I have received the following question:

“Please, I hope nobody takes offense to this. I’m not trying to start any arguments but I have to ask, “How many mouths could have been fed with the monies being used for this crusade?” When talking about raising awareness, I don’t believe there are too many people around that don’t know about world hunger.”

Thanks for tuning in and subscribing to the blog. This question is valid and no offense taken. My response is an open letter to you and those with the same curious mind.

I used to make fun of an organization called “Bladder Control Awareness Group” and I used to say well, if you have a bladder control problem, I’m sure you’re aware of it! It was funny then, but I really didn’t know squat about that issue.

Awareness is not just knowing, but doing. When I was a kid, my mother always told me that if I don’t finish my food, some kid in Africa will die, and I used to think how preposterous that statement was. We as individuals are responsible for what we do, whether it’s what we do at home or at large like voting to elect our servants (AKA government).

We have neglected and for most parts forgotten our rights. Our rights have become temporary privileges that our so-called servants take away whenever they feel like it. If you ask 10 people what their political views are, 9 out of 10 will claim to be either Republican or Democrat. This is a country which was supposed to be ran by the people for the people, but it’s being run by Corporations for the Corporations.

When you go to a supermarket, there are over 100 brands of cereal, 50 different types of soft drink, 200 different brews and there is even a whole aisle devoted to tampons. But when it comes to political parties, we are only allowed to choose between two. This is not a freedom of choice; it’s an illusion of choice. The illusion that you have the right to choose between Pepsi and Coke, Captain Crunch or Corn Flakes, but in presidential debates there are only two parties to entertain the American public while they forget how badly they are getting screwed with red, white and blue bullshit being shoved down their throats.

I have no problem with Democrats or Republicans or any other party as long as they do their job which is serving the people, but do they? I’m probably coming across as a hippy dreamer or a tree huger but I’m not. I’m not against guns (I have quite a collection myself), hell I’m not even against killing people. BUT and this is a very important BUT: when it’s justified, not by the greedy corporations, but by our constitution, our true civil laws and our morals.

Let’s put the rest of the world aside for a minute and concentrate on our own country. There used to be activists who stood up to corporate greed, wrong doings and out-of-line politicians; that was 40 years ago. Speaking of politicians, in the Roman era, being a politician was an honor, a noble position to be a servant of the people, but now days, being a politician is worse than being a crook – because they ARE.

There are over 50,000 lobbyists on Capitol Hill as we speak, lobbying for their corporate bosses. They don’t care about you, they don’t care about me, they don’t care about us. All they care about is their own pocket and their own power.

People of modest means, poor, middle-class, hard working people of any race continue to elect these rich crooks to the office with hope of CHANGE but refuse to question their integrity and qualifications.

Change: \ˈchānj\. a) to make different in some particular b) to make radically different c) to become different

Maybe my dictionary is wrong or I can’t see the “change,” but I’ll let you be the judge. Have you seen any? Change for greater good that is.

One in every six adults in this country doesn’t have health insurance including me, or perhaps you too. There are 13 million children suffering from hunger in our own country. We have 680,000 homeless in this country. We have a 64% obesity rate with over 80 billion dollars in medical expenditures. The unemployment rate has rocketed to 9.5% in 2010 and that’s just the federal figures conducted by our trustworthy government, the more realistic figure is 16.6% nationally. We handed a small chunk of change, 700 billion dollars, on a silver platter to our financial criminals no question asked. If that wasn’t enough, our heroes of the auto industry took 17.4 billion dollars back home on their private jets to “save the auto makers jobs”, visit Michigan and Illinois to see how many auto workers are left. Journalists, bloggers or any schmuck with a reputable voice is forbidden to say another word about the Gulf fiasco, yet we concentrate on our “biggest issues”: abortion, gay rights, gun control and foreign policy. Good thing we have figures like Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro to pick on, otherwise the American people would actually realize there was something beyond wrong in their own homeland.

