Why a ride against hunger?

Thursday, July 15, 2010
St. Ignace, Michigan

Today we rode from Manostique to St. Ignace, Michigan, about 88 miles. At the end of the day we were in the home town of Joe Ossmann and went directly to the newspaper office where Joe was photographed and interviewed, etc. What fun. Tonight we are camping on the far northern shores of Lake Michigan Tomorrow is a down day to rest weary bodies. By Saturday night we will have our first night in Ontario, Canada. And as of today we have completed over 3,000 miles of our journey.

I decided that for my blog today it was important once again to share some of the reasons I am doing this ride. All of the information below was "stolen" from a book called "Ending Hunger, An Idea Whose Time Has Come,” given to me by my friend Jerry.

Please take a moment to read through this information slowly....

"All of us have been "hungry" at some time or other. This usually means simply that we have an appetite or that it is time for lunch. But the hunger experienced by millions of people on our planet is not an appetite that comes and goes; it is a consuming, debilitating, minute-by-minute, day-after-day experience. Hunger keeps people from working productively and thinking clearly. It decreases their resistance to disease. It can be intensely painful. Prolonged hunger can result in permanent damage to body and mind. And ultimately, if hunger goes on long enough, it kills"

Loretta Schwartz wrote a book called "Starving in the Shadow of Plenty" in which she describes her experience of hunger here in the U.S. She says, "I've had no income and I've paid no rent for many months. My landlord let me stay. He felt sorry for me because I had no money. The Friday before Christmas he gave me ten dollars. For days I had had nothing but water. I knew I needed food; I tried to go out, but was too weak to walk to the store. I felt as if I were dying. I saw the mailman and told him I thought I was starving. He brought me food and then he made some phone calls and that's when they started delivering these lunches. But I had already lost so much weight that the five meals a week are not enough to keep me going.

I just pray to God I can survive. I keep praying that I can have the will to save some of my food so I can divide it up and make it last. It's hard to save because I am so hungry that I want to eat it right away. On Friday held over two peas from the lunch. I ate one pea on Saturday morning. Then I got into bed with the taste of food in my mouth and I waited as long as I could. Later in the day I ate the other pea.

More than one billion people on our planet are chronically hungry.

Every year 13 to 18 million people die as a result of hunger and starvation.

No other disaster compares to the devastation of hunger.

More people have died from hunger in the past two years than were killed in World War I and World War II combined.

If you can, please make a donation to an agency dealing with the reality of hunger.