Day 58: This morning, David Daniel took Ron and I on a walking tour of his family’s beautiful wooded property, populated by panthers, bears, wild boar, deer and old growth hardwood forest. Their property is interlaced by three pristine, spring fed creeks that the pipeline would cut right through. David drinks out of his streams now but wouldn’t think of doing it with a tar sands pipeline there. What confidence would you have in a U.S. State Department that says 1.7 million gallons spilling daily from Keystone XL without triggering their leak detection system is considered acceptable (http://tinyurl.com/7t39w8o)?
This statement from David drives home what’s really at stake: “This is our homestead. It’s all we have. We’ve put every penny into this and it’s all we have to leave our daughter and we want to leave her the best… the disrespect for our lives and the life of our daughter… is unacceptable.” Watch for this “walk in the woods” YouTube video to be posted soon.
As if our walk in the woods wasn’t enough to reflect on for the rest of the day, 92-year old pipeline fighter Furman Boles was eager to see us again, and me him, before we left town, so we met in town for breakfast to learn more from this wise, local elder. Furman, who still gets around everywhere on his own, insisted on getting in the rocket trike, and I believe would have pedaled to Tyler himself if I had let him. Don’t miss the YouTube video of Furman in the trike.
On the way to Tyler, stopped into the Wood County Democrat in Quitman, TX for a newspaper interview. Then rolled on to Mineola, for an on-the-spot interview with The Mineola Monitor. Rolling up to the office of the Monitor, passed the Community Care Center, whose staff stopped me to ask if I would be willing to show the trike to their elderly residents. So I rolled the trike right into their meeting hall, to the seeming delight of everyone there. That’s the thing I love the most about this little yellow trike: it makes people happy.
By then, with only 37 miles on the day, was running late for a scheduled 4:30 interview with the Tyler Morning Telegraph, so David Daniel and Ron, who had driven ahead to retrieve Ron’s bike from the bike shop where it was being repaired, met me on the side of the road and shuttled me the rest of the way into town. Tomorrow, the ride will launch at the same spot to continue the journey south. Here’s another good local story on the ride, this time from Antlers, OK: http://tinyurl.com/cftbqe5. We’re countering TransCanada’s propaganda, one small town at a time.