Our system has and will continue to produce a generation of obedient workers who are just smart enough to push the buttons and run the machines and dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. That’s against their interest. We are dedicated to fight street crimes given that street isn’t Wall Street. So it’s not “change” that we are seeing, for lack of a better word, it’s diversion.

And we know what happens when some brave souls stand up to these fascists, they get imprisoned, beaten and disappear. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is reality. Look back to Pittsburgh just a year ago. Water cannons, sound cannons, tear gas, batons, these are the instruments I am quite familiar with; it’s a daily life in Iran. But Pittsburgh is not in Iran, it’s in the United States of America. That’s what they got for trying to voice themselves peacefully around the G20 summit. Maybe it is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

Next time your friendly neighborhood senator comes around for more votes, don’t be fooled by their label, Democrat, Republican, Independent, whatever he is, hold his feet to the fire. Put away your political brand loyalty and be loyal to your family and community. Demand your rights, your hard-earned money, your freedom. They are your servants not vice versa. Demand equal opportunity to live, demand a shelter over your head, demand three meals a day for your kids, demand free healthcare for all. If you don’t, they will happily give it to their friends and supporters on Wall Street and Capitol Hill. Know your rights, demand and take them with vengeance.

Some of you might say mind your own business, ride your damn bike and take care of the hunger issue, don’t get involved in politics. Hunger doesn’t come out of nowhere, it comes out of poverty and poverty is a bastard child of this fascism. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: imagine all the money spent on nuclear weapons and meaningless wars each year, all the embargoes and sanctions imposed upon innocent people – trillions of dollars. If we spent that money feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, not one soul excluded, it would pay for itself many times over.

Awareness is knowing and doing, otherwise it’s just a headline. A trendy buzzword. Meaningless. We are too concerned with our daily lives and the so-called “American dream” that we forget to look behind the smoke and see the fire. To see that in our own neighborhoods, there are hundreds of kids going hungry every night while we fill our shopping carts with useless gadgets and imitation food to feel better and get closer to the dream. We don’t have the power; we ARE the power.

You ask questions, I admire that. This is what everyone should do. No one should be afraid to ask. It is with questions that we get answers. Give us a helping hand. Let’s make it happen together. I hope to see a day that we shouldn’t have to call it awareness anymore. We will call it reality.

~To know and not to do is not to know

First I would like to thank Frank Perreault of the GS Resources for his great support and generous donation.

As we stated earlier, we are still on the fundraising tour in the U.S. and also putting into place details for the charity rides. It helps to have a home base to work on the details and also looking to avoid tornados and flooding due south and east, we decide to keep riding north to my hometown of Helena, MT.

We continued on into Wyoming. The winds were with us again, a seemingly ever-present part of our trip by now. But each time they seemed to blow more viciously. When we would stop for breaks, it was difficult to walk in the wind. Sometimes Cynthia takes pictures as we whiz by some pretty scene on the bike, but the rabid winds hamper those photo-opt moments greatly, so mostly she just hangs on tight to my back. We have a very limited (close to non-existent) budget for hotel stays and try to camp, couchsurf, or get sponsored stays when we can. But with nightfall upon us, feeling exhausted and windblown, Cynthia put us up in a hotel with a free breakfast. After a good night’s rest and a hot breakfast in our bellies we headed for Teton and Yellowstone National Park.

The road through the park is kind of a shortcut but living in Montana has taught me a thing or two in the past; never trust the weatherman, and be ready for snow even in July! I was hesitant to take that route, but since Cynthia has never been to that part of the country and was really looking forward to it, I went for it anyway. After all it was sunny, and I didn’t want to chicken out prematurely.

The weather started out to be promising, but then all bet’s were off and we had the most intense, crazy riding day I’ve ever experienced: driving rain, sleet, snow, hail, poor visibility, freezing our assess off, you name it. The irony is that I was hoping to find “good” weather by heading north, and on this day, we happened to be riding in the coldest spot in the U.S.  Unfortunately, due to the weather, all we could manage was a brief drive-by tour of Yellowstone, but Cynthia was elated nonetheless at each new mountain peak and animal we encountered. We actually were the only crazy motorcyclists on the road until we reached Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.

