Kate Rawles is one of the many impressive people who form The Adventure Syndicate.
She cycled across the United States to engage people in climate change and is now about to take on South America with biodiversity as her theme.
But first she needs a bike…
Can you help build a Bamboo bike for The Life Cycle?
‘The next wave of explorers should seek to protect something beautiful rather than conquer it.’
– Brigid Delaney in the Guardian, 1/9/16
Help crowdfund Kate’s bamboo bicycle
I love cycling, especially in big mountains. And I’ve been lucky enough to do quite a few long hilly rides, over the years. Over the years I’ve become increasingly passionate about something else too – the potential to use these (relatively!) adventurous journeys as a way of raising awareness and inspiring action on our major environmental issues. So I’m about to head off to South America with a bamboo bicycle. The aim of The Life Cycle is to cycle from Costa Rica to Cape Horn, following the spine of the Andes and exploring biodiversity: what it is, what’s happening to it, why that matters and, above all, what can be done to protect it. I’ll be building the bike myself – next week! – (with help from the wonderful folks at The Bamboo Bicycle Club.)
The Life Cycle is an ‘adventure plus’ follow up to The Carbon Cycle – a ride from Texas to Alaska following the spine of the Rockies that focussed on climate change. (A new-look second edition of The Carbon Cycle book is coming out shortly with Word Power Books, incidentally. Great for Christmas presents!) I think we’ve more or less got climate change as a society now. Even if we’re not yet quite doing enough about it, good things are happening on that front. But biodiversity loss, every bit as important, is much less in the news. I aim to help change that. And have a fantastic time in the hills too of course. And the bamboo bike? Well, I want to keep the ethos of the bike in keeping with the aims of the trip, as far as possible. Bamboo has a lower carbon footprint than steel. The bamboo will come from the UK. And I’m crossing the Atlantic, with the bike, on a cargo ship rather than a plane….. Meanwhile, any help with the crowdfunder hugely appreciated. This is an issue that effects all of us on our beautiful, beautiful planet.
There’s more info about the trip and it’s aims on the crowdfunder site, and on my website, where you’ll also be able to follow the journey: http://www.outdoorphilosophy.
