Thank you for helping me surpass my fund rasing goal of $4000 for affordable housing!

So I made it! Thanks to the the 71 people who sponsored, I have raised (to date) $4125 to benefit affordable housing organizations across the United States.

We are still looking for sponsorships! The more money we raise, the more we can help people desperate for an affordable home! Because each rider must raise a minimum of $4000 in order to participate on the ride, I would ask that instead of sponsoring me, please sponsor my good friend Maxwell Kraft (who is responsible for introducing me to road biking to begin with!) who is a bit short of his $4K goal.

Please visit bikeandbuild.org/donate and click on Kraft, Maxwell to donate and grant him eligibility on this ride of a lifetime!

Thank you again for your continued support.

Here's to my Giant road bike

And here she is! My Giant road bike steed which carry me across the United States. I have been training almost every day now and have introduced her to these NYS hills. America, here I come!

Ghana Bike Project: loading day!

Check out these pictures of the hundreds of bikes we collected from the Ithaca area to send to Ghana to be used in rural development initiatives.

Ghana Pics For Blog

View more OpenOffice presentations from guest01b298.

Ghana Bikes on the Cornell University homepage

Check it out! www.cornell.edu
Two undergrads send used bikes to Ghana...

The road for affordable housing : I've hit the $3000 milestone

Thanks everyone for your support! With your help, I have currently raised $3145 to be used for affordable housing project across the U.S.A.

The sponsor of the day: The Blue Rooster Bakery.
The Blue Rooster hosted Jennifer Johnson (fiddler, dancer, singer) to play on March 15th and entertain guests. Proceeds of the event went in part to sponsor my ride. Thank you Karen Finigan (owner) for your support!

Ghana Bikes Project in the Cornell Chronicle!

Publicity just keeps coming our way. My dear friend and housemate Jill McCoy wrote a lovely article about Liz and my "Scrap Metal to Ghana Pedal" Project.
Check it out here.

"Old, rusty bikes sitting in the garage after years of disrepair or disuse are often sent to the junkyard, drifting into oblivion or piling up into scrap metal. But Cornell students Anne-Lise Cossart '09 and Liz Bageant '10 are shifting this paradigm by collecting and shipping used bikes to Ghana.

Jill McCoy

Anne-Lise Cossart '09, standing, and Liz Bageant '10 prepare bikes they have collected to be shipped to Ghana.

Once in Accra, Ghana's capital, the bikes will be refurbished and sold at low prices to African villagers.

"We look at these bikes and think they are rusty or dirty, but [in Ghana] they definitely get used," said Bageant, a development sociology major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences..."

We are in the Cornell Daily Sun newspaper for Bike & Build!

Check out the article in the "Red Letter Daze" section of the Cornell Daily Sun. My good friend, Michelle Pascucci wrote a terrific article talking about our upcoming trip! Since we are three Cornellians on the Providence to San Francisco Bike & Build trip, it made for a great story! Here is an excerpt:

"With graduation looming, seniors are finally preparing for their departures from the ivory tower. While some are scrambling to find a job in an increasingly frightening economy or hoping to leap back into school, others will be celebrating commencement with adventures such as elaborate trips across the world.

Three seniors — Anne-Lise Cossart, Max Kraft and Carlie Pietsch — will be traveling from Providence, R.I., to San Francisco, Calif., over two and a half months, making several pit stops along the way to work at construction sites for affordable housing. For this challenging trip, they will also be trading the ease of a motor vehicle for bikes."

PS: Update on my fund raising - I am now up to $2500! Thank you all for your support!