At times we rode on with maybe 25 feet of visibility in a complete whiteout. My face was frozen, thanks to my open face helmet. Snow kept plastering my goggles and every time I cleaned them with my wet gloves, it made it worse. I had to take off my goggles to actually see where I was going, and our speed dropped down to 20 mph. Every time we stopped Cynthia was more amazed at the scenery, and I was more apprehensive of the situation. As a matter of fact, it was so cold that I had icicles hanging from my knees, and my cheeks were almost frostbitten despite of my ski mask.

It was pitch black and pouring icy cold rain by the time we made it out of Yellowstone. At a gas station in West Yellowstone, we were told that it would take at least another 2 hours to reach our next couchsurfing destination in Bozeman by way of Hyalite Canyon, and that it would surely be snowing. We sought shelter and Wi-Fi at a McDonalds but couldn’t get a connection. We finally started calling hotels from my GPS and were soon finding out that almost every place in town was sold out! Several places even ran out of food, including McDonalds! We lucked out in getting a last available room at one joint which turned out to be reminiscent of a hotel that would be used in a thriller or horror movie, but at least it was a place to warm up.

The next day we suited up and started off in the rain anxious to get to Helena, MT. As the miles rolled by the sky cleared up, and we drank in the spacious skies of the state that is aptly named the Big Sky Country.  I never imagined that I would be coming full-circle in such a short time since staring my trip, but life has a way of bringing the unexpected, and sometimes it works out better than any plan you could make! Stay tuned!

Early dawn found us packing the bike grateful for a few hours of shut-eye out of the wind. We said good-bye to Paul as he had to head to work and found a Wal-Mart to buy the replacement rack for the bike. Then we camped out at the Golden Arches as per usual, when we need Wi-Fi, to try to find some place to work on the bike. I posted an SOS on the GS Resources forum to see if anyone from the Denver area could help us out. After a few hours we were relieved to get a call from fellow GSer, Tom Kent, who invited us to his home in Littleton, CO.  He met us with lemonade and invited us to his granddaughter, Amberlynn’s birthday party down the street where we met the rest of Tom’s family.

We love meeting new people on our trip. So many people have gone out of their way to help us or to make us feel welcome, and Tom’s family was no exception. Tom and his lovely wife, J’Amy, graciously welcomed us into their home, along with their son, Thomas, and cat, Tweak. They made us feel like part of the family while we were there. We were even able to attend Thomas’s graduation. Congratulations Thomas!

Tom is an airline pilot with a love of restoring old bikes. He has a fully-stocked garage and was even in the process of adding a shop to work on his projects. Soon we were swapping stories and chatting like old buddies. Two heads are often better than one, and as we parleyed ideas for the bike, the original project of fixing the rack for the pannier evolved into a multi-faceted task. A three hour job turned into a 4 days of fabrication.

The main problem with the hillbilly racks was that they were aluminum and were not designed to hold anything more than 10 pounds. They broke from the weld joint every time in the same spot leaving the whole rack useless. The cure to that came from a metal scrap yard where we bought aluminum stocks and sheets to make our braces. Two semi V shape brackets on sides, and two on the top did the job but the aluminum tube of the rack was so thin that you could barely put any force on the bolts. We cut aluminum tubes to go over the bolts and keep the main tube from crushing under the force. To make it even stronger, we fashioned four steel tube braces to go from the engine mounts to the boxes to keep the boxes from swinging left and right. To cap it off, we changed the oil and added two 55W Halogen fog lights to the front to fix the lighting problem.

I lived so long with the pain of the old and bent-up side-stand that I almost forgot what a good side stand would be like. Not any more. Tom is the master of fabrication, and all it took was two aluminum hockey pucks and two machine screws to put an end to that old pain. He even welded the backside of the stand to make it sturdier and now I have a fully functioning side stand. Tom promised me to burn that old block of 2×4 I hauled around for under the stand along with his Harbor Freight Sawzall!

