The Bluegrass and Beyond

How’s this for a summer adventure: Dozens of young people are riding bicycles across the country and meeting in Washington. There, they plan to lobby their members of Congress and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on climate-change and environmental sustainability issues, such as bicycle transportation.

Six of the travelers, ages 16-21, arrived in Lexington from Shelbyville on Monday afternoon. They had started in Pueblo, Colo., a month ago, averaging about 50 miles a day with all of their gear loaded on their bikes.

The trip is called The Trek to Reenergize America, www.trektoreenergize.org, and this group is chronicling its trip on its own Web site, www.fromthesaddle.org.

“We’re excited to be here,” said Remy Franklin, 18, of Taos, N.M., who will be starting Dartmouth College as a freshman in the fall.

Franklin and his five companions were camping Monday night in the Southland neighborhood, in the yard of Tim Buckingham, a staff member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and a member of Lexington’s Bike Polo league. Buckingham invited some of his cycling friends over and put on a cookout for the visitors.

The travelers planned to meet up with other groups Saturday in Charleston, W.Va., and together make their way to Washington by July 26.

Franklin said the group planned many of its overnight camping stops, but not all of them. “A number of times, we’ve rolled into towns and just met people,” he said. “We’ve been pretty well taken care of. Everyone has been so friendly when they find out what we’re doing.”

The group found itself in Louisville last weekend during the annual Forecastle Festival, which featured Widespread Panic, The Black Crowes and other musicians interested in environmental activism. The travelers didn’t know about the festival, but a Louisville host called the promoter, who gave them free tickets.

“People are so generous to us,”  said Lucy Richards, 20, of Durango, Colo., who will be a freshman at Stanford University in the fall. “We meet tons of people every day and tell them about what we’re doing. There’s so much interest in the environment and climate change.”

Travelers Lucy Richards and Remy Franklin do a video interview with Shane Tedder, sustainability coordinator at the University of Kentucky. At right is Brad Flowers of Lexington.

This entry was posted on July 14, 2009 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Bicycles, Environment, Ideas, Lexington, People, Politics, cycling, music. Tagged: Bicycles, cycling, Environment, sustainability, trek to reenergize america. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.