8:00 am Start of 50 Mile Ride
Last Saturday was the first annual Fondo d'Congo. A fondo is a non competitive community bicycle ride. The word is Italian. So, add to the languages we're having the fun of learning, one more, Italian. The idea of a fondo is to gather hundreds of bicycle riders in a huge festival.
Mike Gilbert and his team of community developers did just that. Making full use of the incredible Plainfield park system and green ways and county roads, they put together rides of varying lengths: 50 miles for the serious cyclist, 25 miles for those who thought 50 sounded a bit obsessive, and 10, 5, and 2 mile rides in and around the parks. Bikers in racing kit, families dressed for fun, hot dogs, BBQ, popcorn, balloons, frisbees, fire trucks, and fire fighters. Fast road bikes, park cruisers, hybrids, mountain bikes, tandems, recumbents, children in buggers, dogs in baskets.
Guilford Township's Hummel Park, the largest township park in the state of Indiana, provided the big, new, beautiful Charleston Pavilion for the day. Fun and food. Gear Up Cyclery came to help with pre-ride maintenance issues. (Some of our riders were getting their bikes out of the garage for the first time in years.) A whole list of local businesses signed on as sponsors.
The Fondo is one day in Plainfield United Methodist Church's commitment to 175 straight days of risk taking service and mission. This is how they are celebrating their 175th anniversary. No central plan and only a large calendar in the narthex for coordination, members have created and are delivering a different service or mission project each day for these 175 days. Mike Gilbert decided that his contribution to the project would be to organize a fund raiser for Friendly Planet Missiology. He did that and so much more. (Mike will be the first to modestly object to receiving this much credit.) The team delivering this event was huge, enthusiastic, and super competent. In addition, as the Friendly Planet team keeps discovering, God had already prepared our success.
Yes, it was a fund raiser, and yes, many bicycles will be purchased for church and community leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but as our Congolese partners will testify, the biggest contribution an event like the Fondo d'Congo makes is the building of a connected global community. Friendly Planet Missiology now has an annual ride in the Congo and an annual ride in Indiana. (Maybe next year, we can have a Congolese rider at the Fondo, and maybe there is a Hoosier rider who would like to ride with us in the Congo.)
The Fondo d'Congo will happen again, same time next year. For members of the bicycle community of central Indiana, it can be your warm up ride for the Hilly Hundred. (Our 50 mile route has some vertical challenges.) It can be the last ride of the summer or the first ride of the fall. For families and friends, it is an opportunity for wholesome fun in the park. For those who think a lot about the suffering of people in far away places, it is a way to connect and participate in their struggles.
Ride on.
Biking Bob, aka Captain Spaulding (African Explorer), aka the Vicar of Amitydale.
Just a few more photos of riders:
Mike Gilbert (right)
and Free Popcorn
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