We bid farewell to Denver in the late afternoon with plans to head to Laramie to stay with some couchsurfing hosts there. Taking a scenic route through the Colorado giants, we soon encountered breathtaking views and snow along the road. We entered into the Rocky Mountain National Park enjoying peaks at antelope and elk along the way. We had to go slowly in several sections of the road where there was gravel or there were workman taking down trees ravaged by the rampant beetle kill. The light started fading just as to our dismay, we reached a road barricade with no hope of passing through. There wasn’t a soul in site and the official campgrounds we passed on the way had all been closed. We would have to go a long ways back to make it out of the park and into a town, and at this point I was nervous about hitting an animal in the poor visibility. I’ve already had some close calls in the past in my Jeep and wasn’t eager to press my luck, as one wayward deer would likely make road kill out of us on a bike. We tried to call our couchsurfers in Laramie to let them know we can’t make it and soon realized that neither one of us had cell phone reception. We walked around the hillsides trying to get a signal but the cell phone gods were not on our side.

Deciding to forgo dinner as we were too cold and tired to cook, we pitched camp, making sure to hoist our food up a tree a good distance away in case a hungry bear came around. In the morning we met a couple from Germany who was also waiting for the road to open. They said that it was supposed to open that day with a ceremony to start the season. We are heading up north for Montana for a few days. It’s raining and snowing hard in Teton and Yellowstone so we have to make our call…

As we rode up the 25N, we felt a little bit like we were in the twilight zone, each of us privately musing over our recollection of US geography and wondering how in the world Las Vegas could be on our route. Hadn’t we left that back West, miles ago? But sure enough, sign after sign kept pointing towards Las Vegas. Turns out there is another Las Vegas, in New Mexico, although this one doesn’t come up in the first five pages of a Google search, if you just search for Las Vegas instead of Las Vegas, NM, but it should given its colorful and storied history.

Las Vegas was established in 1835 after a group of settlers received a land grant from the Mexican government. The town was laid out in the traditional Spanish Colonial style, with a central plaza surrounded by buildings which could serve as fortifications in case of attack. Las Vegas soon prospered as a stop on the Santa Fe Trail. Historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell once claimed, “Without exception there was no town which harbored a more disreputable gang of desperadoes and outlaws than did Las Vegas.” Among the notorious characters were such legends of the Old West as: dentist Doc Holliday and his girlfriend, Big Nose Kate, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Mysterious Dave Mather, Hoodoo Brown, Durango Kid and Handsome Harry the Dancehall Rustler. A number of films were made in this town, and Patrick Swayze, American actor, dancer and singer-songwriter, had a ranch in Las Vegas.

After grabbing some New Mexican grub in Vegas, we headed out into the fierce winds, like 2 bugs on a bull. The wind was blowing around 45-50 mph. and pushing us back and forth all over the highway. Sometime during the ride, the plastic cradle for the GPS which was mounted on the front left side of the bike broke off. Luckily, Chris was able to grab the GPS before it fell and smashed to bits on the highway. We pulled over at a rest stop to get a reprieve from riding in the winds. Chris latched his helmet onto the front left pannier as he had done hundreds of times before, and the rack supporting the pannier sheared completely off and fell to the ground with the pannier.

Thankfully a friendly family traveling in their RV came over to chat and gave us some rope to help strap the box to the rear left pannier. It’s important that the weight on the bike be properly be balanced and distributed so as to ensure the maximum safety while riding. We were already having trouble riding in the wind but after having to re-position the left front pannier to the back, we were wobbling back and forth in the wind.

