My experience with the cross-country Ride For Honesty in Arizona.

Written by Found Zero Date: 07-07-2009 Subject: Activism

First off, let me say my experience was short and sweet. There's my odd work schedule, there's the inevitable varueries of the timing and schedule of a bike ride and twice as inevitable communication challenges. By the time I established a firm idea of where they were and where they were going to be, I was able to jet up and catch them in Ash Fork, a tiny little town on I-40 West of Flagstaff.

Now I say "them" and "they" because Mike the Liberty Rider isn't alone on his journey through Arizona. Three Arizona activists and a motorhome accompany him. So as I'm exiting the highway at Ash Fork I raise Ed on the cell and Ed says they are about 11 miles East of Ash Fork, so I have some waiting to do until they get here.

Right then Tom Costanzo goes pedalling along right in front of me on the highway headed West bound. So I get back on the other way, overtake Tom, pull over and talk to him for a bit. He'd broken out in front of the pack and was placidly cranking out the miles like he was on his way to the corner store. I tell him the plan is to hook up for a while back there in Ash Fork but Tom says he's just gonna keep pedalling to Seligman. So we make our good byes, I reverse direction again, back over to Ash Fork and it don't take too long before the guys come cranking on in with mechanical difficulties of different sorts.

But that give Mike the chance to do what he does on these missions which is to walk around and talk to everybody in sight. Which in Ash Fork didn't take too long. So we spent some time at the next highway interchange and talked about his experiences which have been overwhelmingly positive. Except this Southwesterly wind that all the sudden kicked up and it's now hitting these guys right in the face. The descent from Flagstaff going West on I-40 should have been like a 9 mile roller coaster that's all down hill. The boys should have been burning brakes down 6% grades but as it was they had to pedal to go down hill.

With that, Ed and Mike jumped up on their bicycles and pedalled away to catch up with Tom in Seligman where the motorhome driven by another Tom was supposed to resdesvous.

That was it for me and this liberty ride, I didn't take part so much as watch it go by but it was worth the time driving in the pickmup truck. Don't know whens the next time I'll see him.