DC, here we come! (September 30, 2009)

Finally, the last day had arrived. Lots of mixed feelings. Sad because it was the final day with all those incredible riders, many of which I am sure that I will keep in touch with. But very excited to be heading towards the Capitol, alongside so many committed people for a cause that is deep in my heart - Climate Change is real and we cannot afford to delay action.

For the first time we were really against the clock. We needed to be in Georgetown (downtown DC) by 3:15PM, so I finally managed to leave early. This time we left at 7:30AM.

Mike Tidwell who is the founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network joined us for the final ride. In this picture he is (standing second from right to left, next to me) together with several of the DC Metropolitan Area Climate Riders, just before taking off.

Two true climate riders. Do you see their tattoos? just in case they read, "I ride for the Climate"We reached the 300 MILES while on the Crescent trail in DC! The final number of miles was aprox. 310. A deserved stop and celebration. Once we had arrived in Georgewtown, I had been told that several embassies would join the rally to the Capitol. I was thrilled to see that the Chilean Embassy was one of those. Here its me with several of the Chilean representatives. And this is Cristian Campos (a very well known soup opera actor), who is the cultural attache. Everything was set for us to leave to the Capitol when a 10 minute thunderstorm poured down. But after that, the sun was out there again and Ooops.. flat tire!!! yes, just 1 minute before the time set for departure, I realized that my front tire was flat. Thanks Daniel, Miguelito and Uwe to come to my rescue!

I am so happy to say that on our way to the Capitol, Daniel and I were joined by three of our friends and colleagues: Adriana, Angelica and Seraphine (from left to right).

So here we were, the famous Cycle and ReCycle team at the Capitol. Happy, excited, and clearly (at least in my case) stronger that ever -pure adrenaline.So, is this the end of the story? some may think that yes, some might think that no. I agree with the second group. These five days on bike were the beginning of a story in which all of us need to be part of. Grassroot movements are the base for generating change, especially in the US. Let's all together continue fighting and doing the best we can to protect our planet, and ALL who live on it. DON'T GIVE UP!!!

So what is next? Just see below

Hills and Head-Wind: unperfect but memorable combination! (September 29, 2009)

Ready to roll on our fourth day at Climate Ride! Weather forecast: wind, wind and head-wind. Anything else? yes, a few hills on the way.

Instructions: Leave the camp site, turn left and there you will find your first hill of the day -No Mercy.

!Share the Road!

Maryland here we are (fourth state in our route). Beautiful day, but very windy, what made it a very challenging day. But the positive spirit and, I bet all the training too, helped me make every single hill on my bike, pedal after pedal, not one foot on the floor.

We hade been told that the last challenging hill was just a couple of miles before our destination, so here we are, a couple of miles just before our destination, making any excuse to delay facing that final hill. After 40 minutes relaxing on this spot, we went for it, and we did it! Our reward, no more camping, a hotel instead. Can you believe? a room for yourself (well we share it with Mariasol), a bed for yoursel (I did not share it with anyone), and best of all, dry towels (my towel was still soaking wet from the first night), and even better, the place was fully organic, growing lots of what they served.

That night the presentations included a speech by the Danish Ambassador, who join us in the last two days of the ride. Do you see me? I am seated, second from left to right. It was followed by the presentation by a bicyle culture consultant "Copenhagenize Consulting"(as you can see you can always find your niche!), and let me tell you that I loved that presentation. If you want to promote the use of bicycles were you live or anywhere else, please consider consulting with him.

And finally, I was able to enjoy a glass of red wine during our last night while we were again delighted by the Salt Lake Licks beside a camp-fire.

Windy Lancaster County- Pennsylvania (September 28, 2009))

The beginning of our third day. Finally no more rain, but some gusty winds would come along our way. This is a picture of our second night camp site (YMCA). No more wet tent, especially after I used my towel to dry it inside.

