WORLDFIRE - Chapter 11

Hoosiers Hungry for Change

             Rocket trike at the starting line of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

“If a dumb guy like me understands that things are not the way they were 30 years ago, you would think that dumb guys all over the country would understand that… not so much worried for myself… but I have a child.” David Letterman on the climate crisis (the Late Show, December 10, 2009)

Like Kansas, Indiana is known for its political conservatism, but this so-called “red” state demonstrated just as much, if not more, appetite for a green energy moon shot as any of the so-called “blue” states I had visited. It was in the Hoosier State that I would have an unlikely brush with the law, an unlikelier meeting with a real “rocket man,” and a once-in-a-lifetime experience at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But first, I still had some work to do in the Land of Lincoln.

My last day in Illinois got off to a strong start at a diner in Urbana, where I powered up with a hearty breakfast in preparation for what would end up being an 83-mile ride day. As always, I donned my American flag bike jersey, which rarely failed to spark questions and conversations with wait staff and fellow diners, like the father and son duo, Neil and Daniel Bernstein, who followed me out the door. After seeing the trike and hearing about my mission, the Bernsteins were so enthused they handed me some cash for the road, which left my heart feeling as full as my stomach. Almost every person I had randomly encountered so far supported the ten-year 100% renewable electricity goal.

The weather cool and clear, it was a perfect day for riding. My destination was Fowler, Indiana, home of the first wind project I had cut my teeth on years prior when I worked in the wind industry. Pedaling along in high spirits, I dialed up my dad to let him know I was still alive and kicking. Reminding me that I was never really alone, I had six close encounters with red-tailed hawks on this day (Hawks #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, and #17). But hawks were not to be my only company.

Pedaling down a rural country road late in the morning, I passed two dogs sitting in a farmer’s unfenced front yard. They immediately stood up and started barking at me in defense of their territory, but when I called out a friendly invitation to join me instead, they happily accepted. Within seconds, both large dogs were running alongside me, one on each side of the trike, barking with what can only be described as unbridled joy. I let them run with me for a spell, until fearing they might collapse from heat exhaustion (they were both foaming at the mouth), I stopped to let them rest. Then I told them to go home. Being good dogs, they did.

I later flew the flag down the Main Street of Rankin, Illinois, and shortly after that in the town of Hoopeston, where I met a local Alderman and an aspiring County Clerk who told me they were big fans of wind power. A few miles later after crossing into my sixth state, Indiana, a reporter from nearby Danville’s Commercial-News flagged me down from the side of the road. She told me her son had phoned her after seeing me on the road, so we did an interview in a gravel parking lot, sparking the story, “Trike rockets through area.”

Eager to find the Indiana wind project I had helped develop years ago, I headed toward the first towering turbines I saw in the general direction of the town of Fowler. I soon found myself pedaling through a massive wind project, mesmerized by the sight of a farm tractor slowly chugging along under the shadow of one of the turbine’s slowly rotating blades. As the sun started to dip below the horizon, its golden rays lit up the bright white turbines standing tall under a beautiful blue sky streaked with wispy clouds turned a pretty pastel pink. It was a picture-perfect moment and I grabbed for my phone, but just as I was about to take the shot, the battery died (a first–maybe I should have taken that as a sign). It then dawned on me that I had no idea how far away Fowler really was and that I better stop gawking and start pedaling if I hoped to make it there before dark. With no highway signs to be found, and my phone’s GPS out of commission, I didn’t even know if I was on the right road. Before long, I found myself pedaling in the dark and pulled over to a lit-up farmhouse to ask for directions.

The good news is I was on the right road with only three miles to go. The bad news is it was now pitch black, the temperature was dropping fast, and I was soaked in sweat. Worse yet, I was on a section of newly paved black asphalt with no painted stripes and no shoulder, not a good combination for riding a bike at night. I had my flashing solar-powered headlamps in the front, and a blinking red light in the back, so I wasn’t invisible, but I still felt vulnerable. To give cars in the opposite lane as much leeway as possible, I hugged the right edge of mine. But sitting so low in the trike, the glare of the approaching headlights made it difficult for me to see and I didn’t notice the sharp angle of the black asphalt until it was too late.

