I had an amazing ride over this past weekend in Mt. Vernon and cannot thank you enough for your support – both with your pocket books (I raised over $1100!) and your love. I rode with my bestie, Clint, and around mile marker 86 of day one he mentioned that he was mentally running through his list of supporters to make it the next six miles… I was counting your blessings at mile marker 30! ; )

I really could not have made it 141 miles over the weekend without you all. There was a moment (a LONG moment) the morning of day two that I really didn’t want to ride. But you did it, so I did it – and it turned out that I completely had a blast. Of all my bikey interests, these long rides are nearing the top as my favorite activity. We had amazing support (the Hell’s Angels brought me a new tube when I blew a tire) and our team captain, Cassandra Haavisto, made it super easy for us to get up there and take care of us for our ride.

Enjoy some photos of the weekend, and look forward to a sponsor thank you party (at our new house) on October 10th (invites to come soon).

<3

Team Bikin' & Smylin' for MS

Team captain Cass in fine form WHILe putting up with the boys

The route led to this amazing ped/bike path across the harbor and along the shoreline

No time for stopping, though

The terrain got rough at the halfway point on Whidbey Island

But we conquered

Deception Pass

After warming up, day two was amazing, and the 49 miles flew by

I took the rest stops seriously

We stuck with this paceline for most of the afternoon until some yahoo screamed at us from the side of the road. The line broke up when the four "dudes" broke up to investigate (drama on the Bike MS ride!)

We won!

We found a lovely little brewing company in Olympia to celebrate

Cheers to the 2009 Bike MS ride

Again, thank you, thank you, thank you for your support.

Late in coming, but wanted to show off some photos of our weekend in Montana. We had an amazing, relaxing, sun-filled holiday with family on Flathead Lake over the Fourth of July. Extended, too, because we got an extra day at the lake by driving all night to get there.

We had planned on stopping along the way up and at best get to my aunt and uncles at noon on Thursday, and I was feeling awfully tired around midnight as we passed through Coeur d’Alene, but getting cut off by a drunk driver on I-90 and a phone call with the Idaho State Highway Patrol got me amped to drive the whole way (and slowly from St. Regis, as the first mile we saw an elk on the side of the road).

Made it for the sunrise, which kicked off the weekend. Lots of fun in the sun on the water and with family. Photos say it all.

We had to wake up my aunt and uncle, but it seemed a small price to pay to be there early ; )

Sunrise over the Mission Mountains

All sorts of water toys were available for us to enjoy

The boys on their first sailboat ride

Me on my first sailboat ride

And the boys' first motor boat ride

Someone's all smiles

Okay, everyone's all smiles

And kisses

One of the few times I got to see Syd over the weekend as she was off with her cousins the entire time

But who says you need watercraft to enjoy the lake? (not me)

Playing with mud is pretty enjoyable, too

As is skippin' rocks... my favorite pastime on my favorite island (Wildhorse)

A waxing moon rising over Flathead Lake

A great weekend, but we had to say goodbye to Syd for over a month(!) as she went to spend time in Idaho Falls with her Grandma

After a week of work, work, work and no time to join any Pedapalooza rides, I got to end the two-and-a-half weeks of bikey fun with a bang. First I went on the XTREME SOPO with Heather Andrews in the morning, and then the kids and I checked out the Multnomah County Bike Fair in the afternoon. Two different experiences.

I was lured to my morning ride by its announcement on the Shift calendar:

“Contrary to popular belief, you won’t fall off the edge of the world if you bike past SE 52nd and Powell. Join a real live native of XTREME SOPO on a tour of her neighborhood! You’ll gasp when you see the army of big-ass pickup trucks! Your spine will tingle to behold the church that looks like a bowling alley! Women will faint at the lack of sidewalks! Folks, this ride is XTREME… you can bring the whole saddle of your bike, BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EDGE!!!!”

Engaging the anthropological tools I’d recently acquired from my trip back to school, I quickly assessed that I should go dressed as one of the natives to truly embrace the experience.

