Tag: bike profile 2018

Meet Jon Brockopp, eighteenth in the 2018 series of rider profiles, and originator of the trip, in his SEVENTH year.  Get to know the riders for the PA to DC rides as the series unfolds, then follow the trips!  Learn more.  Donate.

I ride each year to DC, because climate change is the most urgent problem facing human civilization, and we are the last generation that can do something about it.

Already, I see the beginnings of this change – the dying Hemlocks in our forests, the increasing number of tick and mosquito-born illnesses. We can stop this change, and we must.

I choose to reduce my carbon footprint and to work in community with others. A lot of attention is put on alternative energy, and that’s great: solar, wind, biomass are important sources for the future. But conservation has an immediate effect on climate change without spending a dime – in fact, it saves money.

I go to fewer conferences, I fly less, and I’m happier for it! My church has saved significantly by installing high efficiency boilers and insulating. There are many ways we can conserve energy, live more simply, and protect future generations from the worst consequences of our fossil fuel addiction.

I am also practicing what I teach: a new class at Penn State on the Ethics of Climate Change. My students really don’t want to talk about it. They see this as a political controversy, and so I show them the scientific and ethical sides.

First, there is no scientific debate on the basics of climate change. As Richard Alley says: it’s just physics. And most of it was proven in the nineteenth century. Carbon Dioxide traps heat – making for a greenhouse effect. More Carbon Dioxide traps more heat. Also, as the earth warms, the atmosphere holds more water vapor, another powerful greenhouse gas.

Second, the ethics are pretty simple, too. We wealthy societies made this mess, and others are suffering the consequences. A quarter of the world’s population uses no fossil fuel – it’s up to those of us who do to use much less.

Riding our bikes conserves energy, but it also gives us something in return: time outdoors to enjoy the beautiful PA countryside with our friends. There is time to talk (and sing!) on a bicycle, time to reflect.

But my favorite part of the bike trip is the chance to connect with people across the region. Whether it’s the rural community of Orbisonia or the rust-belt city of Hagerstown, MD, we cyclists have a real chance to bridge the political divides and learn about challenges facing others.

I am convinced that responding to climate change requires fundamentally conservative values: time for family, building up communities, preserving resources. This is something taught by all our religious traditions, and something we all can embrace.

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Donate online to PA IPL in support the PA-to-DC riders (or send a check, memo: bike 2018 to PA IPL 243 S. Allen St. #337, State College, PA 16801)

 

THANK YOU
 to our 2018 SILVER sponsor Sun Directed,

and to our 2018
BRONZE sponsors:
PHEW!
The Weimer Group
Exact Solar
richards | stover group  and Freeze / Thaw Cycles

Want more cyclists?
Read Jon’s past profiles

Meet Janet Swim, seventeenth in the 2018 series of rider profiles, and one of the 2018 trip leaders.  Get to know the riders for the PA to DC rides as the series unfolds, then follow the trips!  Learn more.  Donate.

I love to ride my bicycle.  I associate it with a sense of freedom and joy.  Growing up, my bicycles represented new stages of maturity.  When I was five, I transitioned from my tricycle to my mom’s two-wheeler.  My dad ran down the side walk with me, pushing and balancing the bike as a learned to balance.  Then there was the sudden pride when I stepped over the line to being a skillful rider who could even ride all by myself around the block.

In third grade, I graduated to a really cool banana seat bicycle.  I knew I was getting a bicycle because my two older siblings got new bicycles when they were in third grade.  But I did not know that my parents knew what a cool bicycle was.  In addition to mastering tricks like

riding with no hands and jumping off of curbs, bicycling became a mode of transportation.  It allowed me to separate myself from the slow, hot, drudgery of walking to and from school to the ability to move more like a bird flying with ease with the rush of air cooling me off and fresh air filling my lungs.

