This afternoon, I’m flying to Eugene, Oregon for a Bicycle Leadership Training – the first project of the Spoke N’ Heart Collective. The collective is a group of female-identified people from around the country who have come together to explore the radical, transformative power of biking for social change.

For the next two weeks, I will be riding down the Oregon and California coasts with 8 other amazing people. Along the way, we will be sharing our knowledge, skills, and experience, learning how to handle the dynamics and logistics of long-distance bike trips.

When all is said and done, the collective members will be equipped to organize bike rides in our communities about the issues that matter to us.

This training will be an experiment and an adventure, and I will write about my thoughts, feelings, and experiences here over the course of the trip.

We will also be group blogging (hooray!) at www.spokenheartcollective.org, so make sure you bookmark that page or grab our RSS feed.

Now, its on to the plane!

There are whisperings and possibilities about more bike trips in the future, so keep checking back if you’re interested in being involved with that.  You can also email wanderlust (at) protectchoice.org to hop on the email list to get updates about future plans.

I have spent very little time by myself since we rolled back into New York. I left almost immediately for a retreat in Boston and then flew directly to Arizona to volunteer with No More Deaths (www.nomoredeaths.org), an organization that provides food, water, and medical relief to people crossing the Sonoran Desert.  Surrounded by people I love, I spent two weeks hiking through the lush, malicious desert, where everything can kill you and everything has thorns.

We met groups and individuals, young and old, men and women, who left Mexico to cross the unforgiving desert. It is almost unimaginably vast – even knowing the trails, and having cars to go back to, and being in relatively good physical health, I was utterly exhausted at the end of each day. For the people who are migrating across the desert, it is at least a four day walk, mostly at night.  If they get lost, or injured, or separated from their coyotes, it can be a many day walk – and some never reach their destinations. So far this summer, there  128 deaths have been confirmed, and probably many more have simply disappeared.

Everyone has a story, and it was incredibly powerful to hear the stories of the people we met.  We met people like Octavio and his cousin, two men from Michoacan, who had been walking for two days when we ran into them.  Octavio is married and has a five year old daughter and a newborn baby. He left his family, left his baby, left his wife to work as a tomato picker in Florida.  I asked him why, and he told me the story that is every story, that could be anyone’s.  His home is in a fertile valley, and he’d been a farmer, planting corn, selling it at market. Now, the United States imports subsidized corn from Iowa and floods the market. Octavio said “Ahora, perdimos mas que ganamos, y no podemos sobrevivir” – We lose more than we make, and we can’t survive.

It makes me so angry that our laws and our policies create a situation in which trade is legal but people are not – where the commodities that create a global marketplace are allowed to cross borders freely when it benefits the people in power, but the people who that marketplace relies on to function are criminalized, are dying because crossing the border seems like the best possible option.

Some pictures I took on the border are here on my flickr page.

No More Deaths is always looking for volunteers and donations, so if you’re interested in helping out, visit http://nomoredeaths.org/.

I miss you Wanderlust! In Oakland, working too much and trying to not get *too* overwhelmed in this gigantic family reunion that is overtaking my life and lasting over a week. I think this is FAR too long for any kind of family gathering (except of course a Wanderlust one), but that’s just me….Anyways, I took out some of my overwhelmed frustration on the road today, but as a road-rage biker Naw, just kidding- I didn’t cuss at anyone loud enough for them to hear! But damn, after Wanderlust I feel super strong and super fast on my bike, it’s totally empowering, and then in Oakland you have all these (dare I say this?) wannabe bikers who are SO slow and weave back and forth, and all this traffic that thinks you are also slow and don’t know what you’re doing, which means they don’t actually pay attention to your signals! But not to worry, since I always wear my helmet and I know what I’m tryin’ to do out there so cars and slow bikers can’t get in my way

I wanted to be able to post something rather extraordinary, something that could approach the extraordinariness of Wanderlust, and yet now that I’m here writing I just feel overwhelmed because how could I even begin to approach the extraordinariness of Wanderlust, much less explain it in words? I think that what’s needed at this moment is a list. I’m not sure what exactly this is a list of, but I know that these following things are on it:-

-bicycle tattoo with six stars over my right kidney, drawn by Alex who is also left-handed and loves birds almost as much as i do

