Oakland Yellowjackets Bicycling Club

Biking along the Underground Railroad route.

"WPXI-TV the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh produced 'Biking Through Black History,' a 30-minute Black History Month special highlighting the creation of the Underground Railroad Bicycle Route (UGRR). This route was realized through an innovative partnership between Adventure Cycling Association and University of Pittsburgh's Center for Minority Health."

More details, including a map of the route, on the Adventure Cycling.

Here's segment one:

You can see all segments by clicking on the "Read More" button.

Hi Oakland Yellowjackets,

I'm trying to get the word out about the 2012 California Climate Ride, which is 320 glorious miles from Eureka to SF from Sept 9-13.

Carbon Offsets To Alleviate Poverty is an Oakland non-profit I've founded which is one of the 2012 beneficiaries of this ride.

I'm looking to put together a small team of Climate Riders. I would really appreciate it if you could share the attached and/or this link with your members. More information about Climate Ride and COTAP is also below.

Best,

Tim Whitley
Founder of COTAP.org

About the Climate Ride
Climate Ride is a fully-supported, 5-day charity bike ride, the one and only multi-day charitable bicycling event that supports climate change and bike advocacy organizations. Climate Ride is the hub of the green movement and gives a national voice to your local community. By riding in Climate Ride you can raise funds for COTAP.org and any other beneficiary organizations you choose. In 2011, Climate Riders raised $300,031 for 25 beneficiaries!

About COTAP.org

Based in Oakland CA, Carbon Offsets To Alleviate Poverty (www.COTAP.org) is a new 2012 beneficiary organization of Climate ride. COTAP is a new nonprofit which empowers individuals to address two of the world’s biggest challenges: climate change and global poverty. COTAP connects individuals’ carbon footprints with accredited forestry projects in least-developed countries which create measurable wages for the world’s poorest people.

COTAP also seeks to address the injustice that forestry projects, despite their proven ability to improve lives for the poorest, have been largely overlooked by commercial carbon markets. You can transform your CO2 emissions into wages, improved livelihoods, and changed lives with our three projects in Nicaragua, Uganda, and Mozambique.

I beleive Deb did this ride last year, and, to the best of my recollection, she said it was a great event although it dumped rain most of the time. Certainly a good cause.

Just heard about the Tour de Concord, a leisurely ride on 5/12 to support the Greenbelt Alliance. So if you don't want to do Mines Road, it's a good (relatively) local alternative.

Per Sara, their MarCom person, "the purpose of the ride is to lead cyclists around the former Concord Naval Weapons Station in Contra Costa County and explain the policy and advocacy efforts that will lead to its future development."

Celebrate "Bike to Work" month and join us on a bicycle ride through Central Contra Costa County. We’ll roll by sites like the former Concord Naval Weapons Station, Contra Costa Centre in Pleasant Hill, and the Iron Horse Trail. Along the way we’ll hear about Greenbelt Alliance’s work in Concord to preserve 3,500 acres of open space and plan for future neighborhoods clustered near the North Concord BART station. The ride will end at Walnut Creek. For those who want a more challenging ride, we’ll pedal from Walnut Creek BART through Tilden to Downtown Berkeley BART.

Leaders: Evan Lovett-Harris and Sara Barz
Distance: 19 or 35 miles with an elevation gain of about 650 feet.
What to Bring: BART fare, working bicycles, spare tubes, water, and helmets required.
Snacks are strongly encouraged.
Meet: Pittsburg/Bay Point BART station, 1700 West Leland Road
Date: Saturday, May 12, 2012
Time: 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM

You can RSVP on their website.

We would like to invite Yellowjackets Cyclists to come and join the fun! The ride takes place on June 30 this year, a beautiful time of year in the Eastern Sierra. We offer various routes for varying levels of riders, smooth, low traffic roads and excellent Alta Alpina support! We would be glad to cross-promote rides, if there is a ride your club is sponsoring this year. We would let our members know about your event via email broadcast and newsletter and hopefully, you will be able to do something similar for our ride.

The event takes place on June 30th.

More details can be found on the ride website at altaalpina.org/challenge.