Riding through the Alexander Valley outside of Healdsburg
From Saturday May 17th to Tuesday the 20th, 150 riders and over 25 support staff covered 250 miles on a two-wheeled sustainability conference. Michael Jacob, who raised over $3,100 to participate and to benefit The Climate Center, had the great fortune to ride, hang out and get to know the participants.
Michael shared his experience with us:
Over a New Belgium, I talked with Stuart, the executive director of Oakland-based Transform, a non-profit working to improve multi-modal transportation and urban housing to create more livable cities and what do you know?— help with global climate change. This one conversation gave me insight and inspiration in my work as chair of Sebastopol’s planning commission as we do battle with Cal Trans while updating our town’s general plan.
We live in a world of paradox where out-of-the box-thinking is required.
Yes, we’ve been irresponsibly trashing our planet, starting with the industrial revolution, and yet there are so many wonderful people doing great things to make our future more hopeful.
Life was not so complicated when my partner Denise and I did our first bike tour in 1990. The pace of change was not so well understood. Climate Change was not even on our horizon. The speed of human impacts on our environment didn’t just creep up, it seems to have swept upon us like a tsunami.
This ride provided much needed fuel to those who commit themselves to the environmental health of the planet and to social justice for all beings, both human and all those we share this blue planet with.
We live in a spectacular place. One we often take for granted, so I made it a point to witness and appreciate this unfolding landscape with the eyes of a newcomer.
To learn more about participating in an upcoming 2014 Climate Ride to benefit The Climate Center, please contact Kristin Berger, 707-525-1665, x123, kristin@theclimatecenter.org.
A crowded tent village
Old Town Sacramento where we gathered for the last mile as a group heading for the state capital
Not too tired for one last photo op.