Riders, RVs, and training - oh my...

The first training for the 2010 Equality Ride began on January 5 in Austin, Texas.  My flight there from LA was an exhausting affair involving 3 alarms, 2 poorly packed bags, a Flyaway shuttle, and a layover in Phoenix - an ordeal (oh how I suffer for justice!) that would probably have perturbed me more had I been fully conscious for any of it.  As it was, I drifted in and out of sleep through most of the journey, waking only to worry, as I always do when preparing to meet a large group of people I don't know, "Will they like me?"

Which is a pretty silly thing to worry about because:

1. Obviously, I'm fabulous. (Why are you laughing?)
2. Group trainings always start out with people feeling real nervous and end with people getting real close.  Sometimes there's a bit of "real annoyed" in there too, but generally speaking there's a pressure-cooked kind of bonding that happens during these short, intense experiences.

It's true!  It happened in RA training as we played "big booty big booty" and learned about campus resources.  It happened in AmeriCorps training as we exchanged "what makes me diverse" stories and learned about disaster response scenarios.  And it happened at Equality Ride training as we swapped "coming out" experiences and learned about interlocking systems of oppression.

Also inevitable is the Moment.  It's typically near the end of training - the Moment when the honeymoon begins to end.  People get tired.  The euphoria of learning fades, and the reality of having no personal space sets in.  And hey, super bonus: they stop having to listen to the person who doesn't know when to put his hand down.  (I am often on both side of this particular equation.)  Because you see, no matter how great a group of people generally is, there's always someone in it who's there with (gasp!) less than pure motivations.  You know, the RA who's only doing it for the free room and board, who cares about student life?  The AmeriCorps member who's serving only so they can get that $5,000 to pay off student loans, who cares about community service?  And the rest of us who lie somewhere in-between anyway.

So after getting past the "Will they like me?" stage, my jaded old self settled into actually learning something while waiting, increasingly begrudgingly, for the Moment to arrive.

And learn we did.  We learned about the "clobber" passages in the Bible often incorrectly used to condemn homosexuality, and the Bible's true core message of justice and acceptance for the least, the last, and the lost.  We learned about racism, sexism, and classism and how our own work will amount to nothing if we refuse to meaningfully account for them.  We learned about nonviolent resistance - how to use it, stick to it, and keep sticking to it.  (We also learned about substituting hummus for mayonnaise and how to make a great vegan chocolate chip cookie, but those are other stories I guess.)  We learned and learned and I waited and waited for the Moment to rear its ugly head.  But, weirdly enough, it never did - at least, not in the form I had been conditioned to expect.

See, there's nothing about the Equality Ride that's comparable to free room and board at school or free money to pay off your student loans.  There's nothing in it for you if you don't actually care about talking to people about justice for LGBTQ people.  The rest of it - a crowded bus, crowded hotel rooms, possible arrests, strangers telling you you're doomed for hell - isn't much of a trade off if that first thing doesn't mean anything to you to begin with.

Which is not to say that getting an awesome road trip out of the deal isn't pretty sweet, because it really is.  But when your group's Moment arrives and it involves everybody staying up until 3am on the last night writing love notes to one another...

Well, let me put it this way.  As I flew back to LA the evening of January 13, I pondered my sleep-deprived anxiety on the first day of training and thought about how silly it was that I was worried whether anyone would like me.  Because ultimately, of course they liked me (fabulous, remember?), but I also liked them.  And even better, I liked what we were setting out to do...

Together.

Joining the 2010 Equality Ride

A long time in coming, this one: I've signed up to join the 2010 Equality Ride. Some of you may be familiar with the Ride through its past exploits across the country at schools like Brigham Young University, Baylor University, or (more close to home) Seattle Pacific University. Though all springing from different Christian faith traditions, each of these schools and the many others visited on the 2006, 2007, and 2008 rides shared something in common: harmful policies targeted at lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students.

The first ride began just as I had graduated from college. Fresh from achieving an English degree (and what DO you do with a B.A. in English anyway?) and with no idea what I wanted to do in the long run, I thought 2 months on a bus struggling for gay rights sounded like a grand adventure, if also a trifle terrifying. But my summer job in Alaska prevented me from being able to commit to the mid-summer training, and so I missed out. Crisis of terror averted, right? Scary bullet dodged! It's not like things like the Ride will come along more than once.

Then the 2007 Ride was announced. Again, the flutter of excitement and terror struck in that part of my gut I try to ignore if I know what's good for me. But the decision, thankfully, was out of my hands - I was already in the middle of my first year with AmeriCorps, traveling around in a 15-passenger van instead of a bus. Sorry, equality! I'm busy on another adventure.

And again, in 2008 I was staying in Sacramento serving my second year, and missed out on the third Ride - once again, just barely missing the training because of other scheduling conflicts. Shucks (phew). Oh well (thank goodness).

There was always a reason not to go. They were good reasons, too. Life-shaping adventures I couldn't have had if I had chosen the Ride instead. But the Ride never escaped my consciousness, and all these years I've found myself intermittently checking the website, wondering when they'll announce the next one.

By mid-2009, I had just finished spending my first year in Los Angeles, luxuriating in a good job and living in one place for more than a few months. I had a community of friends and was happy, and my thoughts of the future usually revolved around the GREs, grad school, and dating. Life was good.

And then they announced the next Ride. Having just survived three rounds of layoffs in a vulnerable economy, I was not eager to exit a now-protected livelihood to spend two more months traveling around in search of some naive, idealistic vision of equality. I give to charities! I volunteer! What more could be expected of me! But it stuck with me this time, and I found myself sending in an application right as the deadline struck. Even *if* they accepted me, I could always say no, right?

And then they said yes. And then I said yes. And then my job agreed to let me come back to work after going on the Ride. All my excuses were gone, my defenses worn down. What else can I do but go?

I'm still terrified - terrified of getting arrested, terrified of people I don't know shouting that I will go to hell, terrified of failing and making no difference at all. But there's no avoiding it this time: I'm going.

The other riders and I just finished a week of intense training in Austin, TX (more on that later) preparing for the journey of a lifetime. I'll be updating this a few times before the Ride itself (in March and April) and during the Ride about once a week.

Until then, check out my Rider page (yes, we do need money for hotel rooms, gas, food, etc.) on the right, or if you don't feel comfortable, check out all the rider bios to get a sense of who we are, and check back here for more of my insane thoughts.

Much love and many blessings, y'all!
Stuart