Ideological pedal pushers

>> Bicycle trekkers hope to raise money and awareness

by JOHN EDMONDS

While the closest many Montrealers get to real adventure is either in bed or on the other side of the TV screen, our city has recently become a pit stop of sorts for a variety of adventurous types. In the last few weeks, two groups of long-distance bicycle trekkers have pedaled through town, and another is making plans to depart soon.

Pole-to-Pole 2000, led by professional adventurer Martyn Williams, came through town last week with seven young people from around the world, part of a journey from the North to South Poles, by foot and ski when cycling is not an option.

Another group, Cycling for Kindness, led by 53-year-old Vancouver-based compassion promoter Brock Tully, will cycle 16,000 kilometres around North America trying to put a happy face on life.

And, busily trying to raise funds for a follow-up to an adventurous year spent in South America with the "Rainbow Caravan," Madeleine Thomas and Miriam Moufide-Jones are gearing up for an ecologically inspired bicycle trip from Panama to Mexico this November.

Why do they all do it? What good do such trips accomplish? And should we give them some of our money, earned the hard way in the concrete jungle these restless spirits have been clever enough to escape?

Step by step

B.C.-based Martyn Williams made a name for himself as an adventurer by being the first person to lead successful expeditions to the North and South Poles and to Mount Everest--although he says a case of food poisoning kept him from attaining the summit of the world's highest mountain himself. Now he's leading a bunch of 20 year olds from pole to pole, in an effort to help protect the natural environment which has been his professional workplace.

"After leading expeditions for 30 years, two things struck me. One is how almost anything is possible if you move step by step. And the other is how we're degrading our natural environment," Williams says. "Sometimes environmental problems seem overwhelming. But if you apply an expedition attitude towards them you realize that they're not."

Williams' plan is to raise awareness about ecological issues by touching the lives of students along his route, through school talks and media events. Says Williams: "We've talked to over 5,000 young people so far. About 1,000 have made pledges of action to help the environment. I can't say if they'll all honour these pledges, but it's a step that they hadn't taken before."

Williams says the group doesn't currently have the finances to complete the journey. "But as you might have gathered, I'm not afraid of taking risks. I'm sure the money will come from somewhere."

Pedaling kindness

When Brock Tully was at UBC back in 1970, he set out on a 16,000 km bike trek around the U.S. and Mexico to rediscover himself. "I had lost touch with my life. I was just going through the motions. I covered it up with drinking and being the life of the party, but actually I was close to suicide," Tully says.

On that trip he found that, despite all the nasty news about the Vietnam War and other global suffering, most people treated him with real kindness. He says it caused an inner epiphany that led to a career of telling "stories from the heart": first a series of best-selling books called the Reflections Series, and then an annual event called Clam Chowder for the Soul, a symposium of tales of inner triumph over pain and illness.

Now, 30 years later, he and his RV-driving road crew have clocked in about 11,000 km of a repeat tour, visiting cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, pushing kindness as relentlessly as the pedals of his bike. However, Tully says he's about $40,000 in the red for his cycling trip, due to end in Vancouver on September 17. "So I don't mind that journalists ask the question of whether I financially benefit from this because I can answer 'no' with a clear conscience," he says. But he does have one problem with the news media. "It's hard to get attention for something positive like this. But if I went out right now and murdered someone I'd be on the front pages tomorrow."

Chicas del Rainbow

Miriam Moufide-Jones and Madeleine Thomas--both 20-something non-smoking vegetarians from Montreal--just came back from a couple of years of gutsy low-cost travel through South America. They had a good time--and perhaps even found their vocation in life.

When they were in the Amazon rainforest attending the Boi meu Bumba festival, they met members of the Rainbow Caravan, a multihued bus which has been travelling around South America since 1996. Profiled in an HBO documentary last year, the caravan is based in the Mexican ecovillage of Huehue Coyotl, founded in 1982 by hippies and yippies from the '60s and '70s who neither burned out nor--as Moufide-Jones puts it-- "became asshole yuppies."

They visit Indian villages, festivals and the homes of the Rainbow-minded to do street theatre, give workshops on everything from Mayan religion to nutrition, and participate in spiritual gatherings.

After experiences with magical Indians, bloodthirsty Colombians and crazy smugglers, the two women now plan to cycle through Central America, passing on their Rainbow lore at ecological projects and Indian villages.

Does a year on the Rainbow trail qualify two CEGEP graduates to give workshops to Latino peasants? "There were fully-qualified people on the bus with degrees in nutrition, psychology and computer science. They trained us in the material," says Thomas. "We're also both graduates of New School at Dawson, which taught us how to facilitate workshops. I facilitated a couple of courses myself."

And--other than out of kindness--why should people financially support the daring duo?

"Just the fact of what we are doing will make a difference in showing what people can do, what women can do," she says. "And the workshops in nutrition and ecology will definitely help people."

And, in words that could apply to all the world's adventurers, Thomas says: "People might want to support us just for the pure pleasure of living vicariously through us." :



For Pole to Pole info: e-mail mwpole2000@bcinternet.net, surf www.pole2pole2000.com, or call (250) 395-1715

For Kind Acts info: call 1-800-663-2331, or surf www.kindacts.net

For Wommyn Road Warriors info: e-mail cosmictour@hotmail. com, or call 482-9541

more news...