First Ride!

Today I took my new bike for its first spin! I test rode it twice at the shop, of course, but this was the first real ride. I went 11.2 miles--not a huge distance, but that's a 10th of a Century Ride (a 100-mile bike ride, for those of you unfamiliar with that term), and so all I need to do is get to the point where I can do what I did this afternoon ten times in a row in one day! Piece of cake......maybe.

The first picture is MY BIKE! Love it!
The second and third pictures are documentations of blue sky....a phenomenon that only emerged as I pulled into my driveway. Thank you, Pacific Northwest weather!

Recommended Reading

Hello, once again!

Getting my bike was thrilling because it was retail therapy in a sense and I now have a new world to explore. But let's review why I plan to ride it 4,000 miles in the first place: I want to help others.

And who best to look to for inspiration in the quest to help others? Today I would say it's the people heading Partners In Health. PIH was founded in Boston in 1987 by Paul Farmer, Thomas J. White,Todd McCormack, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Yong Kim, also a medical student at Harvard. The story behind PIH is fascinating, and there are lots of resources to find out more about this amazing organization! The website is a good start: http://www.pih.org/

If you're eager to know more of the story, however, you're in luck! All twenty riders this year are reading Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, The Man Who Would Cure The World by Tracy Kidder. The book chronicles the life of Dr. Paul Farmer. I am just about to start the book and am very excited to learn more.

Furthermore, PIH has had some VERY exciting news this week! President Obama nominated Dr. Jim Kim, a co-founder of PIH, to be the next head of the World Bank. Dr. Kim, currently the President of Dartmouth College, is pictured to the right. A Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2012/03/23/obamas-surprising-world-bank-choice-health-care-as-a-human-right/

Other books on my To-Read Shelf (which is always filled, because I procrastinate starting books) include: Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer; Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.

As always, many cheers! (And cross your fingers for some Oregon sunshine tomorrow so I can ride my new bike!)

~Nina

Bike!

Greetings!

This week was my spring break and I spent a good part of it bike shopping! I basically received a crash course in bikes and cycling. I checked out books from the library, researched online, and then went to several different bike shops in Corvallis and Eugene to test ride bikes! Six days ago I had never even heard the word "componentry" before. I rode a road bike for the first time on Tuesday. And then yesterday I found myself debating with two guys working in the bike shop I was at the merits of different shifter systems and ways to alter gearings. I still don't know a whole lot, but I sure know way more than I did at the start of the week! Cycling is this whole new world I'm excited to explore.

Ok, I'll end the suspense: I am now the proud owner of a Specialized Allez Elite C2. Below is a beautiful picture of my beautiful new machine! The picture is off the Specialized website, and not a photo of my actual bike, because I want to photograph mine outside and it's terrible weather in the Pac. NW today (go figure--April showers bring May flowers, right?). 

I couldn't have found my baby on my own--I had a lot of help from the expertise of  my fellow riders for this summer and from various family and friends. I also had a lot of help from Peak Sports, the bike shop I purchased the bike from! The employees there were gracious in letting me test ride multiple bikes multiple times, and fitting me to this bike. If you live in the Mid-Willamette Valley and are in the market for a new bike, visit them! http://www.peaksportscorvallis.com/

If the roads aren't completely flooded tomorrow, I'll take it out for a spin and take pictures. If not, I'll be indoors drafting my fundraising letter! 

What have I learned this week?

1) Don't be afraid to try something new.

2) Ask questions, then ask some more questions, and then ask more questions--even if you are afraid you'll sound like you don't know anything! Because even if you don't know anything, you'll know more if you ask more questions.

As always, cheers!

~Nina

A Little Perspective

Greetings!

I think every college students knows that stress over both the present and future can be overwhelming at times. This week, however, I have been blessed with an enormous amount of inspiration and joy from a group of people that I wasn't even aware that I would ever know. This past Monday was the last class session of Divided Societies, a discussion-based class held through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. The classes were held once a week at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, OR and was composed of equal numbers of inmates (inside students) and University of Oregon students (outside students, such as myself). Inside-Out is a phenomenal program that seeks to break down the barriers separating insiders and outsiders from one another and to combat common stereotypes and social stigmas. The program is also meant to provide access to education where there otherwise would not be any, and to provide a very special sort of education that opens up new perspectives and opportunities for both inside and outside students.

I can honestly say that my participation in the program has changed me and my life course--I made 14 friends this term and had to say goodbye to them on Monday, which set a sad tone for the week. Finding and developing human connections with people who I never would have met otherwise was incredible and brought me equal measures of joy, humility, and change this term. Joy is a human experience that can only occur, at least for me, when the full spectrum of human emotion is combined. Joy is knowing the regret over the fleeting passage of time, but it is also knowing the happiness of being told 14 times in a row, one after another, that I have a friend that believes in me and my future success, that wishes me well, and is grateful for my presence in the classroom.

I have changed in the past three months--almost indescribably so. I have decided to bike across the country, I have been to a hospital twice weekly to shadow a cardiologist, and I have also made very unexpected yet cherished friendships. I am unsure how these changes will manifest themselves as effects on my future academic and career plans, but I will carry my new friends with me on this Ride, every pedal of the way and every town we stop at. I have yet another source of inspiration from which to draw strength. I feel confident that I am meant to accomplish the Ride and that there is a reason I felt called to apply for this opportunity. I look forward to this summer with everything in me.

As always, cheers!

Nina