I felt my right front wheel drop over the edge into space first. Then the rest of the vehicle followed. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach as the rocket trike tipped over the steep embankment. Fearing the worst, I braced for impact, but fortune smiled. Instead of rolling, I landed on my side maybe four feet down in a gully cushioned by a soft bed of grass that might just as well have been angel feathers. Not rolling saved me from possibly breaking my neck, but the crashed capsule was lying on its side with me still inside. Stunned, and more than a little embarrassed, I crawled out of the cockpit to survey the damage. The trike looked to be intact, and my only injuries, save a wounded ego, were a couple of small scratches.

A woman who had witnessed the accident pulled over to ask if I was okay. I sheepishly told her I was fine, as I rolled the trike back up to the shoulder of the road. She then thoughtfully offered to drive behind me the rest of the way into Fowler. Staying close, she trailed me with her hazards on to help me safely negotiate the last couple of miles. Once we reached the lit-up edge of town, I waved her an enthusiastic thank you as she passed me in the night. It happened so fast I never even got her name, but I was grateful all the same.

I briefly considered pitching my tent in a park on the edge of town, but decided I had already taken enough chances for one night and instead rolled over to the Sheriff’s Office to inquire about other options. Sensitive to my predicament, the kind police dispatcher made a round of calls trying to find me a bed for the night. She even dialed up a local church, but the pastor was on vacation. Sitting in my shorts in the station lobby cold and exhausted, I found myself alternatively shivering and nodding off until a Sheriff’s Deputy suddenly appeared with an offer I couldn’t refuse: they would store my trike in the police garage, recharge the battery overnight, drive me 15 miles up the road to the nearest hotel, and return me to the station house in the morning. Before leaving, the friendly dispatcher even loaded me up with some Halloween candy for the road.

On the drive to the hotel, Deputy Jason Dexter and I talked about what I was doing and why. When we reached the hotel, he asked me to wait in the car, which I found curious, but I said, “Okay.” A few minutes later, he reappeared, opened the passenger door, and handed me my room key with his business card, saying, “I really admire what you’re doing. Here’s your room key. Just do me one favor and email me when you arrive in DC.” Deputy Dexter had personally picked up the tab for my room! Speechless, I struggled to properly thank him, then promised to email him when I safely landed in DC. Once in my room, I revived myself with a long, hot shower, grateful for the shelter and to still be in one piece. Then I slept like the dead.

I was ready to go the next morning when the Benton County Sheriff’s Department knocked on my door. It was my ride back to Fowler. En route, Deputy Don Munson and I talked about the economic benefits of wind power. When I mentioned the wind farm I had worked on years prior, he told me he knew where it was. Then he took me there. So it was courtesy of Deputy Munson that I got to see the finished product of the first wind project I ever worked on. Surrounding us as we stood outside the police cruiser on the side of the road were 53 two-megawatt wind turbines that were not only generating green electricity for Indiana, but also providing a new cash crop for farmers that leaves on average 98% of their land undisturbed. It felt deeply satisfying to see the realized physical manifestation of something that seven years earlier had been just a hope and conversations over kitchen tables. Deputy Munson told me the county had about 500 wind turbines, with 500-700 more expected by 2012. Before dropping me off back at the station house, he took a few minutes to share with me his views on wind power:

“I think the wind turbines are a great deal. They’re not overly noisy, haven’t had any ill effects, any kind of negative effects in the area… it’s great for the farmers that have the wind turbines… if we have more wind turbines and that type of energy, we’d have less instances where we’d have oilrigs going down in the Gulf of Mexico and have the same problem we had with that issue and the cleanup issue and that kind of thing. I think that’s the way we need to go.”

Deputy Munson was referring to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 offshore oilrig workers and devastated the Gulf of Mexico. The worst oil spill in U.S. history, the blowout lasted 87 days, spilling more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. He’s right, of course. When was the last time you heard of a wind spill or a solar spill?

A nighttime crash that could have ended my journey, if not my life, instead precipitated a chance encounter with law enforcement that reaffirmed my faith in humanity. My experience with the Benton County Sheriff’s Department gave new meaning to the police motto “protect and serve.” After retrieving my trike from the police garage, I grabbed a sandwich at a local grocery store, which powered me the next 30 miles past farm fields into West Lafayette. As a general practice, I rarely checked for messages while moving in the trike, but for some reason I decided to check my voicemail as I was rolling past Purdue University. It was meant to be.

