After a recent financial windfall, I've finally been able to accomplish some things I've wanted to do for years. One item on my list is Cascade Bicycle Club's Red-Bell Century, a one hundred-mile fund-raising ride from Marymoor Park in Redmond to Boundary Bay Brewery in Bellingham.
World Bicycle Relief provides bicycles to people in poor communities in Africa. If you check out the WBR website, you'll find stories of kids who had to walk hours each day to and from school; with a bicycle they could ride in half the time and save their energy for studying. Parents who could use a bicycle to take products to market, and come home with food and milk, or carry heavy water cans from a well instead of sending their kids on foot. Nurses and aid workers who could travel by bicycle to visit patients and families in distant rural areas.
I know that poverty in America is very different from poverty in Africa, but I've spent enough time plodding to and from low-wage jobs on foot to know how much easier it becomes to get around, to just get by, with a bicycle. Working in low-paid retail, restaurant or pink-collar jobs, I couldn't support a car. The first time I sold my car at an auto-auction I got enough money to cover rent and bills for a couple of months, then had to accept the first minimum-wage job I could get. For a year I walked four miles home after 10pm, and eight miles on Sundays when there was no bus service at all, until I got a better job offer.
Several years later, after another spell of unemployment, I couldn't afford to repair or insure my car. Knowing I couldn't last long limping around town on foot, I bought a used bicycle and junked the car. It was the beginning of a going-on-ten-year total life-style change. I still love my bicycle. It's carried me to work and school, on century rides and tours, and on scenic local day-trips. It's strengthened my knees and kept my weight, blood pressure and heart-rate down, and taught me patience, self-reliance, maturity and more.
I've donated enough money to World Bicycle Relief to cover my fund-raising minimum, but I'm writing to ask you to contribute to the cause. According to the WBR website, $134 is enough for one bicycle, and $50 buys tools to assemble and maintain bikes, but any amount helps. And 77% of the money raised goes to providing bikes or training in bike maintenance and repair, not to administration or event costs. Here is a link to my fund-raising page: http://worldbicyclerelief.akaraisin.com/2014redbell100/FerndaleAnna
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