-New York hustle bustle concrete jungle, me walking zoned out in its wake, dreaming of bicycles and remembering i have a life waiting for me on the other coast

-a greeting from one of my students the first day back at work: “you flew all the way home to us, melon! your wings must be SOOO tired!” (they long since identified my bird alter ego)

-riding Remedios to work and friends and errands thro the streets of Oakland, feeling kick ass and listening to Paper Planes by M.I.A. on repeat while i slam up the steep hills

-delicious breakfast at Blackberry Bistro with my parents, my sister, and…my girlfriend (this is after they were visiting for the huge family reunion and came early to my house to bring me coffee as a sweet surprise but instead caught me and Remedios coming up the steps to my house after a night out at my girlfriends’ house….at which point, i decided honesty was definitely the best course to follow and i told them i had spent the night at someone’s house and then i told them her name and THEN i asked them if they wanted to meet her for breakfast the next morning, at which point my mom answered “i KNEW it would be a girl!” and my dad did his best accepting shrug, which after seeing it several times i take to mean that he is totally freaked out by me being a dyke but he really loves me and is doing his best to be supportive)

-looking at the full moon out my window: feeling again the moon/ stars/ dark sky/ rustling leaves/ shared lives/ communal slumber

-Monterrey Market in Berkeley, eating peaches and drinking peachy drinks at a celebration of the 40th birthday party of my best friends’ Sun Crest peaches, tears coming to my eyes as she beats loud and angry on her taiko drum while her dad reads about destructive hail storms, and then later she talks about power & privilege and a food revolution and- eyes closed- i touch hands with a stranger, following an exercise she makes us all do, and i feel wanderlust rising within me and i feel her powerful dynamic energy and i realize it’s the same thing and damn that’s like a mind orgasm

-hot tubbing with my family and sharing a glass of red wine with my mom (Grapefull Sisters, Noras’ aunts’ house both come to mind)

-browsing the library catalog this afternoon for “Dreaming the Dark” by Starhawk

Maybe I’ll get the neck tattoo after all. Maybe the list’s name is: Until Wanderlust ’09. Maybe I’ll do a solo, self-contained tour up to the Arctic Circle and back in Sweden.
Maybe I will start making good on my dream to “write something.” Let’s go tho, y’all, cuz i’m ready! xoxo mel

I’m having my period right now so I’m not biking anymore until my crimson waves are over. My body feels week and is urning to bike. Everywhere I go I see bikers and I wish I were them taking the road. My internship with PEP ends mid-August and currently I am in the middle of searching for another job. I seriously am considering being a bike messenger.

I miss being surrounded by 10 other people. Its really lonely here in the big apple. I’m craving an adventure. I’m thinking about joining a cycling club, but I know the cycling club will not be able to replace Wanderlust.

I was speaking to my Grandaddy on the phone the other night as I was making dinner, and I was talking to him about biking. I told him he should bike more, like he should go to the store via bicycle instead taking his car. I told him I’d bring my bike home when I go to visit Ohio at the end of August and we could ride together. He thought I was crazy, and I said that I wasn’t crazy, I was just really into biking!

I wish all the other Wanderlusties were here with me in New York. I wish we could recreate the magical world we had for 6 amazing weeks. I feel so changed. I feel so awake. I feel so different. For example, even thought I’m looking for a new job right now, I don’t want just any job, I want a job that will make a difference and change the world. I don’t want to sell out. I want to be helping and not hurting the world. I don’t want to me a money hungry consumer. Yes I still love to shop and everything, but I’m more consious now where I am spending my money.

I am really trying to teach others everything I learned on Wanderlust, especially the Non-violent communication stuff I learned. I think its very powerful for one to express their needs to others. I am working on being a better communicator.

Everyone knows how I want to be a real estate developer, now I want to develop commune group living communities…I’ve been researching it for the past week, and I really want to learn more. I’m actually considering attending Burning Man now…..uh-oh world…watch out THA KJA won’t STOP!!!

hahhah well I know I just typed a lot of random thoughts and everything, but I though the world needed to hear what was on my mind.

Stay healthy, stay engaged, and never forget!

-Tha KJA aka Kathleen aka K. Dot