There was a message from my friend Paul telling me Purdue was having their annual Space Day at the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering that day. Imagine my surprise to see the building directly across the street from where I sat in my trike. Even more serendipitously, the event was mere moments away from starting. Given the moon shot theme of my mission, I couldn’t not go. So I crossed the street and rolled the trike into the building, introducing myself to the student organizers. They warmly welcomed the addition of a rocket trike to their event after proudly telling me the first and last astronauts to walk on the Moon had studied at Purdue. Just as I got set up in the lobby, 600 3^rd-8^th graders began streaming into the building. I had some great interactions with a few of the kids, but they were there to see someone else. As they streamed toward the auditorium, I was told the head of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics wanted to meet me. This led to a fascinating conversation with Tom Shih (yet another Tom) about cutting-edge renewable energy technologies. Then Tom walked me to the auditorium to introduce me to the person everyone had come to see.

I may play one on YouTube, but David Wolf is a real rocket man. Never did I think I would meet an astronaut on my bike odyssey, yet here I was talking to someone who had logged 168 days, 12 hours, 56 minutes, and four seconds in space. A veteran of four separate spacewalks during his four trips to outer space, Wolf once lived in orbit for nearly five months. He had a lot of excited kids to talk to, so I didn’t get to ask him much, but he seemed as interested in my journey across America as I was about his journeys into space. When he asked to see the trike, I walked him over to it and we had a picture taken together. When he asked if I had had any incidents with it, I told him, “Yes, in fact, I crashed it just last night…” which prompted the quick reply: “Always put safety first.” Coming from someone whose life literally hung on that adage in space, I took his exhortation to heart. I would later read an article in National Geographic that reported Wolf’s first spacewalk “almost became his last after a glitch with the airlock left him and a fellow spacewalker stranded outside [the Russian] Mir [Space Station] for several hours” until they calmly resolved the problem.

With safety front of mind, I visited a local bike shop after the event to get one of my balding front tires replaced before grabbing a motel room for the night. I spent Halloween morning working at my desk, then pedaled 40 more miles to the town of Lebanon, which regrettably for my rapidly shrinking travel budget did not have a campground. I briefly considered pitching my tent in a town park, but did not want to risk being Halloween pranked, so I checked into yet another motel, where I was just able to squeeze the trike through the door. With few dining options nearby, I walked across the lot to a fast-food joint where I picked up a sackful of aptly named “sliders” for old times’ sake. No trick-or-treaters knocked on my door that night, but the following day would bring tricks and treats galore.

Waking up with visions of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway swimming in my head, I was eager to get to Indianapolis. For some reason, I felt drawn there like a magnet. Maybe it was the fond memories of my dad taking me there as a child. Maybe it was the iconic nature of the place, with the Indy 500 being so much a part of the American fabric. Whatever was drawing me, getting to the track would not be easy.

My first challenge, a road detour, was easily negotiated. But not long after that, the trike’s chain started feeling strangely loose. Then it suddenly snapped. Again. I couldn’t believe it. Repairing the chain on a rocket trike is not as simple as repairing a chain on a road or mountain bike. For starters, half of the chain is housed under the seat, which is bolted down to the carbon fiber body. Because it is so long (imagine three regular bike chains linked together), the chain has to run through two pulleys that guide it along the floor, with part of it also strung through a plastic tube under the seat. So for the third time on my trek, I dialed up roadside bike assistance for a tow. Luckily for me, the closest bike shop was only eight miles away. I took advantage of the time waiting for my ride to do a phone interview with the Lebanon Reporter, which ran a nice story titled, “Pedaling a shift to green energy.”