Here we go along some nice tree corridors. Parts of the route were simply gorgeous. Some of the folks in the back included Mariasol, Susan and Uwe, with whom I rode a nice chunck of the whole ride.Keep pedaling!!!

Although it doesn't seems like, this was a very tiring day because of the wind. The wind was hitting us on the side, so you would feel the bicycle shaking a lot, and therefore I would hold the bicyle very tight. My back suffered a lot that day, but this night, for a change, we had the opportunity to chose between camping or sleeping in a cabin.

Guess what I chose?

Dirty? YES, some rain did come our way also this day, altough very little compared with the previous day. But, by now we had arrived to our third night stop, and my next personal stop was the shower.

That night more amazing presentations. The 17,000 miles bicyle trip of Cristine in Latin America. The rowing adventures of Roz Savage across oceans to raise awareness on environmental issues, and the presentation of the "No Impact Man" movie (BTW, I did not watch it because I was dead tired, but many told me that it was great). And by the way, the no impact man was also riding with us. To see more about this documentary check the following link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fITT6rVPds

Singing and pedaling in the Rain (September 27, 2009)

So after our first night camping with non-stoppable rain, we took off, and the rain continue all throughout the day. Our destination: Valley Forge in Pennsylvania (the third state in our tour).

At least I was well prepared, look at my cool outfit, although some of my fellow riders told me that I looked like one of this person who works processing fish. Well, it doesn't matter, at least it kept me dry, or at least it did, while I was wearing it (with the exception of my shoes that were like swimming pools because I had forgotten my shoe covers). The sky was turning blue, and suddenly some black clouds made there way towards where we were and in a matter of less than a second, a huge storm poured down. This time I did get wet because I had taken off my cool jacket.

This is a nice view of the Valley Forge. And this are Tom (Tomás) and Michael (Miguelito) with whom we spent most part of the day riding and laughing. Together we had the chance of meeting some interesting folks (e.g., a man who was working to make his town as bike-frienly as possible, and a true unbeliever of climate change who thought of us as Al Gore's robots, and with whom unfortunately we could not dialogue).

That night we saw some amazing presentations, but there was one in particular that really caught my eye. David Kroodsma, one of our fellow Climate Riders and with whom I had the pleasure to ride during this second day, had riden 21,000 miles across 16 countries in Nortn and South America to spread a message to fight global warming. Please check a video about his journey (his trip included my home country Chile) in the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSiU7lUeQYo&feature=player_embedded

First day, full of good Karma! (September 26, 2009)

So, here we are having breakfast just before goint to Central Park.

Chilly morning but super excited. First stop, CBS Plaza in the corner of Central Park to appear in the CBS early morning show.

Then going down on fifth avenue towards Pier 11, where we would take a ferry to New Jersey (the secong state in our tour).

What a cute helmet by the way! (this is Jenny)

Oh!!! where is my wallet? I had lost my wallet (well a ziplok bag with my credit, ATM, insurance card, driving license, and almost US$400 cash were gone). It was gone from my bicycle bag, I though I was robbed, so of course I had to cancel everything (and by the way, this was the second time in my life and in the same month that I had lost my wallet and cancelled credit cards).

Always be positive! I really had good karma, because in the ferry, I found out that someone had called Geraldine (one of Climate Ride co-founders) to let her now that he had found my wallet, including all the cash I had in it.

I had this smile even before I found out that my wallet had been found

Once in NJ, we continue our ride. First night stop: camping in the YMCA in Princeton, next to Princeton University. Shower, dinner, mingling with new folks, and lots of fun presentation on climate change, good music, and of course an end of nigh visit to one of the few bars in downtown Princeton.

What a night! Lessons learnt: get a good tent for Climate Ride. It rained the whole night, and the tent got wet. Only thanks to my super sleeping bag I did not get wet. However, and thanks to all of you I won the fourth prize for fundraising: a much better tent that will be used in my next Climate Ride.

