Meet Louise Hunter, Fifth in our get-to-know-the-riders series. The 2017 PA-to-DC ride will take place May 19-24. Louise is a guest rider from Colorado, joining Pennsylvania family for the ride.
I enjoy living in Colorado, with its many sunny days and numerous city and mountain trails where I can hike with my friends and photograph wild flowers.
I have easy access to a city bike trail connecting to the New Santa Fe Trail, where I train for the PA IPL bike ride. I ride northward on my mountain bike to the Air Force Academy and onward to Palmer Lake, a distance of about forty miles round trip.
Nearby Faith Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) has served as our extended family for over forty years. My husband Jim and I are both Elders and have been active in church education, youth work camps, finances, stewardship, fellowship groups, Bible studies, centering prayer, and many other committees and discussion groups. We serve dinners to Urban Peak homeless youth and stay overnight as hosts for our Inter-Faith Hospitality Network guests.
Within a block of our home is the Ranch Organic Community Garden, where I have a plot for the first time this year. The Presbyterian Hunger Program suggests that we help heal ourselves through healing the earth by using organic fertilizers that turn food back into food and by avoiding chemical fertilizers that create mental and economic dependency.
Presbyterian General Assembly Missions works for environmental justice through advocacy to stop emissions, while dealing with existing trade agreements that allow foreign corporations to continue polluting air and drinking water. GA Missions also focuses on peacemaking; human rights, including human trafficking; and social, racial, and women’s justice issues.
An important program to which I can relate as a financial person is the PCUSA’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee, which leads PCUSA in its effort of faith-based investing. The special focus of the MRTI for 2017 is engagement with the oil and gas industry. Currently, there are 50 companies on the MRTI Proscription List . Proscription means to not invest in these companies, whereas Divestment means that if you already own one, sell it!
I am grateful for my State College family—Dave, Cricket, Molly, and Betsy Hunter—for helping me to prepare for this ride to D.C. Cricket’s strong leadership in PA IPL inspires us all. It will be fun to bike along with my family. Thanks also to Jim and our daughter Melanie, also ardent conservationists, who will keep each other company during my PA IPL ride.
Donate online to PA IPL in support of the PA-to-DC cyclists
or send a check, memo: bike 2017 to PA IPL 243 S. Allen St. #337, State College, PA 16801
MANY THANKS to our 2017 silver sponsor Sun Directed
and our 2017 bronze sponsors, the KBB Beth Richards Group and Freeze/Thaw Cycles
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