by Mario Wyon
Most recently I was living in southern Mexico near Guatemala, in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.
I gave notice at my jobs, my house, and my community. I meditated on the idea of biking for 350 miles in Arizona. I surrendered to the wave of energy and opened my heart to the possibility of just doing my best, with the hope that it would be enough.
And, thankfully, it was.
The team met in Phoenix and then set off for Flagstaff, AZ. There we learned about the struggles of Native people, and shared the team’s visions for the bike tour.
We were warmly received and slept at the community media center, where our first speaking event was slated to be held. The spirit of solidarity between the ten of us helped set the tone for the trip. We knew the trip would be challenging, to say the least, but I sensed we would fulfill our vision for the trip.
Such optimism was key, as on day one I crossed the threshold for longest bike ride I’ve ever completed.
Rolling into our campsite in Cottonwood, dark had descended, and I realized this trip would be a mixture of physical, social, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual challenges. I had a unique appreciation for the strength, courage, and knowledge that each individual had already displayed while biking. I felt equally assured about our collective strengths, as well.
Day two was a huge physical challenge.
Daniel Kim, our bike mechanic, was a great coach and helped me to set a realistic pace for that day’s long, energy sapping uphill climb: almost 3,000 feet.
It took around four hours before we began dropping 2,000 feet into Prescott. On the final few hours before reaching the town, my knees gave out. Minnie McMahon, another of our crew, was waiting for me and suggested I call the support vehicle.
I needed no convincing.
Nia Robinson, our support vehicle driver appeared shortly after calling and we were all in Prescott a short while later.
On day three, I led a group communication exercise with a dyad, sharing our “life-story.”
After, we partnered up and then shared with the group one hope and one concern for the rest of the trip. It was helpful to focus on how we were communicating, especially since most of our attentions had been focused on pushing ourselves physically, but also taking care of ourselves in the process.
Wickenburg to Phoenix was a hot stretch through saguaros and billboards. That night we spoke at the Rusty Spoke, a bike co-op with a “volunteer-run” feeling to it. We shared stories, food, and music, stoking old connections and sparking new ones.
Day four was a rest day.
We spoke at Phoenix College, and the presentations were informative and inspiring. Nia Robinson and Jesse Sanes fleshed out the climate change/environmentalist arguments that counter the rhetoric of white nationalists infiltrating the environmental movement, while also integrating race, class, and history into their analysis of contemporary environmental challenges.
One of the biggest pieces of new information for me was that the global human population is actually stabilizing and is not growing exponentially. I had thought, like so many, that we were reaching carrying capacity; however, the human population is not the most urgent threat to the environment. Other environmental crises such as the amount of carbon parts per million in the atmosphere seem to be the biggest causes for climate change, not the amount of people on the earth.
Soon after, sadly, Nia received the bad news that she had to return early to complete a final for a college class, a final she had tried to reschedule. At this point, I was dealing with my own struggles: my knees were giving me more problems, but I stepped up to be the driver for the rest of our trip. If this would have to be the case, I thought to myself, I would be the best damn driver for the group that I could be.
Day five, we were back on our bikes.
And we biked and biked and biked.
And then biked some more. Our goal was Florence. Along the trip we had met many people from diverse walks of life and perspectives around what we were doing. The majority of our reception was positive and sincerely interested.
One of the most interesting and random encounters we experience occurred in a café/bar at the edge of Florence, where we met two lawyers working with an immigrants rights legal assistance organization. We chopped it up that night on the patio of the café under the glow of white Christmas lights and the bright lights of a men’s detention and processing center owned by C.C.A. (Corrections Corporations of America), which was blazingly visible down the road.
With that backdrop, our conversations were a sobering reminder of why we were on this bike tour.
After dinner we watched a police car pull a civilian car over just passed the café. Someone explained, “You know what they say: ‘came to Arizona on vacation, and left on probation’.” This touch of the dark humor captured both our acknowledgement of the bitter reality we live in and the sweet hope we carried in our hearts.
On day six, I continued my stint behind the wheel.
It was a long and hot stretch from Florence to Tucson, and in total I had biked over 150 miles. Even though some of us had a few scrapes and bruises, a little delirium from exhaustion, funny sweat stains, messy hair, and sun burns, we concluded our 350 mile bike ride in good spirits by arriving in Tucson to speak briefly with people from “No More Deaths” and others from the Tucson’s biking community.
No one asked for a party or trophies. We had made it.
Today, I am excited to see what will come next, and hopefully others will organize bike tours such as ours in communities around the country. I like to think that we threw down to do something with the odds stacked against us and that our efforts have sent ripples.
Surely though, our commitments to social justice work have transformed both our inner selves and our visions for a more compassionate, peaceful, and conscious world. “Biking Beyond Bigotry Arizona 2011” will not simply fade away as beautiful memories; our experiences are an adventure that will serve as a model for an interdisciplinary approach to engaging and eroding bigoted political movements.
For me, our greatest achievement was immersing ourselves in Arizona’s political context—the more we pedaled, the further we traveled, the more we learned. That, and getting closer to the folks on our bike tour team.
_______________________________________________________________
Mario Wyon is an elementary school teacher with passions for travel and social justice._______________________________________________________________
This is the fifth blog post in an ongoing series written by riders who participated in the recent Biking Beyond Bigotry bicycling tour. From April 28th to May 5th, ten individuals from across the nation pedaled over 350 miles to speak out against the greening of hate. Along their route from Flagstaff to Tucson, Arizona, the riders spoke with members of local communities across their route. Their messages included immigration myths and facts around population stabilization, the anti-immigrant movement’s attempts to “green” bigotry, and steps that environmentalists can take to counter such attacks. The initiative of this speaking tour was to directly counter the greening of hate through awareness, education, and the formation of alliances to defeat racism disguised as environmentalism.
_______________________________________________________________