What a start!

It has been seven years since we moved out of NY, but we still have some very good friends living there and Friday morning was a great opportunity to catch up with my friend Valeria.
The inauguration of Climate Ride would be that day in the afternoon and I was getting more excited by the minute. The first one to arrive in NY that afternoon was Daniel. Walking, having lunch and visiting a couple of sports stores to look for the last gadgets/gear we were missing were some of the afternoon activities. Amazingly, especially given the number of millions that live in the City, the world is small enough that we bumpt into Susan on her way to ride in Central Park.
The time had arrived! we walked to Central park Zoo with the three bycicles (thanks Daniel for carrying Mariasol's bicycle), we registered, received out jerseys, shorts, signed a bunch of papers, and the mingling started soon after.
My dream was coming true, I knew why I was there, how important is climate change and I really felt proud and thankful to all of you that helped me making this dream come true; hearing the words of the different speakers only made this feeling stronger; especially when on the back you could see the sea lions in the open pool.
The night finished with several of us in an Italian restaurant, followed by a deep sleep before getting up at early hours the next morning. We needed to be back at Central Park Zoo by 7:15AM.

Here we come Big Apple!

Given that I did not have the time to update the blog day by day while riding on Climate Ride, the idea is that I will post a brief summary of each day in a separate post. It was a great experience that I wish everyone of you could also live it.

Well, on thursday September 23 we drove to New York with Susan Stillman (a climate ride friend and neighbor). It was a nice ride, especially given that I was the co-pilot and that I managed to sleep for a while (packing kept me awoken until 2AM the night before, and I literally escaped from the office to leave to NY). The ride took us by some back roads in Pennsylvania (maybe some of those that we rode on some days later), after we missed the entrance to the NJ Turnpike; but the co-pilot with the help of a map was able to get us back on track.





After a lovely dinner at Abra (my favorite greek restaurant in NY) together with Costas and Athos (thanks Athos and Efi for your hospitality!), I went directly to bed. The rest of the team and fellow Climate Riders would arrive the next day and the show would begin.

Hills and more hills

What a day! Hills and wins, the perfect combination for a nice ride on our fourth day on Climate Ride.
Sorry that I had not post anything on the blog before since we started, but it has been busy. Riding all day long, enjoying the placed we ride through, arriving just in time for dinner (most of the times late in reality), showering (extremely important giving the conditions in which we arrived everyday), listening to different presentation, mingling with fellow Climate Riders, and after that, simply desire to go to bed.
I promise that this coming weekend I will be posting summaries of every day together with some georgeous pictures. For now, go to Climateridelive.org, which is updated everyday and it has some wonderful pictures.
And remember please join us tomorrow on the Rally to Capitol Hill.
Bicycle Rally to the Capitol
Join Climate Ride in DC!!!
Location:Meet at Thompson Boat Center (3:15) or West Lawn of US Capitol (3:45)
Time:3:15PM Wednesday, September 30th

Once upon a time.....

In reality the once upon a time was not so long ago. It all started on July 26, 2009, when I registered to participate in Climate Ride 2009.

Raising enough funds to be able to participate looked difficult; I had never done it before. But the climate change cause was so deep into my heart, that I just pressed the "enter" button (after paying aU$100 fee) and here I am.

Raising awareness on climate change on my bicycle was a win-win for me. And after 59 days, I can only say Thank You!. Thanks for becoming part of this initiative, thanks for the great emails and messages full of wondeful wishes and positive energy, and thanks also to those that could contribute to the fundraising campaign, making climate ride a reality for me.

Special thank you to Donna Manz, a great journalist from my local newspaper who got interested in this adventure and wrote a very nice article about the ride and how I was connecting my two passions (protecting the planet and my bicycle) for a cause, helping spread the word in my community. You can see the article on page 4 in the following link
http://connectionarchives.com/PDF/2009/081909/Vienna.pdf






The ride is soon to start, only 3 days left, and my excitement is increasing by the minute.