I learned mechanics with my high school bicycle that I bought with money I sold from delivering newspapers. Modeling myself after my brilliant older brother, Martin, who could do no wrong except to always be right. I took my bike apart down to tiny ball bearings so I could clean and oil every moving part. I did need help putting it back together again but I learned how each of the parts worked, and the mechanics were less of a mystery.

I continued to bicycle in college, graduate school, and pre-tenure. Bicycling extended my adventures and allowed me to be transport myself without a car and fossil fuels, which in our “age of consciousness” about climate change takes on a new dimension. Now that our children no longer require us to transport them, I am back to bicycling again.

So, why do I ride to DC?  I ride to DC because my bicycle is an expression of myself.  I love the outdoors.  I respect and find wild animals amazing.  I want them to be able to live free.  I hate seeing them killed by cars who seem to have taken over the world.  Plus, we destroy their homes for whatever building or road we want to construct. We eat them even when we eat too much.  Then to top it off, we are not only causing local problems but global problems by changing various ecological cycles, like the carbon cycle which is warming our planet and destroying our oceans. To top it off the problems we create with our consumption, while, ironically, employing many, are also harming many.  

I ride specifically with PA-IPL, because I find religious groups are dedicated to attending to ethical dimensions of climate change—attending to impacts on both people, animals, and more generally the biosphere. These group consist of supportive intergenerational communities effort and express spiritual messages that moral, unifying, and hopeful messages of change. PA-IPL is working to facilitate and unite these groups to give them more strength.

There are various ways to fight these problems and I have dedicated my academic life to this task, and, when I can squeeze it in, I support others in their activist efforts. The bicycle ride viscerally represents my passion for the need to make changes.  Moreover, symbolically, it represents going beyond what we now define as ordinary ways to live to engaging in new ways to live that are more symbiotic with nature.  The new ways are not poor replacements for the old ways.  Rather, like riding a bicycle, they can be freeing and bring joy.

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Donate online to PA IPL in support the PA-to-DC riders (or send a check, memo: bike 2018 to PA IPL 243 S. Allen St. #337, State College, PA 16801)

 

THANK YOU
 to our 2018 SILVER sponsor Sun Directed,

and to our 2018
BRONZE sponsors:
PHEW!
The Weimer Group
Exact Solar
richards | stover group  and Freeze / Thaw Cycles

Want more?
Read Janet’s past profiles

Meet Centre County Commissioner Mark Higgins, sixteenth in the 2018 series of rider profiles.  Get to know the riders for the PA to DC rides as the series unfolds, then follow the trips!  Learn more.  Donate.

I am excited to bike this year with Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light. As a County Commissioner, my schedule is very full so I will not be able to bike all the way to Washington, DC, but by participating on the weekend days, I’ll get to do most of the Pennsylvania miles.

I have been participating in bicycle charity rides for many years. This will be my ninth year biking in the MS150 ride and, due to many years of volunteering, I am now a member of the Multiple Sclerosis 1,000 mile club. I also donate to the Bestwick Foundation and Centre Volunteers in Medicine charity bicycle rides. This will be my first charity ride that includes sleeping in churches and talking with the public about the cause while riding.

God gave us one planet. We will not be receiving another one. As the Bible says, God appointed human beings as stewards of this Earth. We must take this responsibility seriously. Polluting the air poisons our children and kills people with asthma and other lung conditions. This violates God’s precepts. Now that we know our activities cause global warming, we as a society need to do something about it.

Centre County Government is undertaking an energy savings initiative that will require investments of nearly $5,000,000. This energy savings initiative should save Centre County Government nearly $6,000,000 over 20 years. It will also include the second largest solar array in Centre County, which will be located on the grounds of the Centre County Correctional facility in Bellefonte. At full capacity, the solar array will provide over 1.5 megawatts of power. The only larger solar array in Centre County will be the 2.6 megawatt solar array installed by the University Area Joint Authority (UAJA) which performs wastewater treatment for the Centre Region.