I'm (almost) gangtsaVegan

As the mile markers to Milwaukie ticked closer and closer, it became obvious that to truly embrace the experience, all one needed was a pickup truck. Being on a bike, I was as out of place as a vibrator in church, and those truckers kept letting me know with their stomach-quaking revving of their engines and passing me with three inches to spare. THANKS RECENTLY ACQUIRED ANTHROPOLOGICAL SKILLS!

But safety comes in numbers, and catching up with others from my ride gave me the freedom to peruse the unkempt neighborhoods of these vast car clans without fear of harm. Even crossing 82nd, the Avenue of Roses, (twice!) was breezey compared to my attempts at crossing Powell on my own. Many people on bikes – it’s why I’m loving Pedalpalooza.

Abandoned shopping carts are re-purposed as convenient banana bread holders in XTREME SOPO.

I also love the ride leaders. Each unique in his/her own way, but always attentive to showing their “followers” a good time. Not only was Heather full of local knowledge, she was fluent in the local language – Clakimitacky – and was able to keep the crowds of gaukers at bay. She also she baked us banana bread and we ended the ride with her homemade ice cream at the park (including a vegan version).

Kelly Elementary Community SUN School, part of "Kelly Grow" - a partnership with the CCC, BTA, Growing Gardens, and Community Health Partnerships.

The bridge to nowhere, just off the Springwater Trail

The edge! Sidewalks and sewers are cursed south of the Portland line

The abundance of lush patio furniture scattered throughout the territory provide a welcome respite from the grueling hours spent on the asphalt.

For a completely different Pedalpalooza experience, the kids and I ventured into inner southeast Portland for the Multnomah County Bike Fair. It may have been that I was overheated, it may have been that tracking three kids in any crowd under any circumstance is always a chore, or it may have been watching a young bohemian crack his melon open on the asphalt that made MCBF the least enjoyable event of Pedalpalooza (okay, it was watching someone lose concious that did it).

We made it to the show at the start of “chicken jousting,” where contestants on a mini bike, with someone on their shoulders, face off against an equally crazy pair… with lances. Sounds like “fun,” and like ancient Romans in the Coliseum, I watched with drool dripping from my mouth, Pavlovian style.  The dude on the left didn’t wear a helmet, and we left after that.

Ouch

EMT to victim... "So let me get this straight - you were on someone's shoulders, who was on a bike, and you weren't wearing a helmet?"

Actually, we didn’t leave right away. MCBF redeemed itself (a bit) as we stayed to watch the always lovely “Sprokettes,” and also ran into Tre Arrow (the second time in 48 hours) and Clinty (the second time in a week – a record for us). Look for Clinty in the background of all the Sprokette picts.

Tre Arrow

We have been having a great time at this year’s Pedalpalooza. Thought I’d share our rides and some photos with you. There is still another week, including tomorrow’s North Portland edition of  Sunday Parkways (on Father’s Day, no less… in honor of me ; )

We started Pedalpalooza off with the kickoff parade, which the kids joined and loved, especially as we went through their school neighborhood and got to see their friends.

Around and around and around Ladd's Addition

Drew turning onto Hawthorne

Following the crowd through Sunnyside Neighborhood

A little spring color

Enjoyed racing, tasty beverages, and community at Cirque de Cycling on Mississippi.

Too fast and too close for me

Jonathan outscooping us all

Notice the contrast in these two modes of travel

Wings are better

Style points

Participated in Portland’s edition of the World Naked Bike Ride.

Clinty pre-funk

The best photo I got... sorry folks

I bought new socks for the occasion

Learned the history and reasoning of Portland street names (rich white male tugboat/steamboat captains, developers, and bankers… mostly) on the Dekum to Woodstock ride.

Carl Larson and Shawn Granton share a bike and a megaphone to lead the ride

And got JC up on a bike that fits him.

