In the Press
Julia Murphy is ninjatreehugger@gmail.com She will show you the hot end of a stick every week in her column “Green Light” appearing in Chico’s Synthesis.
Ain’t Nothin Like The Wheel Thing, Baby
Remember when you first learned to ride your bike?
I proffer my own reminiscence: the suburban streets of Newton, MA; suburban moms still occasionally smoked cigarettes in holders and had cocktail parties, and I was working on Riding Like A Big Girl, sans training wheels, down Peggy and Susan’s street. I remember the fear and exhilaration—the amazing realization that my body was way smarter than I was, and the freedom and confidence—I HAD THIS SHIT DIALLED IN. I was rockin my blue Schwinn with ape hangers and banana seat (exactly the same as my brother’s, except for the crotchal region—which only makes sense from a sartorial standpoint, as anyone who’s ever seen the Dutch girls riding in short-skirts can attest to). I was maybe seven years old—the same age as when I first started worrying about getting a job. Win some, lose some.
Freedom and confidence; car ads and deodorant ads. You don’t buy cars and deodorant to feel more confident—you go through a rite of passage. Instead of having to keep buying things that make those nagging feelings of inadequacy go away for a minute, you willingly participate in a ritual that sustains you through all those times you might feel like the biggest fuckwad on earth.
“But where, oh where can I obtain such an experience?” you may ask. “Firewalking is too great a liability to be offered for credit anymore, and I already have enough piercings to piss both my parents off.”
OH! Do I have an experience for YOU.
Back in the Oughts (Ought-Eight) WM rode to San Luis Obispo, an epic journey that transformed a life or two (or three or ten) and covered 800+ miles to the Cal Poly SLO campus. It was an experiment and an adventure that spurred discussion, envy (mine. I drove to SLO and have never stopped regretting it) and the desire for MORE TOUR.
Here’s the More. The Wheeled Machine is gearing up (pun) for this Spring Sojourn ride. From Ryan Laine, WM’s (and Green Light’s) daddy:
The three day tour will focus on water and food issues of the Sacramento valley while looking at community solutions along the way. Students will follow the Sacramento River until meeting with the American River near the capitol before turning south into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta region.
Want to cut your teeth? Ride to Stockton. Want to chew them up and swallow them? Ride to Yosemite. That’s the extended dance remix ride, and why not? It’s a vacation. Either or.
Here’s what I have to say about multi-day bike tours: it’s like the Polar Bear, only longer; it’s like jumping off the Trestle, only longer; it’s like meditation and exploration and leaving your old image of yourself in front of the TV while you go discover how many different muscles you have in your legs and lungs and how truly amazing it feels to lay down to sleep at night.
From La Fabulosa, veteran of WM SLO and bike-lovin’ funster Michelle Wurlitzer’s Facebook page :
“Come one, come all! Activists, artists, bachelors, bikers, cooks, drunks, ecologists, freaks… students, teachers, me and YOU! We’re goin’ on a bike tour over Spring Break!”
When you do something you’re not sure you can do, it gives you the courage to try more things. When you ride a bike for more than 100 miles, why not 1,000? Why not across the country? What stops you?
Answer: nothing. “Nothin’ at all!”, as Flanders said.
Better to do it before there’s a wife or a husband or a child or a lockdown job or a (insert excuse here). I got em. You got em. There’s never going to be any fewer of them, take it from someone who remembers station wagons with real wood on them. But you can do it. You can always do it. And Wheeled Migration will both take you by the hand, and kick you gently and lovingly in the ass, and help you to discover that you can do it.
Freedom and confidence. Do you want it? It’s yours for the taking.
One more thing from La Fab’s facebook page:
“…And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.”
-Ellen Bass, “Pray for Peace”
Two-wheel drive.
Wheeled Migration takes on 500 miles of roadways, and that’s just the beginning
Last fall, when Ryan Laine took the reins to organize a summer cycling tour to an environmental conference along California’s Central Coast, he could divulge few details save for the departure and destination dates and locations.
