focused entirely on the donation side of things. They are already supporting other charities and this is something we fully expected to encounter and fully accept. However, the letter did feel a little like a blanket response because it didn't mention anything about the request for a parking space, a mention in the programme or allowing access to have our photo taken inside the ground. Whilst I appreciate that football clubs are busy, recieving a blanket response is a pet hate of mine and after taking that into account I emailed Bill Lodey (the Port Vale contact) to ask about the other requests direct. It may still be that they cant help.

Spirits were raised however by an email this afternoon from Huddersfield Town. 'Linda' wrote to us confirming the date and approximate time we'll be reaching them and granting us access to the stadium for photo's ect. A fantastic response.

Nothing from the Premier League yet. I'll update again once i have more news.

Busy busy busy...

If it wasn't made obvious by the title, the next few weeks promise to be rather busy. We sent the letters off and already have a response from Dagenham and Redbridge who have very kindly agreed to meet us on the day and show us into the stadium where we can take photo's. We've also been offered 2 tickets for a home game to raffle in order to help raise money for the charity.
Terrific response and very very quick. Full credit to Terry Grover and Dagenham.

The main order of embroidered shirts arrived today. I'll be posting more pictures on here tonight or tomorrow. Looking forward to going home and opening them up. It's like christmas.

Done now. No going back..

Ok, i took the plunge yesterday and bought the iPhone 3gS. So far so good. Everything seems to be working absolutely perfectly, i've downloaded a load of apps that should be incredibly helpful for our journey and even managed to work out how to use most of the features entirely on my own (google).. I'll let you know of any future developments on the phone front but for now, all news is good news.

Incredible weekend of sport I had. Pool on Friday night and Saturday lunch time, Darts Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, cricket and obviously the Wimbledon finals as well. On that note, I felt for Andy Roddick on Sunday. He put up one hell of a fight. More so than anyone expected. I think he'd have beaten anyone else the way he was playing including Nadal but Federer just took everything he threw at him and kept giving it back. Full credit to surely the greatest tennis player of all time.

Also, the letters to all 92 teams went this morning. I expect replies to start flooding back in the next couple of weeks. Actually, I really dont know what to expect. Anything i get back as long as it's polite will be greatfully appreciated. I'll keep the blog updated with the responses.

No more thoughts...

The dillema of the past few months has revolved around the phone i'm going to upgrade to. This phone is ultimately going to responsible for getting my Dad and I to and around all the 92 football grounds and numerous other places during those 12 days in September. So it has to be the 'right' phone.

I've been torn between the new iPhone 3Gs and the Nokia N97. I hear nothing but good things about the iPhone but i've always been a bit of a Nokia fan so i ignored the reviews of the N97 with reports of sluggishness with the operating system and went and tried it out myself. I was impressed. And the salesman obviously works his pitch very well because by the end of the demonstration he was giving I was almost ready to buy it. That said, by the time i'd got back home i'd talked myself out of it again and I was back to square one.

Today, the iPhone is supposed to be back in stock. If it is, i'll get down there this afternoon and upgrade. There's reasons i shouldn't such as the camera only being a 3.2 megapixel but there's just so many reasons that counter act. The ability to utilise the bigger screen as a satnav will be very handy as will the apps to edit and amend dns and ftp data so i can update the website whilst we're away. I'm sure you can do this on the N97 but it's not easily accesible or easy to find out the details.

So by about 3 o'clock i'd expect to have my new phone.. But knowing my luck, they'll be sold out again.

Posing..

It was our pool league presentation night last night.. Thought i'd throw up a few pictures of me collecting trophies. The prize money can help pay for our tour!

The first interview..

Well, as per previous blogs, i spoke to a guy named Simon from Kent News a week or so ago. We discussed the tour, what it's for and why we're doing it, what i'm looking forward to and not along with a lot of other bits and pieces. The story was published today in the Your Medway paper and here's the link...

http://www.yourmedway.co.uk/kent-news/Gills-fans-to-undertake-mammoth-road-trip--newsinkent25822.aspx?news=local

Worries

It now appears that Pinnacle have pulled out of negotiations to buy Southampton Football Club. The group headed by Matt Le Tissier have withdrawn interest over an argument to do with contesting the 10 point deduction. With that, the club now have to find a new buyer by the end of the week otherwise it could well be Journey To The 91 after all. Of all the things to go wrong, a team dropping out of the league before we start our quest really would be catastrophic.

Here's hoping for a white knight...