Six years ago, Shannon Galpin walked away from her career as an athletic trainer and used her own limited funds to launch Mountain2Mountain and “be the change” she wished to see in the world. Today, Shannon and the M2M team, are just returning from their latest trip to Afghanistan where they launched the Streets of Afghanistan project and rode bicycles through Kabul to raise awareness of cultural barriers and empower women and girls in conflict regions.

As big supporters of Shannon and the M2M work she does, we’re happy to stay in touch with her and get period updates throughout her travels. That said, we’re also excited to share what she has to show and tell from those very journeys, the latest of which center around the Streets of Afghanistan project. Here’s the latest from Shannon both in words and in pictures. Enjoy!

“Yesterday we had the finale show of the Streets of Afghanistan exhibition at the Sound Central music festival — its up for four days throughout the incredible  four-day alternative music festival.  Yesterday was the women’s only day to kick off the festival, where young Afghan school girls attended the festival for slam poetry, a fashion show, Afghan rap duo, Afghan singer songwriter, Ariana Delwari, and White City — fronted by my long time friend, advisor, and founder of Sound Central, Travis Beard.  We brought three members of the cycling team to watch the concert and to help with the M2M Bike School.

All in all a full day. Streets exhibition set up and finale show at Sound Central Festival, M2M bike school and rock concert, finished with filming at Darul Aman Palace. Whitney, the co-director of Afghan cycles is leaving today, and then our crew is just a duo until we leave.  Whitney has been amazing, and creates a sense of community, friendship, and openness wherever we go, she interacts with the Afghans we meet with grace, humor, and authenticity that I have rarely seen.  Her infectious laugh combined with everyone’s exhaustion at the end of the long days makes for a slap-happy crew.

Exhaustion is starting to take hold, but perhaps that will just make the plane ride home go quicker as we sleep our way home.”

Active Lifestyle, Adventure, Advocacy, Bikes Around the World, International, Non-profits, Osprey Athletes, Osprey Life, Pedaling Change, Photos advenure, Afghanistan, bike, cycle, home, mountain 2 mountain, shannon galpin, Streets of Afghanistan, travel, women

It’s time to celebrate; May is National Bike Month! That means wherever you live, no matter what city or state, you can take part in something as simple and beautiful as riding your bike.

The League of American Bicyclists has a fantastic website with all of the key dates for this month’s happenings, so if you want to stay in the loop, check here. If you want to partake in an event in your neck of the woods but don’t have the inside scoop, search here by city, state or zip code.

Looking for more National Bike Month info to digest? Check out the League of American Bicyclists blog for inspiring, motivating and informing posts centered around cycling. And while you’re at it, check out the video at the top of this post, a PSA of sorts created by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition that asks the question: “Why ride a bike?”

Happy cycling!

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In most of the country, today just happens to be the last day of February. But in Durango, CO, it’s not just the end of another month, it’s the Third Annual Winter Bike to Work Day. The event itself is put in place to honor the bike commuters who battle the winter elements in Durango, and the festivities surrounding it are open to cyclists of all kinds. The City of Durango’s Multi Modal Department is the key sponsor, and will be offering up hot drinks, food and giveaways today from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. in front of Durango Coffee (at 730 Main Avenue). There’ll be a bounty of cyclists and commuters there to celebrate. What’s more, there will be schwag to give away, including T-shirts, scarves and even an Osprey Pack for the day’s raffle winner! For more information on bicycle commuting and Bike to Work Day in Durango, head here.

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If you’ve ever lived in a less-than-deal apartment for the sake of saving a buck or for reasons related to an expedient break-up/move-out situation, you understand how hard it can be to find a fantastic place to store your most prized possession: your bike. Sure, some old-school buildings offer neat nooks and crannies that you can get creative with when it comes to your two-wheeled baby. Yet in the case of a balcony-free, cramped living space, what happens to your ride?

Fortunately, that question may become obsolete as Americans begin pedaling more, prompting builders to recognize the importance of providing residents in apartments with bike storage. An article posted on The Daily Journal points out the straight facts, stating:

Bike commuting is on the rise in many cities, studies show, and as the number has grown, so has the need for bike-friendly housing.

Many apartment complexes are offering secure storage spaces for bikes. Some developers are even putting bike repair shops in apartment buildings.

The article also mentions über bike-friendly cities such as Portland and Seattle, both of which have apartment complexes that are specifically catered to bike commuters. These spots may be trendy in their new-ness, but we’re pretty certain that as more two-wheel commuters invade the streets, more bike-friendly housing options will pop up as well. Of course, we’d love to know: What are your thoughts?

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Back in October, we wrote about an incredible new bicycle that’s made entirely out of cardboard. Now we’re back to show you the newest in cardboard creations: a helmet that’s designed with a corrugated cardboard interior that mimics the corrugated cartilage standing between a woodpecker’s impact-heavy beak and its precious skull.

The new “Kranium” helmet is crafted with cardboard in such a way that, according to NPR, a whopping “90 percent” of its liner is actually air. Specifically, the helmet is uniquely designed by “incorporating a network of honeycomb-shaped corrugated cells” that would safely dissipate the energy of a blow to the head.

We’re excited to see new innovations hitting the bicycle and bicycle helmet market, which are changing the way we see transportation and the safety that’s necessarily involved in it. What’s more, we’re hoping that inventions such as these spark people’s interest in riding bikes, regardless of what they’re made out of.

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Osprey was introduced to 88Bikes when we first entered the bike industry with our Osprey Hydraulics™ line of hydration packs. Their model is simple yet incredibly powerful: provide bikes — often the first — to young people living in challenging environments across the planet. In places like Cambodia, Uganda and Peru the addition of a bicycle to a young person’s life almost always is a life-changing event.