He knew the trip would begin in Chico and 10 days later—after more than 500 miles— end in San Luis Obispo. He also knew there would be unforeseen complications along the way. But what he couldn’t possibly predict is how the ride would turn into a life-changing experience for many participants—including him.
“You can’t sign up and pay for some of the stuff that happened out there—to be on the edge, pushed to your limits and to do it among people, friends, some of whom you’ve never met before,” said Laine, an accomplished cyclist. “It’s a completely different world than what we live here and very liberating.”
So for about the 30 Wheeled Migration riders who rolled into Cal Poly for the CSU/UC/CCC sustainability conference, it was the journey, and the surprises along the way, that made the trip so special.
“The conference was nothing compared to the ride,” insisted Michelle Wurlitzer, a Butte College sophomore, who, despite her relative biking inexperience, was determined to complete the trip.
Wurlitzer contacted Laine (a CN&R contributor who periodically writes for Green Ways) after hearing about the trip during Chico State’s sustainability conference last fall. She joined the group, but not without reservation. After all, she didn’t know most of the other participants and she wasn’t a cyclist.
In fact, Wurlitzer began training only about a month before the group hit the road. Her longest ride up until that point was 40 miles, which she did on her mountain bike, not a touring bike.
The route down south was formidable. On the second and third days of the trip—during mostly uphill rides from Williams through Clearlake, then into the Napa Valley and down to Occidental—Wurlitzer says she often questioned what she was doing there. She wasn’t sure she would make it.
“I didn’t think it would be as physically or mentally challenging as it was,” she said.
Day five, a 72-mile ride starting in the North Bay, brought about the biggest challenges and change for the 19-year-old. Of course, one of the highlights was riding across the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. But the real turning point came later in the day as she began to crest a steep, traffic-filled road in a region called Devil’s Slide and got a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean near Half Moon Bay.
“It was just so bright and beautiful and I felt so alive and full of life,” Wurlitzer said. “I think it was that moment … after that I wasn’t the slowest one anymore. The ride just became something different for me.”
That change manifested itself in many forms, including the peace sign and huge smile she flashed to oncoming traffic for 40 miles straight on day eight of the trip. Back in Chico, the journey has continued for Wurlitzer, who credits the experience and her new friends for giving her an adventurous spirit—and, she admits, a bit of a sense of invincibility.
CHOW TIME For these road-weary riders, there’s nothing like a good, healthful meal after a long day on the bike.
Chicoan Brad Hauskens said the trip at times proved physically demanding for even experienced cyclists such as he, and the highlights for him were actually the stopping points along the way.
In addition to staying the night at various campsites and purchasing food from CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture partnerships), the group visited several intentional communities, such as the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, a nonprofit educational organization.
While they were there, Richard Heinberg—an author, educator and senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute—gave a presentation to the group about peak oil, a subject he’s written about extensively. Hauskens said the best part of the lecture was hearing Heinberg’s ideas on building communities and gardens—strategies that will prove crucial when the oil runs out.
“It brought everything home for me,” he said, “what we were doing on the road and what we could do back in Chico.”
Two months after the trip, many of the ideas have stuck for the 30-year-old carpenter. Hauskens hasn’t turned on his television and said he’s changed his eating habits, cutting down on meat and increasing his intake of organic fruit and vegetables. He’s also more involved with local efforts promoting bike culture, including the Bike Kitchen at the Saturday Farmers Market, a valet parking and bike-maintenance service.
“If I could quit my job and ride a bike for a living I’d love to do that,” he said.
Meanwhile, that’s exactly what Laine has done.
“You know how people say, ‘I wish that one day I could do this or that’? Well, this is it—this is something else,” he said. “This is the thing I’m going to do.”
He’s now working full time to turn Wheeled Migration into a nonprofit organization and on some smaller events and tours to keep it alive between larger ones. On Sunday (Sept. 28), the group, in concert with the Butte Bicycle Coalition, is putting on a community biking event called the Chico Cycling Chautauqua.
It will start at City Plaza and include music, food, along with all things bike: demos, repair and networking. Fittingly, the event will migrate to the Fire Ring at Bidwell Park after dark for a fireside chat with Wheeled Migration and end in a late-night ride (riders need lights).
