Claire and Cristhian in Quito on bicycle con los jovenes de Sol de Primavera

The Tour and the Objective

On this trans-national bike tour, we will travel more than 5,000 miles (8,046+ km) from Santiago, Chile to Quito, Ecuador (and possibly beyond). This tour is not just a personal challenge for us, but will also be educational and open to many more people to be involved in various ways. We will stop at NGOs, bike activist organizations and environmentally focused community groups along the way to interview, investigate, give presentations and share information on the movement for the bicycle as alternative transportation. We wish to exchange ideas and stories about climate change and the movements that have formed to address its root causes (such as car culture, industrial agrigulture, consumer culture and colonialism).

Our goal is to do research and collect stories on bike cultures and movements in order disperse them and help the cross-fertilization of various movements by creating resources of information and promoting networking between towns, cities and countries.

We will have a focus on the bicycle as a cheap, accessible, autonomous and environmentally-friendly form of transportation and sport that can be one tangible and practical way to help mitigate climate change. We will be exploring the ways in which we can get more people riding—especially women and other people who aren’t encouraged to ride and have less access to bikes—in order to increase the quality of life for all and promote climate justice.

En este tour transnacional vamos a pedalear en bici más de 5,000 millas (8,046 Km.) desde Santiago, Chile hasta Quito, Ecuador (y quizás más allá). Este tour no es solo un reto personal para nosotros, es educativo y abierto a mucha mas gente para que pueda unirse al proyecto de diferentes maneras. Vamos a ir a ONGs, organizaciones de bici activistas y organizaciones comunitarias ambientalistas a lo largo de viaje para entrevistar, investigar, dar exposiciones y compartir información sobre el movimiento de la bicicleta como transporte alternativo. Querremos compartir ideas e historias sobre el cambio climático y los movimientos que se han formado para luchar contra las razones fundamentales (como la cultura del auto, agricultura industrial, la cultura de consumismo y colonialismo).

Nuestro objetivo es hacer investigaciones y recolectar historias sobre culturas y movimientos de la bici para que podamos dispersarlos y ayudar la cruz-polinización de varios movimientos, creando un recurso de información y promover redes entre pueblos, ciudades y países.

Vamos a tener un enfoque en la bicicleta como una forma de transporte, deporte económico, accesible, autónomo y ambientalista, que puede ser una manera tangible y practica para mitigar el cambio climático. Vamos a explorar las maneras en que podemos tener más gente pedaleando, especialmente mujeres y gente marginalizada, para aumentar la calidad de vida para todas y todos y promoviendo la justicia climática.

jueves, 27 de marzo de 2008

Help us get to Quito by bicycle!

Hello dear friends of Movement Por Un Cambio,
We hope you have enjoyed reading our blog, seeing our photos and learning about bike cultures in South America. We are writing you with a request, that we wish we didn´t have to make, but life brings surprises. We are currently in Cusco, Peru and have completed slightly over half our kilometers (3,700... with 3,300 more to go) in over half our budgeted time (4 months 1 week out of our 6 months). This has occured for various reasons, the two main being: 1) We have stayed longer than expected in certain locations in order to be able to complete our bike culture investigations and 2) we have experienced, unfortunately, unforeseen sicknesses that have forced us to stay longer than planned in various places. For these reasons, it is impossible to avoid the fact that our bike tour will last several weeks longer than anticipated. We now expect the earliest we can arrive in Quito (assuming we have no major illnesses along the way) will be June 16, rather than mid-May as we had anticipated, even as we plan to pick up the pace of our biking. Unfortunately we only budgeted for 6 months, and therefore it will be very difficult for us to find a way to survive this additional month, even as we live as cheaply as possible, cooking nearly all our meals, camping and staying in firestations. We fear the possibility of having to take a bus due to lack of funds. Therefore we decided to write to you, our dear friends, and ask for support! If just a few folks donate $50, or if 15 donate $20, or if 30 donate $10, it will allow Movement Por Un Cambio to continue as planned and arrive in Quito, Ecuador purely by bicycle! It will allow us to complete our investigations thoroughly so that we can share them with bike movements all over the world. It will allow us to bike on and encourage others to bike too. With your support, we can do it! So please, donate today. You can use PayPal on our website, http://www.movementporuncambio.blogpot.com/, or mail it to: Claire Stoscheck-207 W. Clinton St.-Ithaca, NY 14850. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, your support is much appreciated.

Sincerely,
Claire and Cristhian

P.S. It´s Claire´s 23rd birthday today! Why don´t you donate $23 for her 23rd?

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