When not biking part of the way to Washington, DC, Commissioner Higgins can be found all over Centre County – attending charity functions, cutting ribbons, assisting our emergency responders, biking or hiking around Central PA, administering a nearly $80,000,000 annual budget, and working together with the 163,000 residents of Centre County to make the County a better place.

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Donate online to PA IPL in support the PA-to-DC riders (or send a check, memo: bike 2018 to PA IPL 243 S. Allen St. #337, State College, PA 16801)

 

THANK YOU
 to our 2018 SILVER sponsor Sun Directed,

and to our 2018
BRONZE sponsors:
PHEW!
The Weimer Group
Exact Solar
richards | stover group  and Freeze / Thaw Cycles

Meet Alex deCarle, fifteenth in the 2018 series of rider profiles.  Get to know the riders for the PA to DC rides as the series unfolds, then follow the trips!  Learn more.  Donate.

One of the first things I do when I go home, is go hiking in the mountains. Pennsylvania mountains are never too tall that reaching the top seems impossible, but at the same time they still provide enough of a challenge. Currently the outdoors which I love are being threatened by climate change. Change starts with small steps, and I have made many minor habits specifically to slow climate change. I take public transportation instead of driving my car to school, I use reusable water bottles and grocery bags, I take stairs over elevators, and make many more tiny decisions to try to help.

I grew up doing athletics activities with my family. Whether it was going for a hike, walking to downtown State College, or even bike rides, our family enjoys spending time together and love when there was a challenge involved. When my mother approached my brother and I with the prospect of participating in this ride, it just felt natural to say yes. When she told us about the history and the concept of the ride itself, it made me want to do it even more. I am also excited that I will be riding with some family friends too. Lastly, I am grateful for the opportunity to learn more about what I can do to make a difference and the chance to be part of the team of people that care about climate change.

Growing up, I attended St. Andrew’s Episcopal church in State College, and so I am excited to learn more about the intersection of climate change and religion.

Currently I am studying Video Game Development and Design at Fanshawe College, in London, Ontario. The photographs that I take when I am in nature – hiking, fishing, and skiing – are used to inspire my game’s environment. On this trip I look forward to taking pictures along the way.

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Donate online to PA IPL in support the PA-to-DC riders (or send a check, memo: bike 2018 to PA IPL 243 S. Allen St. #337, State College, PA 16801)

 

THANK YOU
 to our 2018 SILVER sponsor Sun Directed,

and to our 2018
BRONZE sponsors:
PHEW!
The Weimer Group
Exact Solar
richards | stover group  and Freeze / Thaw Cycles

Meet Rabbi Meryl Crean, fourteenth in the 2018 series of rider profiles.  Get to know the riders for the PA to DC rides as the series unfolds, then follow the trips!  Learn more.  Donate.

I started riding a hand-me-down bike with no seat, no brakes and only stubs for pedals when I was four years old. I was hooked. For my sixth birthday, I got my first bike . My feet couldn’t reach the pedals from the seat. “You’ll grow into it,” they said. I never had a seat before anyway, so I didn’t miss it. Forget the driver’s license, all I wanted for my 16^th birthday was a 10-speed. Equipped with my new Peugeot, I went on my first bike trip with American Youth Hostels that summer- 400 miles through the Green Mountains. I feel most free and most grounded in my body when I am riding.

A few years ago, I began to combine my love of riding with my activism. I joined Hazon for three days of its six week journey from Seattle, WA to Washington, D.C. to bring attention to and lobby for sustainable agriculture.

As a faith leader, I read with considerable attention, Pope Francis’s Encyclical on the Environment, Laudato Si. His clarion call to the world is: Climate change is everyone’s problem and it is also a matter of social and economic justice. It is untenable, as a moral being, to stand by and do nothing.

When Rabbi Nathan Martin asked me to join the PA-IPL team this year, I jumped at the chance. Creating lifestyles that respect the environment and minimize our carbon footprint are essential to the sustainability of our planet. Legislating for sane energy policy is one way we can move our country and communities in the right direction.

