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Entries tagged: Bike Tour

For Ben Sollee, the call of the open road had dulled to a ragged whisper.

As a hardscrabble musician, the Kentucky native sprinted from town to town, taking advantage of every opportunity to play his cello and showcase his incredible songwriting talent for audiences across the nation. But traveling at faster-than-human pace left Sollee disoriented. Instead of savoring the lifestyle, he could barely remember the communities he visited, the people he met.

It was time for a change.

Instead of focusing on the destinations, Sollee decided to reclaim the journey.

“So, in early 2009, when I saw a commercial for an Xtracycle cargo bike, my mind spun into fantasy: the road, a bike, my cello and music to play,” Sollee wrote in American Bicyclist this summer. “At that moment I saw the bike as an offering of limitations, a tool to re-humanize the pace of touring. And, with my 60 pounds of gear loaded onto a 40-pound bike, there were plenty of limitations.”

Not the least of which was the fact that Sollee was a bike rider, but not a serious cyclist. During the first leg of his two-wheeling tour — a 350-mile jaunt to the Bonnaroo Music Festival — pedaling 50 miles a day was taxing. But cruising on backcountry roads, a cool breeze blowing away his touring stress, Sollee got hooked. A few months later, in December, he planned a more ambitious bike tour from North Carolina down through Florida.

That’s when he shifted from an experimenting artist to a budding bicycle advocate, promoting not only his music but local bike-ped organizations.

“We found what would become our model event in Savannah, Georgia,” Sollee wrote in the article. “We teamed up with the Savannah Bicycle Campaign [an Alliance member organization] to host an open-door fundraiser and show at a local bicycle hotspot, kicking the event off with an amazing night ride through the historic streets. We were able to become a vehicle for the bike group’s message, helping drive membership and getting great coverage in the Savannah Morning News. This event bridged what seemed like a magical mix of advocacy, community engagement and shared arts.”

For his current tour, Sollee took the mantle of an all-out activist. And he’s not just promoting the benefits of bicycling by partnering with local advocates; he’s also helping the Alliance.

“The weather has been terrific and the people are inspiring,” Sollee wrote on the blog this week. “But we’ve only just begun. And we’ve decided to put all these miles to good use as part of CLIF Bar’s 2 Mile Challenge.”

“The 2 Mile Challenge is a response to a staggering statistic that 40 percent of trips in the U.S. are within two miles of peoples house and 90 percent of those trips utilize a car,” he explained. “We hope that this bike tour and riding for the challenge will inspire other folks to take up the charge. We’ve signed up to ride for the Gold Team, which will benefit the Alliance for Biking & Walking. Go team!”

Have you stepped up to the Challenge yet?

It only takes a few minutes to sign up. It only takes a few seconds to log all your bike trips online each day. But the payoff is huge: If our Gold Team logs the most points by the end of October, the Alliance will win a $25,000 grant from CLIF Bar.

Join Sollee in taking the Challenge — then find a tour date in your area and pedal out to meet the bike-touring musician in person. We’ve already go his September 25 show in Washington, DC circled on our calendars!