(WFS -- Seattle, Washington) Ben Okri, the Nigerian author, called the road, famished. Robert Ament, an environmentalist from a continent away in Bozeman, Montana, staves this hunger by feeding them dirt -- literally ripping then piling and pouring topsoil and organic debris, reuniting roads with wilderness. The obese asphalts, or as he claims, their “high densities” especially those near or inside protected sensitive areas “kill wildlife.”

The road is a road is a road, after all, bringing in, taking out, separating, uniting, developing, destroying. But for 21 young people biking across America under a program called Bike-Aid, the road may be all these.

“I’ve always been anti-America. I guess I’m what you call unpatriotic,” was how Rebecca Letz, 19, from California introduced herself to the mixed bunch. From June 14 to August 21 she will be on her bike to try to know her people beyond their government’s international policies which she says “haven’t done others in the world any good.”

Julie Dutton, 34, also from California, is a hospice nurse helping the dying and their kin cope with death. Taking life on differently this summer, she says, will affirm her commitment more, “And besides, I always wanted to bike across the country, too.”

The incredible journey crossing many and all sorts of roads is a 15-year running program of the Overseas Development Network (ODN) based in San Francisco, California. ODN is a non-profit student-based organization that directly involves people in addressing global problems by providing opportunities for both education and action.

Day 1 and just 40 miles off the Pike Place Market in Seattle -- one of Bike-Aid’s starting points, Eve Steiner, 19, from Utah, shifted her gears to avoid a car, fell on a ditch beside the narrow shoulder and broke her wrist. Frustrated, she sat amid a patchwork of red ambulance lights, concerned motorists and the worried cyclists who could have been her community on wheels. “I prepared for so long and so hard...stood on street corners to raise funds and explained to strangers where their money would go. A little girl gave me her dollar like she understood when I told her mom about cycling against globalization!”

Each participant is expected to raise $3,600 or $1 each for the 3,600 miles of road and people they will pass through and connect with. “Of course, this is 3,600 dollars plus-plus,” jokes Jonathan Burnstein, ODN’s Bike-Aid Coordinator and himself a Bike-Aid ‘91 alumni, “Cause you’d have to count the miles when you’d get lost, go out of your way to have fun or just feel the communities more!”

Seventy five percent (75%) of the total funds raised by Bike-Aid ‘97 cyclists went to projects that travelled the ends of the whole empowerment process -- actually staffed by the very people who conceptualized the design, are affected and directly involved, and who may in varying degrees enjoy some kind of benefit from them. This road led to bike-related initiatives like the Free Cycles Missoula-Bicycle Checkout Project in Montana; Bicycles for Afghan Amputees’ Rehabilitation in Afghanistan and the Mexico-based Bicycle Inter-community Action and Salvage. Funding to cooperatives, people’s banks, agricultural organizations and recycle shops in Ghana, Zimbabwe and the Philippines held the tape at the finish line.

With a cement cast covering the length of her arm, Steiner made the painful decision, “Maybe I can recuperate for 6 weeks and meet you guys somewhere in Ohio and then we could all cycle to D.C.” The Seattle Route shares the road with 17 others who started in San Francisco, California. After 10 weeks, their routes will merge and together, they will ride on to Washington D.C. and knock on the august doors of the White House to narrate stories about the famished roads and the people and wildlife divided and united, destroyed and developed in between.

Women seemed to thrive in the details of physical stress and road stories as last year, 59% of the cyclists were women. With Steiner healing at home, 11 of the 21 Seattle Route cyclists, and 10 of the 17 in the San Francisco Route mix their ovulation and menstrual cycles with the highs and lows of riding the road.

Steiner’s own road tale set a mood for the plots conjured along the way -- of the open kindness and generosity of total strangers to total strangers; of the very nature of the bicycle, its impact on the riders, the road and everything else it passes; of the act of creating, living in and touching base with the concept and workings of a community.

Hitting snow, freak wind and hail in notoriously moody Steven’s Pass, Rachel Jennings, 18, a student from Connecticut, jumped off her bike, walked and talked rapidly to keep hypothermia from setting in. At the 6,000-foot high summit, she and Dutton knocked on the doors of a ski lodge where “three motherly men welcomed us inside, gave us mixmatched clothes, mittens and socks while they dumped our soaked stuff in their dryer. And then they fed us. Despite the cold, it was wonderful.”

