The NO COAL Pedalers, is a pedal-powered caravan up to the Big Mountain region of Black Mesa, where we will be volunteering our labor and as many resources as we can bring, assuring a safe winter for those communities resisting relocation efforts by the US government on behalf of the interests of the Peabody Coal Company. This project couldn’t be possible without the help and support of the Black Mesa Indigenous Support, who organize a caravan of work-crews to Black Mesa every year. “By assisting with direct, on-land projects you are helping families stay on their ancestral homelands in resistance to an illegal occupation.”

Why ride bikes? Next to walking or horseback, riding a bike is the best way to more fully connect with the land as it has been encountered for generations. Riding a bike to Big Mountain will give riders the chance to become intimately acquainted with the land in a way that would be impossible by car. This is perhaps best explained by Ernest Hemingway, who said the following regarding how much one loses by driving and gains by riding:

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you…”

Cruising in an automobile, with the windows up, music blasting, and the heat cranked is akin to sensory deprivation. In this way, riding a bike is more attuned to a human-scale, whereby we are not detached from the natural elements, nor the sounds, smells, and bumps along the journey. By experiencing the land in a meaningful way, cyclists arrive at Big Mountain with a great respect for the landscape in which Black Mesa communities are situated

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Novelist H.G. Wells once said, “When I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the human race.” Given that the Arizona Daily Sun recently reported that “according to the city’s 2012 Regional Plan, about 9 percent of all trips in Flagstaff are made by bicycle. The national average is 0.8 percent,” there is no doubt that Mr. Wells would find little despair here.

Within this 9 percent of pedal-powered trips there are many different folks who all pedal through town for many different reasons. By now, most people know the categories of Flagstaff cyclists. There are the commuters, those cyclists who are in it for the long haul, often decked out in bright colors and reflectors with rear panniers or even a small BOB Trailer.

There are the cruisers, who don’t plan on going too fast or climbing too many hills. They are often pedaling their way to or from a bar down town. Then there are the roadies and weekend warriors. For these cats, cycling implies a densely layered matrix of Spandex, leg razors, and a bike expensive enough to impress the members of their Sunday morning group ride. To their credit, they have legs as chiseled as Michelangelo’s David and they put in 25 miles before many of us were even awake this morning.

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