{"id":1187,"date":"2012-09-14T15:01:28","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T20:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transitionamherst.org\/blog\/?p=1187"},"modified":"2012-09-14T15:01:28","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T20:01:28","slug":"co-cycle-welcome-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transitionamherst.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/co-cycle-welcome-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Co-Cycle Welcome Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We learned about an exciting event, right in our town: a whole group of Hampshire College students bicycled across the United states to support and learn about co-ops. They arrived to their final destination – Amherst – on September 1st, and folks here put up an outdoor reception to greet them upon completing their journey. See more information on their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All happened as people planned. The tents went up, many co-ops and co-op friendly organizations were represented, including Transition Amherst, and we waited for the bicyclists to arrive.<\/p>\n

They indeed arrived, right on the planned time too, and told us a tiny bit of their story. What grabbed me most was how much they learned about co-ops on the way, and how excited they were about it. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The welcoming event, for which here is a nicely designed flyer, generated other conversations as well. Organizations with similar goals connected during the three-hour festival, and many learned more about the strength of our community, to which co-ops add greatly. I learned about how interconnected that world is with organizations supporting the movement, individuals expressing a great amount of effort, uncompensated other than the feeling of belonging, a feeling that otherwise ran lower and lower in contemporary USA. And I learned more about how powerful young people are nowadays, while facing a world that, if anything, is even less hospitable than what I, twenty plus years their senior, grew up in.<\/p>\n

Just to show how well connected we are becoming across all these community creating movement, I also learned, that they came through Viroqua Wisconsin, home of another group of transitioners, in which a dear friend of mine is participating with honorable amount of zest. From him I learned, that their community outreach event is coming up soon, in fact within a month from ours<\/a> here in Amherst.<\/p>\n

And since I am so enthused to show how bicycles can be used for cargo carrying, I took my trusty Yuba Mundo<\/a>, and gave rides to people. In a later Amherst event, the block party called Celebrate Amherst<\/a> several people came up to the Transition table recognizing me partially because I was the ‘one with the great big blue bike’.<\/p>\n\n\t\t