The journey begins
It might have been when Kyle and I were mere feet from the grinding tires of a semi while riding through charred rectangles that signified where cars had caught fire that I thought “Phil, I think you’re living an interesting life.” It was late summer in 2015, and we were climbing the Coquihalla Pass of Canada 5 across the Canadian cascades, a pretty constant 7% grade that had claimed a few car engines as well as no doubt, bicycle tires. Starting from the town of Hope that morning, we were heading for Merritt. It was day 3 of the Road to Athabasca, which would stretch out a further two weeks of riding ahead of us.
I hadn’t really gotten into any sort of activism until I moved to Whidbey Island in Washington State on Earth Day, 2010, exactly 11 years ago from the time of this writing. Having grown up in rural Northeast Ohio, the entire area of the Pacific Northwest seemed pretty otherworldly, and the thought of living on an island, well, I’d never have imagined that growing up.
I first got into cycling when I moved there. I had been a happy climber and backpacker when I lived on the mainland (or “America” as some islanders call it). My day job required a ferry ride, and still does to this day when a global pandemic isn’t ravaging communities everywhere. Cyclo-commuting was an easy way of keeping movement in my life, as well as avoiding ferry lines.
My first nonprofit work was started by my (then) wife, and revolved around putting Kenyan students through college. At one point, it involved a 1000 mile bike ride from Seattle to San Francisco called S2SF. The model of how we did that ride would come in handy later on.
The setup for that fundraiser trip was where I met Kyle, the guy who was now mumbling under his breath that we had just ridden through glass, and he hoped it didn’t cause a flat.
Photo: The Road to Athabasca, August 22, 2015
In 2011, my (then) wife and I started going to the local Bioneers conference on the island to network with other projects. That was where I met Derek (who I had seen as a fellow ferry commuter almost every day up to that point). Eventually, Derek and I would bike to the ferry together. Later on and since then, we get ourselves into all sorts of fun trouble making plans in the evenings.
It was at a Bioneers conference a couple years later that I saw a report from the Athabasca tar sands during a plenary talk. The place seemed like a disembodied war zone infinitely far away, but what was going on there turned my stomach. Later that evening, Derek and I were talking about the day, when we decided to look at a map and see where all of this was taking place. It was only 1000 miles away, the same distance as San Francisco. At that point, I said something to the tune of “Hey, we could ride there!” Derek said, “that’s really close to us.”
At this point almost a year later, Kyle and I summited the Coquihalla Pass and began the descent into Merritt. Derek, Erika, and Lou had gone ahead to conduct interviews that we had set up beforehand. That was a great thing, because after our day of battling the pass on bicycle, Kyle and I weren’t capable of anything quite that intelligent.
This is the first in a series of blog posts that will continue throughout the month of May detailing the progress of the fundraiser, and remembering the voices and places that exist along the Trans Mountain Pipeline and on the long Road to Athabasca.
