Two of my friends are getting ready to go on bike tour this summer. they've decided to throw parties or send letters to request funding and support.
I'm all for it. In a way that I've never really thought about before, I realize we should help each other out more on our bold adventures. My first bike tour changed my life, it awakened me to a whole new way of looking at the world. It was far more enriching than even college, (when you look at it as a ratio, "time spent" / "amount learned")
The hardest thing about it was funding it (which is probably true for a lot of people with college too). I was in Europe and the dollar was at it's all time low, $1.52 to the Euro. I budgeted like crazy, and really, slept in some unsafe places on a few occasions. While it's true, that the budget aspect of things taught me nearly as much as the actual riding, I still could have learned a lot without being so uncomfortable and possibly in danger. Also, I had it lucky. Nothing happened to my bike on that trip. If I had had any bike issues, my budget would have been exhausted and it's quite possible I would have had to end my tour early.
Since then, I went on another tour down to SF with the ladies of Spoke N Heart. We encouraged each other to fundraise for the event. I had some thoughts about it but ultimately felt bad about asking my friends and family to fund my "vacation". But really, it was such an enriching experience. And I took the knowledge gained there and brought it back to my community, integrating the lessons into the collective bike space, Bike Farm. My community was richer for me having gone on this ride.
I'm lucky cause circumstances in my life have made it so I am financially stable enough to go on a 3 week bike tour without going into debt. But it's really unfeasible for a lot of people. Yet, if we were all able to go on a tour, I honestly think the world would be a better place.
So, the point...
Let's encourage our friends to take risks. Let's pull our resource together.
Luckily, the internets is making it easier. there's not only warmshowers.org and http://www.couchsurfing.org/index.html , but there are also easy ways to donate cash (which is sadly necessary.)
I've quickly created paypal donate buttons by going to
I answered some questions about the buttons and the code was generated. I then copy and pasted the code into the "Edit HTML" tab of this blogger post. and bam, i have a donate button. About as hard as uploading a youtube video.
Start donating to a bike tour fund. For the next two months, the money will be split amongst my two friends Jesse Bruce and Adam Lecki.
Or there is the subscription method, which is what I hope people will go for. I've thought about it this way, if I were not on tour, would you take me out for coffee once a month. I would take a lot of my friends out for coffee once a month. And then there's the big donation, $60, a fancy dinner. I'm hopping someone like my Dad would take me out to a fancy dinner once a month if I were not traveling the world on my bike. So, with that same willingness to give if I were physically present, maybe he can give me that while I am on my tour. It will certainly help me out more than a belly full of sushi.
After a bit more research I found that paypal charges $0.30 per transaction, so, the cup of coffee a month is not actually a good idea. 17% of the donation would go to paypal, better to just lump up the donation in one bigger one like $10, or 15$.
ReplyDeletestill, the technology is super easy. And it's still cheeper than western union. I once had to send $150 to a friend on a bike tour, and Western Union charged me $15, bastards...