The group has a Web site (www.wheeledmigration.org) where participants have blogged about the ride to San Luis Obispo, but the goal of the event is to share the trip—and biking in general—with the larger community. Laine noted that riders of all ages and degrees of experience came together for Wheeled Migration and they ended up building a community of their own.
By the end of the journey, he said, it was clear that everyone wanted more.
“It really felt like I was part of something very precious and people believed in it,” he said. “And I think that’s what community is all about.”
By Melissa Daugherty melissad@newsreview.com
Wheeled Migration’s Cycling Chautauqua is Sunday
CHICO — Chico’s biking community is planning an old-fashioned “chautauqua” Sunday in City Plaza from 3-7 p.m.
Chautauquas were public gatherings popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that promoted cultural and intellectual events for the community. There were speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and others who specialized in topics of interest of the time.
Wheeled Migration and Butte Bicycle Coalition are organizing the chautauqua and are encouraging people to ride their bikes to the event that will include with Ma’Muse and friends, bike food from the Sicilian Cafe, speakers on bikes and bike culture, bike repair with the A.S. Bike Kart, bike Valet from Chico Bike Kitchen, networking and a night bike ride.
The ride will include a fireside chat with members of Wheeled Migration. It will take place at about 8-9:30 p.m. at the fire ring in Bidwell Park, near Caper Acres. People will ride their bikes to the park and are encouraged to bring plenty of lights.
Chautauqua pix from the Chico Enterprise Record!
Chico Cycling Chautauqua planners strive to entertain, educate attendees
By: Orion Staff
Posted: 9/17/08
Biking is more than just a mode of transportation – for many it’s a lifestyle.
The first Chico Cycling Chautauqua will take place from 3 to 7 p.m. Sept. 28 at City Plaza, where people will come to promote Chico’s growing bicycle culture, said Laurie Niles, a member of the Butte Bicycle Coalition and a Chico Cycling Chautauqua engineer.
A chautauqua gathering, made popular in the 1920s, is an entertaining and educational forum, which features speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and different specialists, Niles said.
Chico Cycling Chautauqua will be an opportunity to network and bring together the different, and sometimes rifted, subcultures of biking, said Ryan Laine, founder of Wheeled Migration, an organization collaborating with the chautauqua.
“We lose touch with what the bike means to other people,” Laine said. “We want to see the different biking groups break down some of the walls that divide them.”
It’s a chance for people to come and show their stuff, Laine said.
“We have people bringing out couches and we’re going to set up an outdoor living room in the downtown Chico plaza,” he said.
Laine, 29, a Chico State student, refers to himself as, “a perpetual senior,” he said. He is a special major in outdoor leadership and outdoor education.
The Wheeled Migration project is a statewide cycling event that unites students, educators, innovators, activists, organizers and entrepreneurs of the environmental justice and green economy movements, according to wheeledmigration.org.
Admission is free and there will be food from the Sicilian Cafe sold at the event.
Tune-ups will be available and in the evening there will be a night ride to Bidwell Park, so participants should bring bike lights, Niles said.
Chico bike culture has gotten huge, she said. And with the rising gas prices, there have been a lot more bicycles on campus, so they are expecting a pretty high level of interest in the chautauqua.
“The cost of driving could have a lot of students more interested in biking,” Niles said, “and the sustainability department is soliciting Chico as a bike-friendly town.”
A few hundred people are expected to participate over the course of the event, Niles said.
“And people don’t need to stay the whole time, they can just come check it out for as long as they’d like,” she said.
Senior Kyle Hughes, manager of the Adventure Outings bike cart on campus, said he and his co-workers are interested in coming to the event.
Hughes is hoping to attend and repair bikes, he said.
The event will run late into the night and will be open to people of all ages, Niles said. Donations are not required, but they will be accepted.
But it’s about more than raising funds, Laine said.
“The purpose of this event is to honor the cycling culture, it’s for anybody who rides a bike,” Laine said. “We’re going to have people on cruisers, racing bikes, mountain bikes, lowriders, fixies – this is for all the people who love their bicycle.”