The cool staff (a prerequisite, it seems, for working in a bike shop) at Nebo Ridge Bicycles in Carmel dropped all of their other jobs to get me back on the road. It took some agile acrobatics for the mechanic to rethread the repaired chain through one of the pulleys, but after an hour or so, I was back in business. In yet one more remarkable display of generosity and solidarity, they didn’t charge me for the repair. But pedaling away from the shop, I felt the chain tugging up on the seat. When I reached down to figure out what was wrong, I discovered a severed electrical cable that must have gotten sliced when the chain snapped. Now the electric-assist motor was dead. This required a visit to a car stereo shop that performed electrical work. Luckily, one was close by. To repair the wiring, the technician had to remove the seat, which revealed the source of the other problem. The chain was pulling up on the seat because it hadn’t been threaded through the second pulley on the floor, so he remedied that too. This repair cost me a pretty penny, but it was worth it to have everything working properly again.

By now, I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to make it to the famous speedway. After winding my way through lanes of rush hour traffic, I finally arrived. Rolling up to the entrance, it looked similar to how I remembered it as a kid. There was just one problem: the time was 5:15pm and the sign said the track closed at 5:00. The exit gate was still open, but the entry gate was closed. Kicking myself for having missed it by 15 minutes, something told me to just chill, so I got out of the trike and waited, hoping to speak with one of the employees when they drove out. Seconds later, a woman in a pickup truck rolled up the exit ramp. She looked official, so I approached her to ask if there was any way I could still get in. I explained to her how far I had come and why. She picked up her walkie-talkie and spoke to a disembodied voice on the other end. After a brief exchange, she told me I could go in, but I needed to hurry. Excitedly thanking her, I hopped into the trike and raced down the ramp and up to the security building on the other side, which was staffed by Jim “Woody” Woodlock.

Woody was instantly taken with the trike and seemed just as taken with my mission. When I asked him where I could get the best view of the racetrack, he suggested the museum at the top of the hill. But before I could even snap a picture, he yelled up to me to come back down, quickly, saying he had a “treat” for me. It turns out Woody had radioed the head of security, who was on his way over to give me a personal tour of the speedway. He told me Ron only had five minutes, so we had to move fast. For the second time that year, I felt like a kid at Christmas.

Before I knew it, I was pedaling behind Ron’s white pickup truck onto the main straightaway of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine riding my rocket trike onto the track. Since he was driving kind of fast, I kicked in the electric-assist motor to keep up. I caught up with him at the starting line, a 3-foot-wide band of bricks known as the “Yard of Bricks.” A man clearly in love with his job, Ron told me the original track, built in 1909, consisted of 3.2 million bricks, and that these were the only original bricks remaining (the rest of the 2 ½ mile-long track is paved). He also pointed out where a mini-tornado had come through the week before, ripping some tiles off the victory podium. I imagined it to be the same hurricane-force windstorm I had barely averted in Springfield.

Then it was time to pedal down the track. Wanting the full experience, I turned the electric-assist motor off. After a slow start, I picked up some speed on the main straightaway before hitting the first curve, where the embankment was a lot steeper than it looked. That took me near the stands where I playfully imagined throngs of racecar fans cheering. I then followed Ron into one of the pit crew areas and back up to the security building where Woody was waiting for me, with a big smile on his face. He said, “This place has a lot of history and now you’re part of it.” I was smiling, too, grateful for this once-in-a-lifetime thrill made possible only by the amazing kindheartedness of three extremely thoughtful human beings.

I would later learn that an innovative entrepreneurship program for at-risk urban high school students had a similar Indianapolis Motor Speedway adventure the year after mine. One of their projects involved converting a wrecked Lola Indy chassis into an electric racecar that caught the attention of the White House for its fuel efficiency numbers (at a 45 mph pace, it achieved the astonishing equivalent of more than 360 miles per gallon). One of the program’s students even got to drive their electric racecar onto the track as part of the racetrack’s Emerging Tech Day. The next logical step, it seems to me, is an Indy 500 electric car race.

On a high, I raced in the fading light to yet another motel, which was busting my budget, but there aren’t many campgrounds in big cities. Having gained only 23 miles on the day, November 1 was the day I finally stopped trying to predict when I would arrive in Washington, DC. I would get there when I got there. If that meant having to contend with snow, I would just hole up somewhere until it melted.

