And... they're off!!

The Cycling for a Sustainable Future - 350 people-powered miles tour kicked off at the Upper Valley Food Coop in White River Junction on Thursday evening. With the Eco-Tones playing fun, environmentally inspiring songs, and yummy food provided by the Upper Valley Food Coop, D-Acres and others, we celebrated the start of the tour along with the exciting projects and efforts that organizations from this area are doing now to create more sustainable communities. So much is happening in this town, and here are just a few examples of projects and organizations represented at the Kick-Off:

• The first meeting of  Transition Town White River Junction is happening May 8, 5-7pm, location TBD. Contact Kye Cochran at the Coop, and join this effort to create a vision for the future of White River Junction.
  
• The Upper Valley Land Trust helps people conserve land, and runs educational and other programming.
• The Vermont Chapter of the Sierra Club continues to support many exciting initiatives in the region, including our tour and the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network.
• Cover runs home repair and reuse programs and builds bridges between sectors of the population through volunteer service, the Cover Store and more. A benefit concert featuring Mary Gauthier and Anais Mitchell is happening at the Lebanon Opera House on April 18th.
• D-Acres is an organic farm and educational center in Dorchester, NH that has so much going on, you must check out their website.
• The Marion Cross School in Norwich: we visited their Ecoclub of 3rd and 4th graders, and their parents, and were inspired with what these children are doing for their community. They constructed recycling bins, do classroom trash audits, started a successful composting program for the school and present (yes, 3rd and 4th graders!) to the PTA and the faculty (filming their own presentations) as they work to further green their school. 

All this and so much more.. the perfect place to start, with enormous inspiration to (alternatively) fuel our journey!  

We would like to especially thank other supporters for this event as well, including the Norwich Inn, that put us all up for the night, Heron Graphic Arts, that created the beautiful event posters, Ibex who tremendously outfitted us for our tour, and all the volunteers who helped organize this event.