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Couple on a quest for
kindness
They're biking 10,000 miles to
promote idea that one kind act makes a difference
By Bill Varble
You know that kind bumper sticker that
says, "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty."
What if people tried to take it seriously?
Consider the Cycling for Kindness bike tour
that pedaled into the Rogue Valley Thursday. Led by 53-year-old Canadian
bicyclist Brock Tully, the tour originated in Vancouver, British Columbia,
Feb. 26.
Its mission? To boldly bike 10,000 miles
around the United States, promoting kindness both random and otherwise.
To that end, spokeswoman Janine Tafaka
says, a Kindness Conference is planned for 2 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the
Windmill Inn in Ashland. It's free. Tully stresses that it begins at 2
sharp.
For information, go to the Web sites: www.actsofkindness.org
or
www.kindacts.net
"It was Brock's idea," Tafaka
says of the tour. "He did a 10,000-mile bike tour 30 years ago. He
decided to do a repeat."
Tully says his first tour, as a young
physical education graduate from the University of British Columbia, was to
find himself.
"I was out of touch with my
heart," he says.
This time, Tully and his wife, Wilma, are
riding custom-made mountain bike/touring bike hybrids. They ride with three
support vehicles, one a motor home.
"We go into little towns and speak to
radio stations and newspapers," Tafaka says.
Tully says he's not sore.
"I've been taking lots of vitamins.
Something must be working."
A February press release from the group
said, "Working in the news must be tough these days, each day filled
with the countless tragedies and senseless acts of violence our fellow man
commits."
Well, who'd argue? But what's the
alternative?
Tully says, "One kind act by one kind
person is the kind of action that shows kindred spirits how kindness can
rekindle our oneness."
Or maybe as poet and lyricist Robert Hunter
once put it, "Whoa-oh what I want to know/Is are you kind?"
In fact the group finds reporters and
others wide open and listening. Tully was doing an interview on a Portland
radio station, and the Vancouver Grizzlies were playing the Trail Blazers,
and the disc jockey got the kindness guys free tickets to the game.
At a Mariott Inn (a corporate sponsor of
the tour), a waitperson gave the kind guys half-off on dinner. Then the bill
came, and a note from the manager said heck, forget the other half, too.
At kindness conferences, Tully talks about
his bike trip of 30 years ago, then people swap stories of random acts of
kindness.
Tafaka says the group plans to document 1
million acts of kindness and post 365 of them on a Web site so that people
can read one each day of the year. Others will go in a book to be published
by Conari Press, of Denver.
Tafaka says the wayfaring kindsters aren't
associated with any church or other group.
Tully's Vancouver-based group is called
Kind Acts. Any money raised during the U.S. tour goes to Random Acts of
Kindness, a Denver-based foundation, Tafaka says.
The group hopes to get on the
"Oprah" television show this summer.
Tully says he's encountered grumpy people
in traffic, but he tries not to take it personally.
"We really haven't encountered actual
unkindness," he says. "If we did I'd tell you." |
