Help Trips for Kids! Vote Now!

If you haven’t heard, the Volvo for Life Awards are happening for the 6th year pretty soon. What are they? I can’t say it any better than they do on the website:
"Protecting our kids. Helping our neighbors. Saving our earth. This is what heroes do, the real-life heroes we honor each year through the Volvo for life Awards. Since 2002, Volvo has given these heroes nearly $5 million in funding and awards to help them continue their extraordinary work on behalf of their communities."

There are 4 categories (Safety, Quality, Environment and Butterfly) and multiple nominees in each category. Each winner from the Safety, Quality and Environment category wins $100,000! The Butterfly winner gets $25,000 and the grand prize winner gets the money and a Volvo for life. The breakdown is here.

Online voting has been open since November, but it closes at noon on Monday, January 7th. Why am I telling you this? Because we know one of the very cool nominees, Ms. Marilyn Price, the founder of Trips for Kids. She has been nominated in the Quality category.

I’m hoping that they don’t mind, but I’m going to past Marilyn’s nomination bio here so you’ll see why we all think she’s so worthy of this award:

As a young bicycle enthusiast in the mid-1980s, Marilyn Price often pedaled up the redwood-forested slopes of Mount Tamalpais across the Golden Gate Bridge. On one afternoon excursion, she stopped to look out over Tamalpais' sweeping view. Taking in San Francisco, its deep, blue bay, and the Pacific Ocean beyond, the mountain's panorama inspired in her a sense of so many paths not yet taken. She remembered the disadvantaged children whom she served when volunteering at St. Anthony's Dining Room in the heart of the city. It was from the mountain's view of a larger world that Marilyn's vision of Trips For Kids (TFK) began to take shape.

A single mother with two children, Marilyn began TFK on a simple hope and ten donated mountain bikes. But she persevered in her belief that getting inner-city youth bicycling outdoors would connect them with nature, provide exercise, and steer them away from trouble. The program has ensured that more than thirteen thousand disadvantaged children from the San Francisco Bay Area have experienced the natural world from the seat of a mountain bike. The program also teaches bicycle and computer repair work at the TFK warehouse. Through their apprenticeships, participants earn credits toward purchasing their own mountain bikes and computers.

The original program still brings inner city youth from San Francisco to bucolic Marin County to mountain bike the county's expansive countryside. "Many of these kids have never been out of a concrete setting," Marilyn notes, "and never hiked on a mountain, and never seen a deer." The typical outing begins at TFK's San Raphael warehouse, where the staff outfits the young riders for the trip. Next, the staff teams each youngster with a mentor - an experienced mountain biker who will accompany them for the duration of the trek. Together, the group sets out for Marin's lush terrain. Here, inner city kids ride from hidden ocean beaches up through steep coastal slopes forested in towering redwoods. "I liked being in a natural setting," one teenager says, "and I never thought I could make it up the slopes. But I did."

Twenty-one years ago, Marilyn Price rode up the high slopes of Mount Tamalpais and saw a view that inspired her. Marilyn's inspiration has, in turn, inspired hundreds of volunteers to join her cause - fifty-seven TFK chapters have since formed across the United States. Through her program, over thirty-eight thousand inner city children nationwide have explored a world once closed off to them: a place in nature far away from the confines of the street.

To learn more about Marilyn Price and her cause, and how you can make a difference, please visit: www.tripsforkids.org.

There are many great nominees, but we think Marilyn is fantastic and has brought cycling to many more kids than you can count. Go on…no signing up, just a little check mark. It’s so easy!! Vote for Marilyn and Trips for Kids! I did.

Go Marilyn!

Congrats to Andy Zalan - 2007 Markus Cook Award Winner

Congrats to our friend Andy Z down in DC - he's the recipient of the prestigious Markus Cook Award this year. The official press release from the IFBMA is below because they can say it much better than I.....

Congrats Andy from all of your friends here at Kryptonite!

The International Federation of Bicycle Messenger Associations (IFBMA) is pleased to announce that Washington DC messenger Andy Zalan has been awarded the 2007 Markus Cook Award. The Cook Award is given annually to bike messengers who best represent the camaraderie and community spirit of the international messenger community. In the past year, Andy set up the Destination Dublin race series in Washington that enabled several DC messengers to travel to the Cycle Messenger World Championships in Dublin , Ireland . His annual bike messenger calendar is a tribute to those who work day in and day out.

However, beyond Andy¢s accomplishments of the last year, lies a decade long history of community advocacy and bridge building among American and European messengers. Andy is one of the founders of the District of Columbia Bike Couriers Association, one of the first organizers of alleycat racing in Washington and he brought the world to his city as host of the
1998 Cycle Messenger World Championships. Andy has been instrumental to the continued success of the CMWC and is a critical component of the international messenger community. In his nomination for the award, veteran Swiss messenger, Luk Keller accurately summed up the international messenger community¢s appreciation of Andy Zalan: "He never loses the spirit. He unites every aspect of what I like about messengers (he¢s uncomplicated, he can race, he can party, he's good-looking, he's smart, friendly, badass...helpful) and by being the way he is he unites the messenger mob with the messenger snob."

With all this in mind, the IFBMA and previous Markus Cook Award winners are pleased to welcome Andy to the list of winners.