It’s undeniably the season of giving, which can equate to added stress over finding the right thing to give the ones you love. The good news is, if you want to embrace the spirit of the season and gift up something meaningful, it’s easy. Through the non-profit 88bikes, you can donate a bike to a child in the name of your special someone and know that you’re quite simply helping to pedal change on a global level.

Want a little more background? Here’s how 88bikes gift-giving works, directly via the non-profit’s site itself:

Bike contributions are $88 each, which will be used to purchase one bike for one child for the project. Your name will be added to the website, and we ask that you send a photo of yourself to us by email so that we can print it out and give it to the child who receives your bike. We’ll take a picture of the child holding your photo, with her new bike, and send this back to you. 88bikes is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and your donations are fully tax deductable. 88bikes does not maintain a staff or an office, so that 100% of your contributions go towards our projects.

You can choose to donate a specific dollar amount, one bike or multiple bikes by going here. You can even print your own gift certificate to personalize and wrap up for the holidays yourself. However you choose to donate, 100 percent of your donation goes to the cause. What’s more, “Each child is given his or her bike in person by the founders or an 88bikes volunteer, on behalf of the individual Sponsor who donated the bike. The child is also given a postcard with a photo of their Sponsor and a world map, indicating the Sponsor’s hometown. Photos and film of the project are made available to the Sponsors, and each Sponsor receives a thank-you letter with a photo of the child who received their bike.”

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It’s that time of year again: National Geographic Adventure has nominated ten individuals to stand in the running for 2013 People’s Choice Adventurer of the Year. This year in particular, we’re incredibly proud to announce that the outstanding Shannon Galpin of Mountain2Mountain is one of the Adventurer of the Year nominees — and you can vote for her now!

M2M, which Shannon founded in 2006, “believes in the power of voice as a catalyst for social action,” and has touched the lives of many since its inception. In its latest project, Streets of Afghanistan, M2M utilizes the power of photography as the voice of change.

In 2009, Shannon became the first woman to bike in Afghanistan, challenging societal norms and gender perceptions in that part of the world. In general, Shannon’s work has seriously highlighted the significance of perpetuating equality for women and girls in conflict regions, and will continue to impact generations to come.

For good reason, Shannon is nominated as Humanitarian of the year. Via Nat Geo Adventure:

The 38-year-old has braved some of the most violent periods in Afghanistan—a country considered by many humanitarian agencies to be the worst place in the world to be a woman—to work on women’s education and health. She fostered midwife training to combat infant and maternal mortality in the Panjshir Province. In Kabul and Kandahar, she helped develop reading programs for the daughters of women in prisons, some of whom were jailed for adultery after they were raped or for escaping arranged marriages.

She has used her bicycle as an icebreaker with village elders in remote mountain villages, and in a particularly bold fundraising act, she’s mountain biked 140 miles across the Panjshir Valley. In Afghanistan, women cannot ride bikes because of laws and social customs, a fact that Galpin believes has hindered women’s education by preventing them from being able to independently travel to school. As a foreign woman, Galpin was able to cross this boundary and turn it into a conversation starter.

Women’s rights are personal for Galpin. At 19, she survived being raped and knifed while coming home from work in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“I couldn’t think of anything worse beyond what had happened than being labeled a victim,” says Galpin. “I was petrified that I would be viewed that way and would have to wear that label for the rest of my life.”

Want to vote for Shannon Galpin? Go here to do so through mid-January.

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Our friends over at 5 Gyres are always doing amazing things. Most recently they’ve embarked on The Last Straw Plastic Pollution Solutions Outreach Tour — a trip that will take 5 Gyres staff 1400 miles by bike down the East Coast in an effort to educate more than 50,000 people about what they’ve discovered in their voyages to our world’s oceans and lakes. You can follow the tour and find specific event dates and locations via the 5 Gyres Facebook page and its Blog. What’s more, you can pledge one cent per mile to support the tour and even take part in the 5 Gyres I Am The Sea Change challenge and win prizes for doing so.

Have 5 minutes? Take the challenge!:

To enter, follow the instructions on the flyer pictured above. That is: 1. Print the flyer out. 2. Spend at the very least 5 minutes cleaning up your environment (street, gutter, riverbank, beach). 3. Have someone take a picture of you holding your sign and your garbage up for all to see. 4. Like 5 Gyres on Facebook and share the contest link (encouraging friends and family to do so as well!) 5. Email your photo to betheseachange@5gyres.org with the subject ’5 for 5 Gyres’.

Do the above and you could not only win some awesome prizes, but help 5 Gyres and the cause to clean up our environment immensely. The contest runs from October 3rd through November 6th.

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The incredible organization known as 5 Gyres is about to embark on its latest outreach project: Last Straw Plastic Solutions Bicycle Outreach Tour. The Tour will take the team of 5 Gyres staff on a cross-country bicycle route where they’ll share stories of their 5 Gyres expeditions along the way; “doing trainings on how to enact common sense plastic mitigation policy, sharing film, networking, and… running a cleanup contest throughout the tour for a chance to win prizes from all our awesome sponsors!,” according to the 5 Gyres blog.

Check out the poster above for dates and details of the tour. And feel free to email 5 Gyres with any questions along the way!

Want to help but can’t follow the Tour? Take the Plastic Promise right here, right now.

Active Lifestyle, Adventure, Advocacy, Bikes Around the World, Events, Non-profits, Osprey Life, Pedaling Change, Travel 5 Gyres, bike tour, cleanup, Plastic, Plastic Promise, pollution

So many reasons to bike, so many benefits to cycling. So, get out and ride!

Found on SF Bike Expo‘s Facebook Page.

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