Co-cyclists from the Summer 2012 Cross-country tour:
Megan Meo is a student at Hampshire College studying cooperative entrepreneurship and food systems. Between studying and trying to stay warm during the cold New England winter, Megan works at her school’s food co-op, Mixed Nuts, where she developed a new love for cooperation. Megan also is serving on the interim Board of Directors for CoFED and loves supporting the creation of food co-ops on college campuses nationally. She hopes to one day open a cooperative restaurant that is sustained by its own farm. In the meantime she will continue biking, baking, playing dress-up, and living communally in a farmhouse full of friends. Her cycling blog can be found here.
Marleigh Higgins is a student at Hampshire College, studying women’s health, environmental justice, and documentary photography. She loves exploring, being outside, biking, growing food, cooking, playing the banjo, and meeting new people. Throughout this year she has been involved in Co-cycle organizing and is incredibly excited to bike on the tour this summer!
Katie Coupe is a recent Hampshire College graduate who is particularly interested in supporting access to health care through appropriate technology design. She spent her time at Hampshire exploring women’s public health, dance movement therapy and psychology. She hopes to one day join the ranks of the great women in comedy, but for now spends her spare time improvisational dancing, knitting watermelon hats and trying to make people laugh.
Luc is a queer and curious creature. He graduated from Hampshire College in May through November of 2011 having studied various topics roughly “focused” on natural sciences and modes of knowing, communicating and understanding. She has dreamed of this adventure for many years and has happily taken to the art and algorithms practical of manifestations. They currently reside in Amherst, MA, where they are often privileged to specify their pronoun of preference.
Riko Fluchel hails from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He will begin his final year at Hampshire College in the Fall of 2012. His academic areas of interest include postcolonial queer theory and politics, ethnography, hapa identity, and creative writing. He enjoys romping around bonfires, red wine (Pinot Noir or Merlot, please), salmon, and looking at pretty pictures of Iceland. His Co-Cycle blog, featuring a mix of creative writing, pictures, and queer theory, can be found here.
Sky Loth is a second-year student at Hampshire college, studying Food, Farming and Community in all of their different modes and forms. She likes holdin’ babies, cookin’food and singin’ songs with good friends. After listening in to Co-Cycle meetings from the other room for the past nine months, she is thrilled to have a place as cook and support team member of the tour!
Audrey Frischman is a student at NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study attempting to look at they ways in which falling in love during your teenage years affects your identity development. As a part of the Co-Cycle support team, she has been able to get the most out of her California Drivers License this summer.She couldn’t be happier to be on this journey amongst a bunch of amazing people.
Aliza Persing is a student at Hampshire College studying somatics, dance, and anatomy. She’s interested in movement and performance as a form of therapy, and everyday movement awareness as a path to more conscious and healthy individuals and communities. She’s excited to explore these ideas further on the road with Co-cycle this summer! Top 5 on her list of favorite things are chocolate, comfy sweaters, comfy people, dancing in the kitchen, and 90’s music.
Charlotte Cadieux is a Canadian who gets weird looks when she says things like ”pasta”, “sorry” and “latte.” When she isn’t defending her accent, she is usually studying climate change education, biking, looking at rocks, clouds, insects and trees, or figuring out how many songs she can play using the same 4 chords. Even though she loves her home, what she has seen of the United States has blown her mind and can’t believe how lucky she is that she’ll be able to see so much more.
Gabriel Rowe is a third year student at Hampshire College. Gabriel hopes to continually try to understand all of the incredible ways the body works. When he is not overwhelmed with the wonderful complexity of his studies he: climbs anything he can get his hands on (provided it’s tall enough and not something silly like a sandwich), daydreams about reading for fun, and enjoys hanging out with a guinea pig named Beachball who loves hay. He can’t wait to see the country and hangout with all of these great people!
Xander Weaver-Skull currently studies how to use art for social and environmental justice messaging. Within his work he investigates concepts of the “unseen,” “unconscious,” and “willful unknowing”. This year he worked on several in-depth projects including a hand bound accordion book with stencils of endangered and threatened animals from his home state of California as well as wrote and illustrated a children’s book about the issues and reality of throwing something away.
Emmett Brennan is a student at Bard College. He is fortunate to call Portland, Maine his home. In addition to studying studio arts, Emmett is shaped by the exploration of mental, physical, and spiritual health as they or it relates to the understanding of self and community. His passions are in food and eating, yoga and meditation, arts and music, and community building/development/sharing. He is excited, and humbled, to be biking with Co-cycle as a member of the film crew.
Katrina Ceguera is a recent graduate of the Environmental Studies program at UC Santa Barbara but is still studying hard at the University of Life. She’s interested in piezoelectricity and writing and sustainable urban growth and hopes that someone will give her a job that relates to any or all of these things. Katrina also enjoys writing mini-bios of herself in third person and looking at rocks and drinking good beer and telling bad jokes with good friends.
Guillermo Ortiz-Palacios is a Hampshire Alumni who is currently a freelance photographer that has worked on multiple projects such as independent films and documentations in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Massachusetts, and New York. Being as a participant of the program “Hampshire College in Cuba” in Spring 2010, he worked with the Office of the Historian documenting 42 blocks in the historic district of Old Havana, with a photographic inventory of 1,800 structures. Part of this work was exhibited in as his final college project in the Hampshire Gallery as “Contrastes: doors within doors.” In Spring 2012, he continued to work in Cuba as a research assistant under a Graham Foundation Grant for the Havana Archive Project by creating a digital archive, preserving and cataloging photographs & glass plates negatives. *Guillermo joined the ride for the San Francisco – Portland leg.