I spent most of the next morning calling the major Indianapolis media outlets, but even with the racetrack story hook, I could not have had tougher competition. It was Election Day and all the reporters were out on assignment. Pedaling through the city, I had the typical experience of cars slowing down for pictures of the trike, but there was one encounter I will never forget. There was a guy about my age sitting in a car idling next to me at a stoplight. The passenger window was rolled down and I overheard him say to the driver: “You’re looking at the future right there, man.” It reminded me of how the futuristic-looking trike, while popular most everywhere I went, seemed to strike an even deeper chord in the inner cities. There it elicited more than just enthusiasm. It elicited excitement. It seemed to elicit hope.

November’s arrival brought with it cooler weather. Chill winds made 50s feel like 40s, sweat-soaked as I was inside the trike. To keep warm, I pumped my legs hard, propelling myself out of the city. I spent the rest of the day rolling past farm fields and pastures, my yellow pod prompting many a curious cow to lift their head and stare. Popping gears made it hard to get into much of a groove, but I somehow still managed to log 64 miles, making it to the town of Rushville before dark, where I saw what has to be one of the most beautiful historic courthouses in the country.

On my way to the police station to inquire about possibly camping in the town park, I encountered a local resident walking down the sidewalk. That man, Randy Kaster, was animated about my mission and had some choice words to share about why he wasn’t voting that day. Looking into my phone, Randy told me that Rushville was named after Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the heroic signers of the Declaration of Independence (who also bravely served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War). Here is what else Randy said:

“I didn’t vote today. I’ve voted ever since I was eighteen, but I’m tired of both parties. The bickering that’s going on in Washington, I don’t think anything’s gonna get passed. They can’t cross party lines. They can’t come to agreement. So I didn’t vote today cause I felt like it wasn’t gonna matter. Democrats, Republicans, Tea Party, whoever got in there, it wasn’t gonna matter.”

He then called out climate deniers and called for climate action:

“I’m for renewable energy… I believe that there is change in climate. You guys want to sit back and say, oh, it just goes in cycles. Well, it doesn’t go in cycles. If you look at the Arctic poles, they’re melting. And climate is changing. And that’s why you’re seeing storms so severe that they are in the spring and the fall. Droughts are going on. We gotta do something. Doing nothing ain’t gonna help. At least if we try, and it doesn’t work, then we tried. Our kids are gonna say, well, hey, they tried, we gotta do something else.”

Randy was just the latest in a long string of disillusioned Americans I had encountered who, like me, had lost faith in the two corporate controlled political parties. When it comes to the climate, I call them the party of no (Republicans) and the party of slow (Democrats). I say this as someone who knows a little something about politics. I’ve worked on Capitol Hill. I’ve worked on several presidential campaigns. I helped elect a United States Senator. I know how the system works and I know it isn’t working.

When I told Randy I was headed to the police station to ask about camping, in yet another heartwarming display of just how generous and trusting most Americans are, he invited me to pitch my tent in his backyard. Back at his house, this decorated Marine Corps veteran and I chatted over beers in his den. He even offered the use of the family’s shower while he ordered a pizza for dinner. After cleaning up and wolfing down a few slices, I briefly met his wife, before retiring to my tent for the night. But the pizza must not have agreed with me. I woke up the next morning not just to ice on the tent fly and frost on the windshield, but painfully in need of a toilet. The problem was, the house was locked and I was miles from a public restroom. Desperate, I quickly sized up my options. Dig a cat hole behind the shed in the back yard? Nope. Knock on a stranger’s door and ask to use their bathroom? Nope. My only real option was to pedal the several miles into town and just hope I made it in time.

Wanting to avoid having to pedal back out to retrieve my tent, I started rolling up my frost-covered fly with frozen fingers, but soon found myself doubled over in pain. Dropping everything, I hopped into the trike for a mad dash into town. Partway there, I thought I was saved when I spied a town park with a bathroom, only to encounter another locked door. With Old Faithful now threatening to blow, I desperately pedaled even faster. Racing up to the first store I saw, I hurried inside, and without breaking stride asked for the bathroom. My distress painfully obvious, the kind convenience store clerk wordlessly pointed me to the back of the store. I made it just in time. I can laugh about it now, but anyone who has ever experienced such gastrointestinal distress knows it’s not funny when it’s happening. Given all the miles I had pedaled, it’s a minor miracle it had only happened once. Disaster averted, I pedaled back to Randy’s and retrieved my gear.

