Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Climate Justice Ride

 
At the Atlanta airport..gear and I ready to fly and ride. Bike folds up and gets checked like any old baggage. US Airways and Delta both give me a carbon credit discount because I am a full time cyclist, and was taking my bike as my transport on arrival at my destination.


Citizen's Climate Lobby has been advancing the opposite strategy: working to build the political will to implement a carbon tax, where by a person ("person" I mean an individual person AND a corporation) pay more to burn burn burn, in a nut shell. 

Biking around the island that Montreal lives on.
R.I.P. to a cyclist

BIKE POWER!!!


My dear friend Lisa came to spend a few days with my in Montreal with her new baby JULIAN!!!!











Then I started biking south. This is the path that I took to begin my journey.


Biking and camping through the Quebec country-side.



Dog in bike trailer!!!!

ONE LOVE MASSIVE                                            A MOVING MEDITATION


Solar powered Vermont dairy farm.

Wind powered Vermont Welcome Center


Biking and camping through " The Kindgom" in North-eastern Vermont
Sawyer water filtration


ONE LOVE MASSIVE                                                                          A MOVING MEDITATION




Amish Peach farmer




Wind towers on the Lowell Mountain range


Meeting Scott Money, born and raised in The Kingdom.

Arriving at Bread and Puppet in Glover Vermont. The oldest running non-profit theater company in the U.. My friend Daniel lived there this season as the gardener.


























To see many more photos of this portion of the journey, including loads of photos of the Bread and Puppet Farm + Theater click HERE
When I left B & P I started cycling through Vermont down route 100. Vermont has done a great deal at the state level to promote clean energy infrastructure!!!!

 Many of the small communities I rode through are fighting small pipelines.



 A little bit of signage is an in-expensive way for the community to create infrastructure and increase the quality of lie for it's residents.
 The Mark Twain library in Redding CT. Totally Solar Powered!!!!
 Where there is a will there is a way to make solar hot water work!!! in Oxford, CT



 I rode to the Nature's Classroom site in Colebrock Ct were my friend Emily Montesinos is living and working this season. I was the special guest and got to talk with the kids who were there for the week abut BIKE POWER and Climate Change.
 I found this guy's iPad on the side of the road. We met in Danbury CT so I could give it back to him
 Guerrilla camping
 The Mark Twain Library in Redding CT
 I cycled through the fancy towns of Bedford and New Canan.. Like an Instructable crashing an issue of Martha Stewart Living

 Then I rode up to Peekskill and over the Bear Mountain Bridge, which connected with 9 down the west bank of the Hudson River, over the George Washington Bridge and all the way into Brooklyn to see my friend and his new little son!







 THE PEOPLE'S CLIMATE MARCH:


So, we all got in our places and picked out our caribou puppet and figured out how to wear it for our own best comfort. I strapped mine to my bike helmet and used one hand to work the head and one hand to steer my bike. Then, under an over cast sky, on a cool day, we waited for the parade to start. It took tow and a half hours of us to start moving. It was one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had. Thousands of people together, sharing food, drink, song, stories and our common cause. At one point everyone in the crowd, from the front of the parade to the back observed two minutes of silence for all those affects already by climate change, and then we all let out a collective cry, an alarm, of anguish, for the pain we all feel in common for what is being done to our beautiful planet. I found that one of my fellow caribou had come up from Athens on the Georgia Climate Change Coalition buses I had helped organize!!! LOGAN!!! Before leaving Athens at the start of September I had made some flyers and ridden my bike around Athens passing them out to anyone I saw that I thought might be keen to come, and one person did! He found me because of my bucket luggage!!!! I saw a fellow from Madison WS.that I had met at the Cowboy and Indian Alliance in Washington D.C. in April!!!

The Bread and Puppet performance in the parade consisted of a herd of 60 white caribou being chased by the Tar Sands Monster behind us... the head and black arms of the actual tar sands being honored and supported by the skeletons of the companies and driven from behind by the skull of GREED OF THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT!!!!! At certain points in the parade a cacophony of sound of begin and the Tar Sands Monster would attack the caribou! We would all get down on the ground, throw our heads in the air and quake while the people in black moved among us blaring dissonant horns and the arms of the tar Sands Monster would cover our bodies!!! But then, from behind the FISTS OF RESISTANCE would rise up and from behind the STOP THE TAR SANDS AT THE SOURCE banner the BUTTERFLIES AT THE END OF THE WORLD would fly in to rescue us and drive the dark figures away, the Bread and Puppet marching band would begin to play When the Saints Go marching In, Biannca would start to play the sleigh bells again and the herd would keep moving forward. We got attacked right in front of Radio City Music Hall!









To see more images of the leg of the journey that took me from Vermont to NYC click HERE