This summer, nine Brown students biked across the country as part of Bike and Build, a nonprofit organization that seeks to draw attention to the problem of affordable housing and raise money for the cause.
Six cross-country trips for Bike and Build were organized this summer, including routes from Providence to Seattle, Providence to San Francisco and Jacksonville, Fla., to San Francisco.
Each rider had to raise $4,000 before departing, most of which is donated to Providence Habitat for Humanity, said Patrick Farmer, a route leader on the trip. The fundraising methods were varied, but most riders took the "typical approach," writing letters to friends and family, Farmer said.
There were less traditional methods as well: one student raised money by hosting a poker game, and another rode his bike around his college's student center all day.
The money raised financed the trips, funded grants distributed to affordable housing organizations and was donated to local organizations in the name of hosts along the route. Housing organizations applied for competitive grants, and the riders decide on the recipients of those grants.
Bike and Build was started in 2002 by Marc Bush, who modeled it after the Yale Habitat Bicycle Challenge, according to Sarah Grenzeback '07.5.5, a route leader on the Providence to San Francisco trip.
During a three-day orientation before the trips began, students researched different topics about affordable housing and worked on a Habitat for Humanity house in Providence that was financed by a previous trip, said program director Brendan Newman. Along their ride, the groups gave presentations about affordable housing to residents of their host towns.
The trips stopped about once a week for either a day off or a "build day." The Providence to San Francisco route, for instance, stopped in Ohio to paint and build a roof for a house. It was "pretty cool to see the house being built up from the frame," Grenzeback said.
"When you see 30 people dressed in the same spandex uniform, it really raises eyebrows," Newman said.
The Providence to Seattle trip stayed on a Midwestern ranch and were hosted by a pastor, "his wife and 35 kids," Farmer said. In one town the group visited, they saw crop circles, which Farmer said the town attributes to aliens.
The same trip also encountered a group of performing drag queens along the way who "were so excited" by the group's mission that they brought the riders on stage, Farmer said.
Both Grenzeback and Bryan Chang '07.5 said crossing the Rocky Mountains was a highlight of the trip.
Because the trips are cross-country - with stops as varied as Lebanon, Kan., and Casper, Wyo. - they are "American studies in the broadest sense," Farmer said.
Grenzeback's trip "stopped in pretty much every town" while they crossed Nevada, she said. One night they stayed in a city park and were woken by sprinklers at 4 a.m. "Battle Mountain would have been completely unremarkable otherwise," she said.
Grenzeback said the people she met on the trip were thankful for Bike and Build's work.
It was "amazing to cross the country this way," she said.
