A cycling trip aims to show the feasibility of the sustainable lifestyle

Nicole Elsasser

University of Guelph alumni Kristi Mahy is going to bike to Costa Rica. Leaving from Guelph in July with three companions, Mahy has given herself a year for the trip, the main purpose of which is to visit a diversity of sustainable communities across the Americas and document their practices using a range of different media.

“The purpose, for us, is to assist in spreading the word that sustainability isn’t something that’s just practiced by an elite group or people who want to spend their whole life doing it,” said Mahy. “It’s practices by such a diversity of people and to do that, we have to travel these long distances and across tons of different cultures and geographical locations.”

While on the trip, Mahy and her companions will be documenting their findings on their website pedalacrosstheamericas.com, as well as posting videos and blogging about the experience. Over the year that they’ve given themselves for the trip, they will stop in various sustainable communities staying for about a week in each one.

“We’re looking [to visit] a diversity of places but we’re looking for places that are practicing a sustainable skill or a range of sustainable skills that we think would be realistic for someone who didn’t have a done of time on their hands to implement in their own life,” said Mahy.

According to Mahy, this project was first dreamed up by her partner after a visit to a sustainable community in Costa Rica.

“He had visited a [sustainable] community in Costa Rica called Durika that I had visited and another person whose coming with us had also,” said Mahy. “The community there had inspired him around sustainable living and he wanted to do that with his life as well. Then myself and a couple of other people came on board to help with planning the journey and it started to develop into [something bigger]. But it started with him, myself and this other individual wanting to return to this community and do it in a meaningful way.”

And return they shall but not before they hold a few local events seeking to raise money for their upcoming trip. On May 8, a folk concert called ‘Folks for Spokes’ will be held at the Norfolk Church with Evalyn Parry and James Gordon performing among other Guelph music notables. The following day, May 9, will be their Mother’s Day ‘Brunch for Bikes’.

Outside of their more obvious mission of documenting a diversity of sustainable practices, Mahy explained that they also have another goal in mind: to promote oil-free, self-powered transportation as a realistic means of travel.

“Cycling is a viable means of getting around [when you’re] going to work, running errands or even taking a trip,” said Mahy. “Everybody who’s going on the trip enjoys cycling…but not all of us have done long cycling trips before. A lot of us just use bikes to get around town. To do a long bike trip, you don’t have to be a really serious cyclist with a really good bicycle, like a five thousand dollar bicycle. None of us are that or have extremely great equipment. We’re training. We’re working up to it.”

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