He is so much more comfortable now

Then saw the craziest thing in the Willamette. Pedalpalooza irony… (nice photo, though)

Don't know how I feel about "The World"... makes me a little testy.

Syd was feeling pretty left out last month when the boys had their 15 minutes of fame, so when I was looking for an image for a Safe Routes to School National Conference advertisement that will be running in the Pedapalooza calendar in the Portland Mercury, she immediately came to mind.

Pretty damn cute, eh?

Look for it in the June 11th, 2009 edition of the Mercury.

Paul Hawken addressed University of Portland’s graduating class earlier this month. It’s worth reading every word. An excerpt [full copy below]:

“YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.”

–

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it is doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Another Earth Day, and… whatevs…

But I always like the thoughts that come from Worldchanging.com, and I really appreciate their recent article Earth Day: 10 Big, Really Hard Things We Can Do to Save the Planet. Here’s their list (comments in parenthesis are mine):

1. Eliminate nuclear weapons
2. Stabilize the bottom billion (people – not dollars you ‘bad economy’ worrier, you)
3. Create a globally transparent society (man I wish government would truly embrace the power of web 2.0 – could be true democracy)
4. Be prepared, globally (um, be prepared locally, too)
5. Empower women
6. Enable a future forward diet (eat local)
7. Document all life
8. Negotiate an effective climate treaty
9. Build bright green cities
10. Build no new highways (and NO CRC ; )
11. (Ride your bike)

Spring is here, a time of renewal – the flowers, the warmth, the baby raccoons eating your kids’ Easter eggs at one in the morning (true story!) – but most telling for me is the creative dissent that pops up in Portland, seemingly stronger in spring.

Had to laugh at this one. McDonald’s trying to shoulder its way into Stumptown, and the hipsters not having it.

Then the kids and I joined in the fun at the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) protest on the waterfront. My ‘demonically adorable‘ boys even made the local press. I’m so proud… and only a little bit embarrassed.

A couple of elders have smirked at my fathering duties, but man(!), the one thing I know about stopping corporatocracy and explosive growth, is that it is our kids‘ fight.  Today’s recession is rough, but if we double/triple/quadruple our debt, can you even imagine  what type of world they will live in…?

Ah, the text generation...

We all need to stand up and be heard. And being creative helps (I hope ; )

Oops… sorta slipped on the “blog once a day” theme I had going. As it turns out, we’re currently back in Portland. I’ll catch you up in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, here are some images from our time in Arches National Park and Moab, Utah.

Oh, and before the images, a side-note… I haven’t always been a big fan of Utah, especially over the last couple of years, but “SO UT” (as I call it) has changed my perception (and Grace’s as well). OMG… take your breath away beautiful.

Devil's Garden

Much of our time in Arches was spent hiking through Devil’s Garden. About a mile into our hike on a well-marked trail, we found a sign that said “primitive trail-rough terrain” and figured that it sounded adventurous,  so we took it.

On belay!

This picture needs no caption ; )

Grace wisely decides not to run up slickrock as fast as one can at 4000 feet above sea level. But though she didn't lose her lunch, she missed the view.

I'm on top of the world!

Grace fell, but she was okay. She totally drove fine the rest of the way home except that she has no memory of driving.

Landscape Arch

Turret Arch

A well deserved reward after our hike.

The beer was NOT up to Portland standards, though.

Was a long day traveling, but most of it was spent touring Mesa Verde in southern Colorado. The cliff dwellings were spectacular, and I couldn’t help feeling a mix of “I could totally live like this…” and “there’s no way in hell I could live like this.” Enjoy the picts.

View of the Spruce Tree House cliff dwelling

The Spruce Tree House was the one cliff dwelling we got to explore

Grace getting caught sneaking inside

Touring the deep

Cutie patuties

Square Tower House (named so because of the square tower in the middle ; )

Cliff Palace - you can tour this, but not in the off-season

On the road to Red Cliffs Lodge, where we're staying in Moab