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December 9, 2009 from Gil Mitchell, Ride Coordinator
Lance Armstrong and Team Radio Shack are training in Tucson this week. Here is a portion of an interview he did with the Arizona Daily Star newspaper:
"Tucson is a real cycling mecca, I think, for the United States. You have a good infrastructure with roads, good climbs. You have nice flats. You also have a lot of bike lanes, which is helpful for any cyclist.
"It helps to have that extra 4 or 5 feet that you can get some separation from the cars. We're a big posse rolling down the road, and the interaction with the traffic and the local people has been wonderful."
We will have one climb in Saguaro National Park and the remainder is rolling or flat. Come join us on April 28th, 2010 when we ride for The Britton Fund.
November 30, 2009 from Gil Mitchell, Ride Coordinator
The San Jose Mercury News reported in an article last week that the arborist for the City of San Jose had inventoried all of the street trees in the City. The arborist found 292,000 street trees and 90,000 spaces where street trees used to be. We are dealing with a crisis. Here is why:
For the following example let's say that all of the trees that are planted live to be at least 50 years old. In other words, no trees die from poor planting, no trees die from poor nursery stock, no trees are vandalized, and no trees break apart and have to be removed.
Let us say that all 39 (as of 12/2) Britton Fund Facebook Fans decide to replace all 90,000 trees. If each of us plants 8 trees a day and 40 trees a week it will take over 13 and one third months to replace those trees. In other words, each of us would need to plant 2,308 trees over more than a 13 month period of time.
After we are done with "our" town (San Jose) then we would need to move on and do the same thing in "your" town. That's right. Check around your town and see if there are "spaces where street trees used to be". This is a crisis that cannot be solved by small groups of people.
But let's say there are 1,000 Britton Fund Facebook Fans instead of 39. We would finish planting 90,000 trees in less than 16 days ! ! ! That is the power of a large fan base. No matter if we are hypothetically planting 90,000 trees or we are promoting research and education. . .there is a strength in numbers that cannot be down played. Contact your friends of Facebook and ask them to contact their friends, and so on. Pretty soon we will reach 1,000 fans.
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