2011 Ride

Fighting for West Port Arthur’s Children

Day 69: Pedaled the final real leg of the journey today, a flat and fairly quick 21 miles from Beaumont to Port Arthur. A few miles outside of Beaumont, a large hawk appeared seemingly out of nowhere and alighted on a utility wire not 20 feet away, wings spread wide and looking right down at me. Reminded me of the hawk in Boulder that suddenly appeared and helped inspire my ride last year. Very auspicious sign. A light rain was falling as I pedaled, which seemed to intensify the sulfur smell of the surrounding oil refineries. Made it to downtown West Port Arthur, with only a mile or two now left to go.

Today was dedicated to a group of West Port Arthur children who Goldman Prize winner Hilton Kelley had lined up to see the trike and learn about the Keystone XL pipeline. We met in a community room at the Prince Hall government housing project — overshadowed by the nation’s largest cluster of oil refineries and chemical plants — where people have been suffering in silence for far too long. Where we met was right next door to the Carver Terrace housing project, where Hilton was born in a back bay room. We had about 20 local kids there, a group small enough that each one got to take a short ride in the trike. VERY fun. One of the big “kids” even took the trike for a spin. Look for a wonderful YouTube video of Hilton Kelley showing how its done.

Afterwards, we went inside and did some Q&A with the children. Not surprisingly, most of the questions were about the rocket trike, but I think some of what Hilton and I said about why we don’t want tar sands coming to their community also sunk in. One of the older kids, Jeremiah Williams, said he wanted to talk to me, so I pulled up a chair. With a look of disbelief on his face, he quietly asked me why I did it (that is, rode from Canada to West Port Arthur). He listened with rapt attention as I told him, then handed me a wrist bracelet that read “LAUGH.” I’m wearing it now. Balances out well the jail wrist bracelet I’ve been wearing since I was arrested outside the White House this summer, along with 1,252 others, protesting against Keystone XL.

Then Hilton and his wife, Marie, generously treated me to a wonderful Cajun-style dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, where we learned that we shared a mutual friend in common, one of my ride sponsors, Graham Hill, from Boulder. So of course we had to give him a call. The older I get, the smaller the world seems to get, and I really like that.

Am writing this around 1:00am — one last late night preparing for tomorrow’s end of ride media event. I want to thank Bruce Walker and my amazing friend, Paul Alexander, for their herculean efforts to alert the media. Here’s one more newspaper story on the ride that ran in Oklahoma: http://tinyurl.com/7my8nlu.

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