Bikes Not Bombs has been a part of our family's life since 2002, when Emily first started as a volunteer intern in the Earn-A-Bike program and then went to Ghana to work with the Village Bicycle Project. We've been riding in the Bike-A-Thon together since we returned to Boston in 2022, and this will be our first year all riding independently! Part of what we love about Bikes Not Bombs is how the mission and organization bring people of different generations and backgrounds together in a spirit of solidarity, justice, and fun. We are grateful to be part of the BNB family!

Why do you ride in the Bike-A-Thon?

Kaia: I like that there is a group of people that you can bike with and you don't have to rush yourself and you can go at your own pace without being rushed. I also do it because it's fun.

Dawn: Because Bikes Not Bombs creates a wonderful community and does important transportation education and advocacy, and because riding bikes is just really **** fun!

Eliot: I enjoy riding bikes, and I think that what Bikes Not Bombs does is important and good, so I think that riding in the Bike-A-Thon is a good way to support Bikes Not Bombs and have a good time.

Emily: Life takes you all over the place. In a 2003 Globe article about BNB, I was described in the following way: "Lin, who will graduate in June with a degree in physics, astronomy, and astrophysics, says that she's changed her plans for the future, to her parents' chagrin. Graduate school will have to wait, she says, while she spends a year in Africa at a Bikes Not Bombs affiliated program in Ghana. 'I want to do something that involves people, that involves direct results.'"  21 years later, the Bike-A-Thon remains a once a year opportunity to reconnect with people and an organization that helped make me who I am, and who are making the world into the kind of place it ought to be.