The clock is ticking…Please join us in our effort to pass on this world to our children as a beautiful and sustainable home for all.

[photo source, and more of the story of the surviving Torah. ]
[download Rabbi Daniel Swartz’ text study Laudato Si and the Sages]

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Donate online to PA IPL in support the PA-to-DC riders (or send a check, memo: bike 2018 to PA IPL 243 S. Allen St. #337, State College, PA 16801)

 

THANK YOU
 to our 2018 SILVER sponsor Sun Directed,

and to our 2018
BRONZE sponsors:
PHEW!
The Weimer Group
Exact Solar
richards | stover group  and Freeze / Thaw Cycles

Meet Dorothy, lucky thirteenth in the 2018 series of rider profiles.  Get to know the riders for the PA to DC rides as the series unfolds, then follow the trips!  Learn more.  Donate.

I am a lover of the earth.

Rolling into my seventies, I am determined to continue using any means in my power to challenge the uniquely U.S. approach of avoiding climate change issues. Most of us seem unable to consider ourselves part of and dependent on nature. Lately we have watched helplessly and ineffectively as the powers of wealth and oligarchy collude to ravage our environmental laws.

I despair, but fight back. My environmentalism is put to work through local chapters and national organizations like PA IPL, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the Unitarian Universalist Green Sanctuary program, the Sierra Club, Fair Districts, and local groups like the Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition sprung up to address local exigencies. We are learning how to flex our citizen muscles against the excesses of the current administration and large corporations, motivating thinking people to fight back through action, media and the ballot.

I do this for my son Ethan, now 28, an avid mountain biker and nature lover, for other innocent children, for the diversity of birds who, as I write, zoom in to take seeds off my porch table — local hungry bears have rendered bird feeders impractical — and those threatened members of the avian species without access to human largess. I do this for the trees who have met untimely deaths by unsettling microburst storms, hurricanes, fires, deliberate clearing, or through the savaging by bugs moving north. I do this for low-lying coastal cites, as an attempt, too late, to arrest the calving glaciers and melting permafrost.

My first 50 years were lived in a still-stable stable environment. As a former small-scale organic vegetable grower turned large-scale backyard gardener, the changes in the generally placid and predictable central PA climate have been obvious and scary for me. As a retired professor of Food Security I have long recognized the crazy thoughtlessness of tying our food productivity to a chemically-based industrial farming system that destroys soil, creates methane and NO3, and uses 7kcal of fossil fuel to produce 1 kcal of food energy. With deforestation, soil degradation and population growth, the productive land per person in 2050 will be only one forth what it was in 1960.

Consequently, I am deeply motivated to keep riding to D.C. each year, hoping to reach the receptive ears of congressional aids that might in turn sway their powerful bosses. This will be my fifth year on the PA-IPL ride.

I have a second motivation: to stay in shape so that I can continue to use my bike for transport, pleasure and reduced use of my car. Each time I jump on my bike I re-experience the sense of freedom felt when I received my first 10-speed bike on my 10^th Christmas.

Though environmental volunteering has taken a big chunk of my life of late, I do have other sides to my personality. I am a cook who develops her own recipes, with the goal of making vegetarian/vegan food taste delicious. My current favorites are a very spicy vegan chili and a rendition of an Italian classic: lots of garlic and greens (kale, beet or chard) paired with orecchiette. My heart is softened by flowers, art, good conversations and hikes with friends. I read widely, and crave good movies. I sing in two choirs. Life is best lived fully, until you can’t!

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Donate online to PA IPL in support the PA-to-DC riders (or send a check, memo: bike 2018 to PA IPL 243 S. Allen St. #337, State College, PA 16801)

 

THANK YOU
 to our 2018 SILVER sponsor Sun Directed,

and to our 2018
BRONZE sponsors:
PHEW!
The Weimer Group
Exact Solar
richards | stover group  and Freeze / Thaw Cycles

Want more?
Read Dorothy’s past profiles
from 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017