Why do this? How you can help...

Beyond what I've explained in the first posting, I'm doing this because I feel the need for a big challenge, for a life-transforming experience. Maybe it's my very own mid-life crisis. Hey, there are worse things one can do! To be sure, I'm at an age where one begins to take stock in what the sum of one's life has been, to wonder if you've done all you want to do, and what's left undone. At the very least you feel compelled to start a list of all that you still want to accomplish so you won't have any regrets. It's an unfinished and long list for me. This fits in that category of doing something a little crazy, but which I think can also fulfill several objectives at once.

For quite a while now I've been wanting to really test my writing abilities--to finally discover whether or not I have it in me to write creatively. Mas o menos I've been able to write for an academic audience, but I always go back to that idea of being a writer I had when I first encountered Chicano literature: To be able to convey my/our "authentic" experiences to readers, Chicano and non-Chicano alike, in some kind of fashion. I don't want to romanticize authenticity here, I just mean I want my writing to be real, to matter. Of course I want it to be good in some way, too. I don't think I'll ever be able to truly be free in my writing if I don't first write through the lens of experience. In this way, I think I'll be less self-conscious about the creative and aesthetic elements because I can focus on tangible experience.

Something else: From the outset, I've thought that this project might lend itself to something else very tangible. As you can imagine, as a professor I'm very invested in educational opportunities for Chicanos/Latinos. Here in Minnesota, more so than I ever had to think about before, we always have to think about the pipeline of students. This is why I work with a Chicano Charter School in St. Paul (Academia Cesar Chavez, www.cesarchavezschool.com/) and a Latino afterschool program in S. Minneapolis (La Escuelita, www.laescuelita.org). While being on the board of these organizations doesn't lend itself to working with students firsthand, it does keep the issues in front of you and creates the opportunities to support institutions and staff that can make a real difference. With that said, I want to ask each of you to consider "sponsoring" this ride of mine by pledging a certain amount for each mile I ride. Every cent of the money will go to students at La Escuelita and students who major in Chicano Studies at U of M. I don't have the mechansim set up yet to take pledges or one-time donations, but I hope to soon. The map below is my latest route. Via highways it's about 7,350 miles. While I don't plan on riding along highways, this will give you an idea of the distance so you can start calculating how much you want to commit!