Cool Planet

Anne Stephenson

By Anne Stephenson
Campus Outreach Coordinator
Clean Air-Cool Planet

Anne fills us in on the last leg of her bicycle voyage to the Washington, D.C. with Brita Climate Ride.

Well, I’m cheating a little and finishing this blog on day 6.  I’m with Amanda in Pennsville New Jersey and I have to say I am SO MUCH BETTER at typing on her laptop than I am on my IPHONE.

Here’s what I have to tell you all:

1. Biking is super fun.  Really.  I had so much fun.  And I learned a lot about riding during the ride.  I learned a super easy way to change a flat (ended up with two, both from speed bumps in the parking lot!), I learned to not just sit on my breaks going down hill and let myself go faster than I usually do – and didn’t break my neck!  I got up to 33 mph which was as brave as I got.  I did not learn how to sit up and not hold on while riding.  I’m not sure it serves much purpose beyond stretching but it looks really cool so I’ll work on that skill before next year.  It would probably make me a better surfer, don’t you think?  I fell three times, only one while actually moving.  It’s tough clipping out of your bike when you’re spaced out and tired and mostly I fell totally stopped, switching my directions!  No harm besides a few scrapes and a couple of mysterious bruises I don’t remember getting.  The third time I fell it was in front of the entire German Transatlantic Climate Bridge team and thankfully I didn’t make them fall over.  I could have been responsible for a terrible international incident!  Their team had an extraordinary skill – opening two beer bottles at the same time by leveraging them against each other.  That’s on my list of things to learn too!
2. The Danish Ambassador was our guest speaker on the last day and rode with us for the last two.  I rode with him for approximately half of a mile until he totally kicked my butt and took off.  He’s an amazing cyclist and was such an interesting and funny speaker.  I hope you’ll look at the notes of his talk.
3. We also heard from Mikael Colville-Andersen. Colville-Andersen is the man behind Copenhangenize and Copenhagen Cycle Chic — two blogs that give readers an insider look at the policies, fashion, and trends of the world’s most bike-friendly city.  Check out his photos of bike commuting in Copenhagen – they’re amazing.  He shared a great lecture and photos and talked about thinking of bike commuting less as cycling and more as bike culture – or citizens on bikes.  Thinking of my own shyness going to bike stores, I think he’s right!  You don’t need to be a cyclist to ride your bike to the store…
4. Ambassador Petersen’s participation was such a powerful statement about the international community’s interest in US Climate legislation before the COP.  And he invited his ambassador colleagues to join us.  We were joined for the last three miles of our ride by the Ambassadors of Chile, Luxembourg, Lichteinstein, and Germany.  Isn’t that amazing?
5. Some notes on two more famous climate riders:  Alison Gannett was on our ride.  She’s the founder of “Save our Snow” and is a well-known sustainability and carbon management consultant.   But her third day job is being an amazing daredevil free skiing champion – like a “dropped out of a helicopter and speeding down mountains in front of avalanches” kind of day job.  You need to see this YouTube clip of her skiing:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUQtJS1pAk.  And No Impact Man.  Yes, he was on the second half of our ride and lectured evening three.  So, my colleagues know that I was incredibly skeptical of his project.  I mean the name alone is irritating….  Now that I’ve met him and heard him speak, I remain skeptical but less irritated.  Anyway, he spoke of his stunt as one that created a platform for him to tell a story about personal action and solutions to climate change to Americans that haven’t yet become part of our movement.  When thinking of it as, well, a communications strategy, I think his project is a little less pointless.  That said, he spoke about reaching out to conservative Americans on one hand, and about the value of the “meta” of his project and launching it on the Huffington Post on the other.  Huffington Post?  Meta?  I am so embarrassed that I have used the word “meta” in my graduate school past but am very thankful that until No Impact Man, I hadn’t heard it since I left the University of Chicago.  Gag. Anyway, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a funny little essay about No Impact Man and Walden the other week and I really enjoyed it.  Here it is:  http://www.newyorker.com.  I don’t think Colin appreciated my Elizabeth Kolbert joke while we were chatting… but who can call himself No Impact Man and not have a sense of humor?  Wood Turner is bringing Colin to Water Street Books in Exeter soon and obviously we’ll have to take a work field trip.
6. Senator Shaheen welcomed us to the Capitol and mentioned how influential the carbon coalition was in the election and how important Local Energy Committees are to local solutions to Climate Change.  So exciting to think of New Hampshire as a leader in this legislation.  Senator Gregg – that means you, too, dude.
7. Climate Action Plans at Colleges and Universities.  I was on the ride with half-a-dozen D.C. based carbon management consultants who first gained valuable low-carbon management experience doing climate action planning on campus.  Josh Lasky (now at Cadmus) started the sustainability office at GWU and knows far more about the calculator than I do.  Asher Burns-Burg (now at ICF) was one of many Middlebury alums on our ride who were part of the team that created such an aggressive climate action plan there.  Anyway, I’ve said it before but I really mean it – these projects at colleges and universities remain the best (and frankly one of the only) ways that students can get carbon management experience.  Alums of the calculator and this work like Josh and Asher are in really high demand in the private sector!  I left the ride thinking that the Fellowship program is truly one of the most important things we can do as an organization.  And that Claire, Jenn, and I, as well as the rest of the campus sustainability community, will have to work hard to ensure that students and courses remain central to the climate action process as more and more consulting firms undertake CAPs for schools as contract work.
8. And that’s all she wrote!  It’s 5:30 am and I’m pretty ready for my sore legs to let me sleep through the night.  A special thanks to Amanda for being my special assistant on this last leg of the trip – it’s amazing to have a ride home.  And my friends Lisa, Jodi, and Amy were my special assistants getting to NYC.  I never would have made it to Central Park with tent and bike without them.  Thanks too to have won the internal contest to represent CA-CP.  I claim a spot on next year’s team too!

This entry was posted on October 1, 2009 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Fundraising, New Generation. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: bike ride, Brita Climate Ride, Climate Ride, cycling, Fundraising