When I later strolled into The Corner Restaurant looking forward to some coffee and a home-cooked meal, I felt more eyes on me than usual. It seemed like every customer wanted to know what I was up to and where I was headed in the canary yellow trike parked out on the sidewalk. Questions were lobbed at me from across the room, which I fielded between bites of fried potatoes and eggs. Like pretty much everywhere I went, the idea of a green energy moon shot resonated as plain old common sense. The president of Rushville’s City Council, Bill Goins, made a point of stopping by my table to say hello. Then my waitress threw me for a loop by telling me, “The guy over there,” Al Tackett, had picked up my tab. Another thoughtful customer advised me on the most bike-friendly route to the next town, while yet another, Mike Sweet, invited me to check out the “green” addition to his home. I felt incredibly welcomed in Rushville, Indiana. It was like being given a group hug by the entire town.

After breakfast, I followed Mike to his home. In his own quiet and unassuming way, Mike is doing his part to protect the Earth by using reclaimed materials whenever and wherever he can. A self-described recycler who is “trying to help the environment out a little bit,” he leads by example by reusing materials others would throw away. Before Mike got involved, the flooring on his new home addition was headed for the landfill. Sharing with me that “even right here in Rushville, Indiana, we see the weather changing,” he told me he did not get the hope and change he expected from President Obama: “We’re not getting near what I thought we were going to, like he was talking, so I hope he can step it up a little bit and do some more for renewable energy, you know, what he promised us.”

My morning also included a stop at the office of the Rushville Republican, where the friendly reporter, Melissa Conrad, wrote a piece that beautifully captured the spirit of my mission. Here are excerpts from “Starting a green industrial revolution in a yellow tricked-out trike”:

Tom Weis is a hard person not to notice. Riding his bright, yellow human-powered vehicle (a recumbent tricycle wrapped in an aerodynamic body) he drew a lot of attention as he made stops around Rushville this week on his way to Washington D.C. from Boulder, Colo., using pedal power and perseverance… From town to town, he is stopping, sharing, learning and listening on Main Street. The phone lines of the Rushville Republican office rang after his departure with more than one person mentioning what a great person he seemed to be, how good he had been in sharing his unique trike with kids and listening to what local folks had to say, all while sharing what he has learned about renewable energy…

His message, though new, green and forward thinking, brought back words that have been long-lacking in American conversation on Main Streets where economic woes have been a topic far to [sic] long… Weis makes it a point to visit downtown restaurants and kids and Main Streets to talk and listen to what matters to Americans and why renewable energy can be our next industrial frontier…

Maybe Weis does have a lot of what it takes to change America. Change is a conversation, then another, then another along Main Street as ideas are shared and new visions for how the world could be... Weis has a goal and he is sharing it one person, one mile, one Main Street, one town, one State, one sunrise and one sunset at a time - with solar panels collecting the energy he will need along the way. There was a day when America dreamed big dreams Weis remembers - when hard work brought a good return. When Americans made quality products and led the way in industrial development…

He calls his vehicle the rocket trike because, for him, this 2020 goal for a 100% renewable electricity grid is as worthy and as inspirational as a goal set by another American president that also believed in the power of rockets and the power of Americans with a mission. He began his ride on the 48th anniversary of a historic speech given by President John F. Kennedy challenging America to land a man on the moon within a decade… Weis hopes when he arrives in D.C., he can share the stories of the people and their desire to dream big again as Americans, and the hope of a more sustainable future by convincing a new President to set a new decade-long goal.

Weis is the man on the little yellow trike who, with every mile, becomes more determined to start a big, green industrial revolution in America. He is carrying the dream of awakening American know-how, American might, American ingenuity and American ideals to build a new vision for how high we could reach again.

I was bowled over when I read Melissa’s article. Never in my long career as an activist had I encountered so many open-minded newspaper, television, and radio reporters. Without them, I would have reached relatively few people with my moon shot message. Thanks to their thoughtful reporting, I was communicating with exponentially more. But what struck me the most was how positive the press coverage was. Just as with almost all of my person-on-the-street interviews, almost all of my media interviews were spontaneously generated. Maybe that was the trick.

