California Here I Come...

    When one door closes a new one opens. When I came to the realization that the cross country trip was a bit too impractical to pull off I started to think of another trip. Before I layout the new trip I want to elaborate on the importance of going on a bike trip to raise awareness for homeless people. When a person is homeless the main mode of transportation they rely on is public transit. However many cities and municipalities don't have adequate public transportation options that are reliable. Once homeless people are on the street this lack of transportation makes it even more difficult for them to find work due to the limited amount of places they can reasonably get to consistently. That leaves many homeless people to rely on bikes for their main form of transportation. Bikes are very helpful and if we designed more communities to be bike and walking friendly it would give more opportunities to people who can't afford cars to get around. 

    This brings me to my bike trip! I am very excited about this trip! As soon as I am able to finalize dates I will write another blog with updates. This trip will still allow me to visit and serve at homeless shelters in six of the ten cities with the largest population of homeless people in the United States. All six of these cities happen to be in the same state, California. I will be biking from Sacramento to San Diego, stopping in Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles along the way. The trip will be 743 miles according to Google maps and I should be able accomplish it in 7-10 days depending on weather and serving opportunities at shelters in each of the cities. This is far from the cross country trip but is much more manageable to work into the co-parenting schedule. This will also give me an opportunity to meet and speak with as many of the 118,109 homeless people that reside in those cities as possible. The purpose of the trip was always to document as many stories as possible and to generate interest in supporting people affected by homelessness.  

   After I founded Cherry Willow Apparel and had been volunteering at the shelter for some time I was introduce to Invisible People. Invisible People was founded by Mark Horvath to "give a face and a voice to homelessness". Since I have been consuming his content I have been inspired to conduct similar interviews which I am working on releasing. My idea to document the stories of homeless people and raise funds for them originally came when watching content on social media. I saw content creators that would do acts of kindness for homeless people which was great but then the creator would benefit from all of the engagement. I wanted to give the benefit to the person whose story and emotion caused all the engagement to begin with. The person in need. This bike trip is about educating the masses on the realities many Americans face today. Showing people how easy it is to end up on the streets. Most importantly raising funds to get as many people off of the streets and into housing as soon as possible. 

Thank you for reading! Thank you for wanting to learn more about homeless people and their stories! 

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