Given that I just started this blog, I want to share with you a brief summary of what has happened in the last 59 days. I promise to keep posting messages from the road, so keep checking the blog.

Cycle and ReCycle:
This is my team's name. Of course after registering I looked around and convinced some of my friends to join me in this super adventure; however, to be honest, some of them were so motivated that very little or no convincing was necessary at all, and in the process we also made a new friend. So who are we? (i) Mariasol, my very good friend and bike pal from Ecuador, with whom I ride every weekend; (ii) Daniel, my colleague and true believer on climate change, and very good friend from Spain, and (iii) Uwe, a German colleague from the World Bank who I am so happy of having met through Climate Ride, and let me not forget to mention, an amazing cyclist.

Here is a picture of the four of us.

Fundraising:
Oh, what an amazing experience! So far, U$5,020...wow...and only thanks to you all!!!

I got in touch with everyone, and by that, I really mean everyone, and that was great. I touch base with so many of you from whom I had not heard in ages. School mates, friends from the university in Chile and USA, friends in Greece, family and friends spread all over the planet, fellow parents, colleagues from past and present jobs, etc, etc, etc.................., and the best that I got from this..........is the unbelievable amount of positive energy that I received and that will be more than enough to fuel the 300 miles from NY to DC.

Just for you to remember, here is the link to my fundraising site. Additional donations are always welcome, they are worth the cause, but you can also reserve them for 2010 Climate Ride which will take place in California in May....because yes, you guessed right, I have all the intention to participate in that one also. Who wouldn't like to bike in California's wine region?

http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?EventID=26781&LangPref=en-CA&RegistrationID=698307

Training
It has been lots of fun and in the process I have burnt many calories! To all of you who are planning to start on a diet, don't do it, keep eating as much as you want, but start riding a bicycle instead; environmentally friendly and it works!

In addition to my daily commute of 15.4 miles each way to and from work (measured with my new bike computer), and my 30-40 mile ride on the weekends, I added some good number of miles and some of them in very exotic places.

Let's start with Germany this summer. It was an adventure because the ride took me across several small towns, and you can guess that given my lack of German (which I expect to improve once we move to Switzerland; if this is news for you, I'll let you know more about it later), and the somehow complicated names of the streets and towns.....yes, again you guessed it right, I got lost. But sign language is useful, and I got back home safe and sound.

Let's continue with Galapagos. Yes, I went on holidays to Galapagos (Isabela's island) and did some mountain bike there with Mariasol. It was not the longest of the rides, but it was in an amazing environment, plus we went with other 7 friends, including our own Galapagos tour guide.

Mountain bike in Quito. This was longer that the Galapagos ride, the setting was very nice, and I had the opportunity to practice how to change a flat tire twice. So slowly, slowly, things started getting better.

Back at home. I broke my personal records. I have done 80 (128 kms) and 92 (148kms) miles in a day....wow....., plus I met some wonderful Climate Ride pals, with whom I have been training and gone to places around the area that I had not visited before. Thanks Jenny for organizing the trainings!!!
I also participated in the September Critical Mass (google it if you have not heard about it) that takes place the first friday of every month; you can join us in the next one that will take place on October 2 (6:30PM in Dupont Circle).
So, I feel ready for the 300 miles challenge. Happy, motivated, excited,...............and leaving for NY on Thursday.

So, keep looking at the blog. Things will only get better, and if you live in DC or plan to be around next Wednesday September 30, please join me and other 100+ climate riders when we arrive to the US Capitol after our 5 day-300 mile ride from NY to DC to raise awareness on Climate Change. This event will be great, very symbolic, and the end of our ride, but hopefully, it will also be the beginning of a better future. Hope to see you there!

Join Climate Riders as they arrive at the US Capitol on Wednesday, September 30th!
RSVP via the facebook