Begin Already

So, I rode about 3000 miles on a bike ride. I had originally meant to ride the full 3831 miles - starting in Seattle WA., and ending in Jersey City NJ. I really did. However I ended up not riding the full 3,838 miles. I did accomplish what I intended to accomplish. And according to everyone who hears about the ride, it was a pretty major accomplishment - full ride or no. 3000 miles is nothing to sneeze at yet even now, a full two months since the end of the ride, it hasn't really hit me. I rode my bike, across almost the full country - with a left turn into Canada. I also didn't raise the full $10,000.00 I had hoped to. The total I did raise was just over $8000.00. That's not bad either considering the most money I ever raised in the name of fund-raising was $100.00 in 6th grade. The purpose of that money making event was to sell space in the 1970 year book and the class that raised the most contributions would earn a pizza party. Was in 1970 or '73? I can't remember actually so I might have been in 8th grade but the point is - the thought of raising enough to help our class have a pizza party generated enough effort to actually accomplish that goal. Of course, I didn't do it on my own. I had plenty of help in that mom & dad were teachers in the school district and of course teachers colleagues are great marks to hit up since it's only fair. School employees are almost a guaranteed source of fundraising income since everyone turns to each other for help in this gig. A colleague's kid has to raise money for Girl Scouts and someone else for the ball team so in comes a TON of candy to be distributed and paid for so the machine stays well oiled since we all know that "what goes around, comes around". What comes around is an overdose of sugar and calories and thank goodness that in IS 7 and surrounding schools there were enough stairs to climb throughout the day so that if you planned right, a teacher or aide could get enough exercise to burn off oh say maybe a bag of MnMs.

Anyway - thanks to Mom & Dad and our neighbors at home, some relatives and maybe even some local people that I didn't really know but were acquainted with paid for space in the Elias Bernstein Jr. High School (aka I.S. 7 - not sure why), year book of 1970, or maybe it was 1973 and our class had a pizza party. Funny that it was the promise of food which inspired me as my next major fund-raising effort was to address the issue of not enough food. While I had given some dollars here and some other dollars there throughout the year for poverty related issues, I had never taken on a project of this magnitude. And what was that you ask? It was making a commitment to ride in the largest cross country bike tour ever. The purpose of the ride was to raise funds and awareness of poverty related issues. It was to get people thinking about the sytem which allows people to go hungry and not have a place to sleep - and not be able to work while needing to pay for medical care for self and family. This is a situation which occurs worldwide: in the streets of Haiti and Calcutta, in all the continents of all the world, including in our own back yards. Families known and unknown to us face conditions daily, hourly which many more of us have an option not to address. But we are all called to address the needs of sisters and brothers everywhere - be we Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddist, or any of the other faith systems which help us make sense of this world. And knowing a couple of self-acknowledged atheists, I can say that they too feel a sense of responsibility for the others in this creation who for any number of reasons are not living in a state of even minimal well-being. Of course it would be naive to say that everyone, everywhere cares enough about others to make the necessary changes which would afford everyone access to the necessities of life but this doesn't stop the rest of us from doing what we can to see that change. "Us" being anyone who does whatever they can, in their place in the world, no matter how large or small. That's about the most I like to do with the "us" and "them" dichotomy. Not that I want to lead you to think that I don't appreciate difference. As a matter of fact, I think in our effort to cement together a sense of unity, we minimize, diminish even the notion that we are different, in so many ways from one another. We are both. There seems to be a trend toward ignoring those things that make up our character, our view points, our ways of perceving things in the world. As if we could. As the old line says, if we were all alike, it would be a pretty boring cookie cutter kind of world. But because being different from others has led to such violent and disastrous tendencies, instead of being able to acknowledge and appreciate them, no one wants to point them out. Skin color, ethnicity, cultural tradition and life experience for everyone in this world entails numerous marks of different. It SHOULDN'T MATTER. Sadly, it does. So, intead of being able to address how being different from someone else has led to looking at life a certain way, we just say, "oh, underneath we're really all the same." Well, that's not exactly true, even in individuals who grow up in the same household never mind the same neighborhood. Perhaps instead of saying "we're all the same", we could say, "some of me is different, my hair, my color, my faith tradition but I care about what school my kids are going to or I care that my kids have enough to eat and if you care about those things then we have something in common." Anyway, my concern with the concepts of "us" and "them" is the way it leads to one individual thinking that (s)he has a right to things that another person doesn't. Or the things that make us different lead one group of people to oppress and diminish another group merely for differences in whatever.
"Us" and "them." It often leads to a lot of conflict. It doesn't even have to be a major issue.
Jocks/brains! Druggies/nerds! Stoners/surfers! Oh no - heaven forbid some of us don't do things the way some others of us do. Some of us don't look like others. Some of us don't do as well at whatever as others. Why should it matter? It shouldn't except that it does.

The idea of the ride grew out of members of the Christian Reformed Church in Canada marking a major anniversary 3 years ago. That ride took place within the Canadian borders and about 65 bikers rode. It went ten and a half weeks with the money raised being used to fund new church starts within the CRC. It was successful and enjoyable and enough people thought it was such a good idea that they looked for another opportunity to ride again. Three years and a lot of planning later, the "Sea To Sea Bike Tour- Biking to End the Cycle of Poverty" came together and on Monday, June 30th 144 riders with about 25 support staff left the park at Puget Sound heading east. I am still amazed that I even considered participating in the ride never mind having completed 7/9ths of it. But it made sense for me at the time and I have no regrets about joining the ride and spending a good portion of the summer of 2008 on my butt, on a saddle, (bike seat but bikers call it a saddle - based on the fact that when the bike was first developed, it was made so that riders would throw their right leg over the bike in the same way horse riders would mount a horse). I have no regrets that I huffed and puffed my way up 3,000 mile "inclines". Or that I slept in a tent almost every night but would accept an invitation to sleep in someone's home almost any chance I could. Nor do I regret getting off the saddle and hitching a ride with our support staff in one of the vehicles designated for the purpose of rescuing injured or just plain ol' worn out riders. Had I not been able to take a break as needed, I don't think I would have been able to keep myself going when the going got tough. Although I also know that there was a fair measure of the divine at work keeping my two little legs pedaling when all I really wanted to do was throw myself off of the bike and just lay down out in the field next to whatever road I was on. This was work. Riding a bike when you are a kid is fun. It's a means to get you from point A to point B. Or to show off. But getting from point A to point B out on this ride was more than just traveling for traveling's sake. It was to help others. It was to challenge self. It was to see how a community (in this case, of faith) can maintain their principles and good humor while being unable to avoid the natural pitfalls of spending a lot of time together in somewhat pared down circumstances. We did it even though there was the occasional stepping on of toes. Hey, 150 to 200 people spending pretty much 24/7 for 9 weeks is going to cause some ruffled feathers. But we got through it because no matter what our differences were, we were committed to the same principle, the same cause, - living out our love of others. And that in the end was all that mattered.