So I have been asking a lot of people for some money and I have been getting $10 dollars here and $25 dollars there. That's cool and I appreciate all the help I can get. Then I have been getting a few hundred dollar donations. These have been very unexpected and they are also appreciated a lot. Then my mother asked her work, Farmers Insurance, for a donation and on Tuesday I got a thousand dollars. Bam, on the table. Well... it actually took a week for them to process a request but holly cow! One quarter of my funding has been completed with a simple ask. I want to thank Farmers Insurance for such a wonderful donation. I can't bring to words how grateful I am for your donation. Then yesterday, Thursday, I opened the paper and saw that the Mountain Democrat, my local news paper, published an article on what I am doing this summer. Chris Daley did a great job on the story. I hope that this will also help me with my funding in raising the $4000. This week I have really seen what a simple "ask" can turn into. I am so excited about what is going on in getting ready for this trip.
So... Bike & Build should be emailing me soon about ordering my new bike and getting that to me to train on. Which is good with the weather getting to be a lot better. I am now working on contacting the local habitat office to get some community service hours in. I do need to raise a minimum of 8 before the trip and I make a doctor's appt. to get a check-up...
fun. The spagetti feed has been scheduled for March 20 at town hall in Placerville. I think it will be around 5:30 that night. I am working on a band and I have donations for door prizes. I hope you can make it. Again, If you have any questions about everything that is going on, please email me. My email address is ryanellis777@gmail.com.
Much love and I will talk with ya later.
~Ryan
P.S. Here is the story poseted by the Mountain Democrat.
Cycling, building across America
By Chris Daley | Democrat staff writer | February 18, 2009 12:16
We’ve probably all contributed a few dollars for a local kid to walk around his or her school track for half-a-day, proceeds to help the swim team or the kazoo band, but rather few of us have signed up to sponsor a local kid whose goal is to cycle across the country and build houses for poor people all along the way.
Yet, that’s just what 22-year-old Ryan Ellis of Placerville plans to do during his “summer vacation” this year.
Ellis has been accepted into the Bike & Build program, and he will ride his bike, along with a hearty band of biker-builders, from Providence, R.I., to San Francisco. Beginning in June, the trip is expected to take about 10 weeks, according to a newsletter he issued recently.
Based in Philadelphia, Bike & Build has been running these projects since 2002. Its 2009 brochure states that the organization has “engaged over 750 riders and donated more than $1.6 million and 36,000 hours to affordable housing groups since its inception.”
For Ryan Ellis, it all started in 2006 while working at Green Valley Community Church. Bike & Build riders came through town and put up for a night at the church. His job that night was to stay and see that the group had whatever amenities they needed.
“I was able to spend time with the riders and learn about the organization,” he writes in his newsletter. “When Bike and Build came back in 2007 and used our church facility again, the idea of participating with this organization became cemented in my heart.”
He began training in earnest to be able to qualify as a long distance rider and to be able to pass some rigorous tests established by the organization to ensure the safety of its participants.
“The challenges of living in the foothills sent me up and down steep hills, along winding paths, and my endurance improved tremendously. I applied to make the cross-country trek with Bike & Build and was officially accepted in November to ride from Providence to San Francisco,” his bio continues. And he notes in his recent blog posting that he passed the safety and policies tests just in the past couple of weeks.
Getting ready to ride across country has taken some considerable commitment to getting in shape, and Ellis said he has had to switch gears, in a sense, from what he is used to.
“I’ve always been into trail riding and mountain biking,” he said. “But now I’m practicing road biking at least twice a week. So far, my longest single ride has been about 75 miles, but I try to get in at least 45 miles each time.”
His next practice challenge might be to ride from Placerville to the Somerset area, which would provide plenty of experience up and down steep hills. He said he’s been in contact with a bike club in Folsom, and members there have advised him to do the “Auburn” run - Placerville to Auburn on Highway 49 for a good workout.
Because of the uncertainty of being selected by Bike & Build, Ryan said he didn’t really make the full commitment until fairly recently.
“I wasn’t accepted until the end of November, and then I had to pass a test on a curriculum they sent me about affordable housing. After that was the test on safety and policy in late January,” he explained. “That included sections on building as well as some on cycling.”
Eventually, and after receiving a few more donations, he needs to buy a good road bike for the trip. He said Bike & Build has a fund to help match what a rider has solicited in donations. That will help him get a good bike for about $1,000, he said.
Ellis said he has begun to communicate with other members of his touring cadre, which includes a rider from the Bay Area, another from San Diego and several who live on the East Coast. He kind of laughs hearing descriptions of their recent practice sessions, “The East Coast people aren’t training at all because of the snow and cold in the East.”
A computer techie and television production major at Cosumnes River College, Ellis said he’s had a little bit of experience in construction building a shed with his dad, but he anticipates becoming quite a bit more of a hard hat kind of guy over the 10 weeks of the project.
If he can get a small, good quality camera, he hopes to make a brief documentary of his experience which might then become a project for his college degree.
For Ellis, the trip has significance in a number of different ways. The physical and mental challenge of riding 3,000 miles is obviously a seminal event in anyone’s life. The personal sacrifice of giving to others and bringing benefit to a local community in need provides rewards of another kind. But there’s another element that is very personal to him.
“I don’t always get enough time with God,” he said. “And I want to see this beautiful country - as His creation.”
Bike & Build has no affiliation with any religion nor any particular spiritual aspect, “though most of the riders are Christian,” he said. But his own connection came as a result of his job and membership in the church, so there is a spiritual cast to his decision to join the project.
Ellis said friends and people who knew him in school hardly recognize the person he has become. He wasn’t such an outdoors person before, but “In my senior year, I kind of started to go nuts and went looking for things with an adrenaline rush. And now, I’m always up for an adventure.”
That included sky diving with his friend Dave Getchel who also did the Bike & Build ride last year and helped convince Ellis to go for it.
Because the project is mostly about affordable housing and its attendant issues, Ellis has begun contacting Habitat for Humanity in El Dorado and Sacramento counties and at Lake Tahoe. He’ll be doing some building in Fairfield for sure, but he doesn’t have a definite schedule yet for other work locations. He thinks it might include homes at Tahoe and in Davis.
Although Bike & Build provides much technical assistance as well as the overall organization, each rider is obligated to raise funds to cover his or her basic needs. That is part of the bigger commitment, he explained. He said he needs at least $4,000, which is the minimum amount for the trip and also includes materials to be used later in the building projects.
Much of the food and housing is donated along the route, and the Whole Foods Corp. “donates all the peanut butter,” which is a main source of nutrition for long-distance cyclists.
There will be a fund-raising spaghetti feed March 20 at Placerville Town Hall, he said.
Ellis explained that one of the easiest ways to contribute is to go to the Bike & Build Website, look for the “Donate” button and then scroll down to select an individual rider. For the more traditional, simply send a check made out to Bike & Build, to Ryan Ellis at PO Box 2414, Placerville 95667.
Locally, he has already received donations from Farmer’s Insurance and Jeremiah Graphics, and although money is a necessity, when asked what he needs most between now and August, he said, “Support from prayers: Pray that I don’t let myself down.”
E-mail Chris Daley at cdaley@mtdemocrat.net or call (530) 344-5063.
The Mountain Democrat Newspaper is published Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday by Mountain Democrat Inc.
All images and text within these cyberpages are copyrighted by the Mountain Democrat © 1360 Broadway, P.O. Box 1088, Placerville, CA 95667 (530) 622-1255 Fax (530) 622-7894
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