Abigail Chapman, 24, working with New Mexico’s Department of Health, sought refuge in a tiny store that sells knives, “I thought I was gonna die there but Elliot and Bobbie gave us hot choco and donuts and sat us close to their fire. Those who have so little gave so much!”

Being on a bicycle, vulnerable and open to elements also meant that goodness could as easily find their way especially when sought. “Stores who realize what we were doing donate food,” gushes Tami Loeffler, 23, a Peace Corp volunteer. “Cars stopping to ask us if we were all right or to give us a ride is a big deal. People letting us in for shelter is something else.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t regret being on a bike. You get to places on your own power and you don’t mess up the environment,” Chapman stresses which Brad Bennett, 22 of California totally agrees to amid cheers, “Geez and you’d only need...a bowl of granola and yogurt, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bananas and potato pearls and you have a full tank for the day!” Advocates of sustainable development swear by the tenet the bicycles are the most sustainable, environmentally-sensitive, gender-friendly and empowering mode of transport.

And the roads, it seemed, cannot hide much of their secrets from bikes as they do with motor vehicles that whizz by and miss much. Deer, fox cubs, gophers and birds lying by the roadside are buried reverently by the cyclists with a gasp and a prayer. Turtles and snakes risking a crossing are blessed with a spell.

For the Bike-Aid cyclists, this direct relationship with the hungry roads which they share with wildlife is as palpable as the pleasure of riding the wind and each other, and seeing the animals somehow free themselves from the roadkill statistic. Heather Hawksford, 21, from Washington, adds her story of kinship with others who have engaged deer, wolves and bears, “Yesterday, I raced a bee, Today, I raced a bird!”

Corporate America, as always, makes no secret of its presence in the billboards that break the scenery with “food and lodging, 3 miles,”or “Casino, next exit.” And perhaps as testimony and unfortunate reaction to this consumer culture, “I saw beds on the side of the road that are practically new. Helmets...clothing...shoes that Americans throw away. This is so much waste. In Zimbabwe, we would have still used them,” observes Cosmus Matipira, 30, a Biology teacher.

With him as “partner riders” are Israel Conrady, 20, a musician from Bolivia and Pinky Serafica, a journalist from the Philippines. Plying the more southern San Francisco Route are Lindi Masuku, a student from Zimbabwe, Alex Silva, an NGO (non-governmental organization) worker also from the Philippines and Bremley who works with the United Nations in India.

“We passed towns that are so dependent on one huge industry, like a mining company, for instance. The small miners just can’t compete so they end up as workers of the firm,” Jennifer Cockburn of California, 25, reports one day as she rides to home base. The “partner riders” affirm her observation with stories from their own lands that run in the same bizarre vein. Says Cockburn who works with the developmentally-disabled, “And when that corporation fails, they just transfer somewhere else. Who loses? Not the big guys but the people in that town.”

But the road also brought the cyclists to communities facing much environmental or cultural damage, and struggling to survive the crosspaths -- the major lead contamination clean-up in Kelogg, Idaho and continued Native American genocide in Lame Deer, Montana. Being on the road shoulders and merely passing, not staying long enough to know and brave the roads there, Bike-Aid ‘98 cyclists have helped repair bikes for public checkout and use in Montana, cleared land in Idaho for a children’s park and sweated in a traditional Indian Lodge in a pledge of solidarity.

Building a community for themselves being strangers before the bike trip, the cyclists have tossed forward their own construct of what a “community” is and should be, and actually trying to live these. “A community is actually what we make it. That’s the challenge. It’s like us here, coming from so many cultures, so many backgrounds now how do we make our visions for this summer work?” is how Anthony Tedesco, 21, a masseuse from Las Vegas and confessed loner, tries to make sense of his niche in the group, or better yet, in society.

David Dick, 26, a graduate student from California and one of the group facilitators -- a role he soon dispensed with, says “we make the rules and we scrap them if they don’t work for us. We don’t have a leader here, if issues need to be addressed, we try to reach a consensus. Everyone can call a meeting, that’s the important thing, we talk. And we help each other out.”

The roads are out there and they can lead to where people want them. Or they can remain famished and hungry for lives and futures. Letz shakes her head at the beauty of a canyon spread before her and her bike, a place Native Americans have always exorcised and called the “bad lands,” “I never understood what this country stood for. Just look at what we’ve done to the Native Americans, and to think our civilizations is so young!”

Then she breathes in, bowing her head against the headwinds and pedalling hard to get home to reunite with the group and dinner, “But with Bike-Aid, perhaps...perhaps there’s more to this country after all.”