With miles to go until Denver, Colorado, we were trying to make good time to reach our couch surfing host, Paul Cornelius, but had to ride between 45-65 miles per hour. This slower place made it easier to spot the antelope dotting the plains as we drove by. The sun set gloriously against the mountains, and we still were hours from Denver. We threw on more layers to help beat the wind-chill and pushed on until we arrived exhausted at Paul’s doorstep. Paul opened the door before we even dismounted from the bike and came out to welcome us. Although our stay with him was short, he took the time from his busy schedule to visit with us and share stories about life and travels around the world. He’s traveled all over Central and South America as well as lived in Europe and will be leaving shortly on a back-packing trip to Asia and Africa for the next 2 years. The next morning we lucked out and found the coolest guy on the planet with more tools that I could care for. We’ll be fixing the bike here in Denver and get on the road. Stay tuned!



As great as it is to follow Chris and his ride around the world, I often find myself looking for ways to help the cause without committing years of my life to a journey such as his. The first step is education, but once people realize how huge the issue is, they all too often get discouraged and do nothing, thinking the problem is beyond us. That is not the case at all, and my weekend is proof of that.

In July I am going on a missionary trip to Haiti to help MissionE4 rebuild some schools destroyed during the Earthquake. Part of our groups training for the trip is some teambuilding events and one of them was a “homeless night” where we got together at the Church on Friday and spent the night outside with nothing but the clothes on our backs and a stack of card board boxes to fashion up some shelters with.

This exercise really only touched on the experience but it was done in conjunction with the youth group and served as a great lesson for them as well. My son took part in this event with me and was part of the continued exercise the following day known as the 30 hour famine. Like the homeless night it is designed to give youth a glimpse of what it is like to not have a basic need met and feel even just for a day what other children around the world are feeling day after day.

They reviewed humbling statistics and really had their eyes opened up. Along with the lessons learned, it was a fund raiser to help hungry children around the world through World Vision. I myself was taught a humbling lesson as well when I learned just one of the girls taking part of this event raised a bit over $2,700 for the 30 hour famine through pledges from friends and family. If one 14 year old can do that, surely I can do more.

On Sunday was the walk for hunger in Boston. I put a team together for this last year with the youth group at my previous Church and wanted to continue my support this year. Unfortunately my new church could not participate as they were having a big fundraiser the same day for our Haiti missionary trip so I got a team together of friends and family. The walk for hunger has been going on for over 40 years in Boston and helps fund Project Bread, a non-profit organization that helps fund food programs locally in Massachusetts for hungry families and kids. The walk was 20 miles through Boston on a very hot and sunny day amidst a water shortage due to a broken water main affecting over 2 million residents. Luckily the water stations where supplied with clean spring water and eventually we made it the full 20 miles of the walk with the kids making it a solid 5 miles. In total the event drew 42,000 walkers and raised 3.8 million dollars to help fund Project Bread. Our teams donations may not have been as much as I wanted but it felt great being among so many others just trying to do their part and then seeing how much money was raised between everyone together.

You may read these blogs and agree that something must be done but doubt what you can do as an individual. It will take a lot to change the world, but every little bit helps and collectively we can make a difference. You do not have to dedicate years of your life to ride a motorcycle around the world to help, join me in showing my support through acting locally and giving globally.

Jared Williams, PR Director

The ride to Santa Fe along the Scenic Byway 14 unfolded like a picture-postcard. You couldn’t have ordered a more beautiful day. The layers of endless white clouds billowed around us in every direction. We stopped in the artsy little town of Madrid, which was once a historic mining town and ghost town, for a pit stop, and then continued on until reaching, America’s oldest capital city, Santa Fe.

Santa Fe, or “the City Different,” as it more aptly nicknamed, is loaded with flavor with charming and interesting architecture and art engaging your senses everywhere you look. The city is home to a host of art galleries and museums for art lovers, including the famed Georgia O’Keefe Museum. We landed at the historic Hilton Santa Fe Historic Plaza which has retained some of the original adobe walls of the 350-year old home of Santa Fe’s “first family,” the Ortiz family. Many thanks to Suzanne Lehman at the Hilton Santa Fe for sponsoring our first night in the beautiful hotel.

