Editorials

Starting August 6, 19 Berkeley High School students will mount bicycles donated by the Berkeley Police Department and begin the 14-day, 600-mile ride from the entrance of Berkeley High to the entrance of Santana High School in San Diego County – the site of a deadly shooting rampage this year that left two students dead and 13 wounded. 

The Berkeley students want to send a message of sympathy to the Santee community. And they want to send a message of peace to their youth peers everywhere. 

They want to show people that, “There’s another way to deal with the frustration that all high school students are faced with,” said Berkeley Booster Association Director Catherine Jamison, one of the trip’s leaders.  

“It doesn’t have to be about violence. It can be about working as a team.” 

But perhaps even more than that, the kids want to show the Berkeley community what kind of people they really are. 

All 19 students are students of color from low-income families. In the media, Berkeley High student Aramon Bartholomew said,  

“You see mostly students of color fighting each other. And we’re not all about that.”  

Bartholomew said he hopes that being involved in the Pedaling for Peace summer program he can counteract negative stereotypes that he feels affect the way Berkeley residents view Berkeley High’s students of color.  

“We’re not lazy. We’re not gangbangers,” he said. 

Evelyn Delcid, who’ll be a Berkeley High senior next year, said, “The message it’s going to give everyone is that youth aren’t involved in a lot of negative things like people expect. The message is going to get out that we’re very caring.” 

Caring – and determined. 

The students, most of whom rarely rode bikes at all before this summer, have endured a grueling training regimen for the last two months.  

Three days a week they spend two hours on the downtown YMCA’s stationary bikes, sweating out the imaginary miles to disco tunes like, appropriately enough, “Y-M-C-A.”  

On weekends, they hit the streets, biking progressively longer and more challenging routes around Berkeley.  

Last weekend they traveled 25 miles. This weekend, they are biking 35 miles up and over Wildcat Ridge and all through Tilden Park.  

They’ll get a taste of how to negotiate steep descents as they come back into the city by way of Spruce Street.  

“Saturday will be the real test,” said Jamison, a long-time cyclist who recently spent a year “biking around the world” and has traveled Highway 1 down to San Diego – the route the students will take. 

Some of the students feel they’ve already been tested. 

“I haven’t ridden a bike since I was 7,” said Maria Herrera, who graduated from Berkeley High this spring and will attend UC Berkeley in the fall.  

“It’s challenging. I’ve had to find a lot of inner strength to get through it. At one point I was like so tired that I started crying.” 

Even the students who feel they were in great physical shape before they started the training have had to make adjustments. 

“I’m a football player, so I don’t really touch bikes,” Bartholomew said. “The hardest part is the seats.” 

The students will travel about 50 miles a day, passing some of the most spectacular scenery of California’s central coast.  

At night they’ll camp out in California state parks. 

By the end of it, said Jamison, the students will have accomplished a formidable and exhilarating feat. 

“Just imagine,” she said. “You’ve got the sun on your back and the wind in your face. You look to the right and you’ve got the waves crashing in. You look to the left and there’s nothing but a thin white line.” 

The Pedaling for Peace students have spent the year getting to know each other through a city-funded after-school program known as RISE. The program provides a wide array of support for students from low-income households, including tutoring, counseling and referrals to other social services.  

“Anything that would get in the way of the children succeeding academically, we would try to assist,” said Adriana Betti, managing director for RISE and another leader of the bike trip. 

Jamison said completing a 600-mile bike trip could do wonders for students confidence and discipline, helping them get prepared for the important upperclassman years at Berkeley High. 

“Cycling is an excellent way for kids to challenge themselves because it forces them to stay focused,” Jamison said.  

“If they don’t stay focused they’ll fall behind, they’ll crash, they’ll end up working harder than they have to because they’re not paying attention to shifting gears.” 

To date, the Pedaling for Peace program has raised a little over $7,000 of the $17,450 it needs to pay for the students food and equipment — and a return flight from San Diego. Donations in cash or in-kind can be made to: Berkeley Boosters/PAL, “Peddling for Peace,” P.O. Box 17, Berkeley, Calif. 94701.