On my way out of town, I made a stop at the Booker T. Washington Community Center, named after the influential African-American intellectual, orator, and advisor to Presidents Roosevelt and Taft. I learned that the national award-winning historic landmark was the culmination of a long-time dream of a fellow African-American leader, Bill Goins. When I saw the beautiful community center also housed a five-day-a-week Head Start program, I poked my head in the door to ask if the pre-school children might want to see the trike. Boy did they. When during show-and-tell, one of the teachers asked if I had a horn, I rang my tinny-sounding bike bell to laugher all around. When she asked how fast it went, one little boy bubbling over with enthusiasm said, “Millions fast, I think.” I said, “Yeah, he’s right. Millions fast.” Because one never knows the impact such an encounter might have on the imagination of young minds, I sought out show-and-tell opportunities like this whenever and wherever I could.

Later, in the town of Connersville, I made a stop at the Connersville News-Examiner, which ran a story called “Riding yellow for green.” In the town of Liberty, a Subway employee generously treated me to lunch after learning about my mission. Pedaling out of town, and out of Indiana, I did a phone interview with Ohio University’s College Green Magazine, which ran another good story on the ride.

The closer I got to Ohio, the more familiar the deciduous forest landscape became. Crossing into my seventh state, I was happy to be back in the land where I was born and raised. I took a short side trip to check out one of the last remaining covered bridges in southwest Ohio, the Black Covered Bridge, where I ran into two fellow sightseers. When they heard what I was up to, they asked if I had seen the low-speed wind turbine at Miami University’s Ecology Research Center and offered to shuttle me the few miles up the road and back to see it. I’ve seen a lot of wind turbines in my time, but never one quite like this. Mounted on a pole about 35 feet off the ground, it was shaped like a giant megaphone with spinning blades in the back that reportedly produced power from wind speeds as low as 5 mph. I learned that an enterprising engineering class at Miami University had launched the project with funding from the university’s revolving green fund. As with the students I had met at Cloud County Community College in Kansas, it was inspiring to see the handiwork of today’s youth working to create a future that can actually sustain us.

Back in the trike and nearing Oxford, I flirted with the idea of spending the night at a campground in Hueston Woods for old times’ sake (I had camped there with my family as a kid). Instead, I took climate activists Don Pestana and his wife, Carla, up on their generous offer of lodging. As much as I enjoy camping, I also enjoy good company, and their offer of a hot shower and comfortable bed after a 64-mile ride day was too appealing to resist. Over dinner, their teenage son was gushing with ideas on how to design the next generation of rocket trike. There is just something about that little yellow trike that seems to spark the imagination.

Reflecting back on my time in Indiana, like in Kansas, another so-called “red” state, my conversations with Hoosiers revealed a genuine hunger for a generational mission to green our energy grid. Like in Kansas, my encounters in Indiana reaffirmed my belief that most Americans care a lot less about political party than they do about what is best for our country. What else could possibly explain so many doors swinging wide open for a guy pedaling a post-partisan vision of an American-led green industrial revolution? Imagine what could happen if the millions of Americans who have given up on voting had candidates courageous enough to inspire them to exercise that sacred right. With that kind of voter participation, revolutionary change could happen almost overnight. My experiences in the Hoosier State–a near-disastrous crash that displayed the best in humanity, inspiration drawn from a real rocket man, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure on the Indy 500 racetrack, and a steady stream of loving-kindnesses from erstwhile strangers–feels analogous to the journey we now need to take as a nation; by looking for the best in each other, and coming together as a people, we can overcome any obstacles standing in our way.

The New Frontier took us to another world by landing us safely on the Moon. The Next Frontier is about bringing us safely home by protecting life here on Earth. Our next journey begins with renewing America with renewable energy, but it does not end there. Securing a habitable planet for posterity requires an American triumph even more extraordinary than a green energy moon shot, as vital as that national mission is. Our shared survival hinges on successfully navigating spaceship Earth to a world of zero emissions and beyond. Let’s travel there together now.

NOTE: The written form of WORLDFIRE is the authoritative version. Any inadvertent errors in transcribing the recordings are mine and mine alone.