Family Bikes Down Pacific Coast

The Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition will be welcoming Jim Sayer, executive director of Adventure Cycling Association, and his family into town this week as a part of the family’s two-month bicycle excursion down the Pacific Coast.

Sayer, his wife Wendy Calvert, and their three daughters, Samantha, Keilan, and Lucy, all started at Washington’s Canadian border on June 15 and will stop pedaling on August 13 when they arrive at the Mexican border. It is expected to be a special homecoming of sorts for Sayer and his wife, as they return to Santa Barbara where they met at UCSB.

“He and his wife met at UCSB and got married afterward,” said Ralph Fertig, president of Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition. “So, they’re all bicycling down the coast and going to be here, arriving on [August 4], and we’re having this evening event in a way to celebrate their arrival here.”

The event will feature Sayer talking about his family’s trip down the coast, among other trips he has taken, as well as Adventure Cycling Association.

With a membership of almost 45,000, nonprofit Adventure Cycling Association’s mission is to inspire people of all ages to ride a bicycle for fun, fitness, and self-discovery.

Fertig will be one of the featured speakers, as well.

“I’m going to talk about my trip in 2005 to Cambodia, where I spent a week bicycling around the Angkor ruins and the town of Siem Reap, in northern Cambodia,” Fertig said. “It’s a place where almost all of the trips are done on foot or on bicycle, so I felt right at home with the people.”

Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition’s treasurer, Dave Bourgeois, will also be speaking at the event about a bicycle tour he took with his wife, Christine, in November 2009.

“Dave Bourgeois and his wife took a bicycle tour through the Pyrenees and climbed several of the passes that are used in the Tour de France — really some high-mountain passes full of snow,” Fertig said.

In addition to the various speakers, a 20-minute film titled Mzungus in the Mist will be shown by its producers, Jacob and Isaac Seigel-Boettner, whose parents are both teachers in the Santa Barbara area.

“They are coordinating this film about seven Santa Barbara Middle School students who went to Rwanda, and bicycled around and, I believe, helped the people there,” Fertig said. “It certainly should be interesting and be of interest to people since there are several Santa Barbara individuals in it.”

While there is no cost to attend, voluntary donations will be accepted at the door that will go toward Santa Barbara Bicycling Coalition’s youth and adult bicycling education programs.