We are still on our fundraising portion of our expedition before turning south for Argentina. It’s hard to put the word fun in fundraising as taking off helmets and riding gear every five minutes to approach another business is not a pleasant task, but the creative vibe of Santa Fe must have rubbed off on Chris while we were there as he had a eureka moment of EPIC magnitude which has been taking up a lot of time in planning. The plan is to set up a charity ride. But not just ONE charity ride-try 50 simultaneous rides in all 50 states!!! This unprecedented event will take place in late August (stay tuned for the exact date and locations as we sort through this). This ride is a nationally and internationally sponsored event, with lots of cool raffle items and entertainment. We are looking for volunteer ride leaders in every state so if you are interested, please send us an email and we’ll put you on the list.

We would also like to thank Jean Salisbury at Lamplighter Inn and Brian Womach at Holiday Inn of Santa Fe for sponsoring the rest of our accommodations while networking and getting the charity ride off the ground. We enjoyed their clean and comfortable rooms and their top-notch hospitality. We both agreed: Santa Fe, NM is a really cool place. We loved it there and bet you will too.

Stay tuned:  a motorcycle safety awareness feature and adventures on the road to Denver coming up!



We would like to thank Sarah Jennings and Cheryl Gibson as well as our anonymous donors for their generous donations.

The cool air by the river in the Payson pine forest campsite tempted us to linger a little longer as it was a welcome relief from the heat from earlier in the week.  Reluctantly we packed up camp and loaded the bike to get on the road again. The process takes at least a good 30-45 minutes. We started back on the 277 to Albuquerque, enjoying the dramatic and changing scenery from pine trees to cactuses to beautiful red rock cliffs. The open road was especially windy. Highway 40 was even shut down shortly after we passed through it due to high winds. The road seemed never-ending and by nightfall, we still hadn’t reached Albuquerque but wanted to push on to our couchsurfing hosts, Janice and Dan Kostelnick.

We arrived late with 4 layers of shirts due to the wind-chill and were grateful to be met by Janice’s warm and welcoming hospitality. She kept a delicious dinner waiting for us and made us feel right at home. Janice is an exuberant, straight-shooting, creative soul who loves art. She was working on an amazing mosaic project on the wall around her house. Her husband Dan is an engineer and has a calm steady demeanor and sarcastic wit. The two make a good balance for each other. Dan had an awesome garage with every tool imaginable and helped me do some maintenance on the bike.

We are grateful to Yvonne Scott, another fellow couchsurfer, for writing about our World Hunger Exhibition on her blog. Yvonne lives and works in Albuquerque, NM, enjoying her granddaughters, mountains and year around motorcycle roadways. She is a landscape consultant and freelance writer on everything from Mongolian embroidery to her other passion: solo travel on the cheap.

Trying new things comes part and parcel with traveling around the world. In all my 28 years I’ve never even heard of a Flowbee, much less had my head shorn with one by an Italian ex-hippie. But thanks to our next hosts, Katherine and Bob Riolo, I can now cross that off my list! They were contemplating moving to work with the needy in another country after having gone to Nicaragua for one month. Inspired by the movie, The Bucket List, Katherine wrote her own list and was actually going to shave her hair for cancer at an event for St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

During our stay in Albuquerque we had two slideshow presentations and lectures scheduled at the Albuquerque Main Library as part of our World Hunger Exhibition. We also had a display outside the library to spread the word about the expedition and fundraise and were able to meet  Harry, a physician, who had gone to hear the presentation before ours by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières). We are grateful to Joani Murphy, the library manager, for her assistance in coordinating our events at the library.

At the end of our stay, we met Steve, a kind-hearted and free-spirited guy and got to stay in his very cool bus/RV. Steve is a talented wood-working artist and photographer who travels around the world selling his art and enjoying other cultures. He rides a BMW 1200RS that smoked our ride by miles when we went out cruising together.

All told Albuquerque was very kind to us and we enjoyed our time there and the people we met. The flavors of the Southwest have been delightful thus far and we look forward to more.