Falling Whistles Bike Tour from Eric Hires on Vimeo.

Materially I think we are just as ready to go. Tony has been getting all our camping gear together, and we are now set with a sweet 4 person tent and some good cooking supplies. Our bikes are pretty much all complete with the gear we need. We even have some nice spandex to wear now. Ben has been working on inventing a new type of cycling shoe: basically he cut two Vans Classics in half, and is going to secure the front halves of the shoes onto his peddles. The idea is to slip his bare feet into the shoe halves for riding, and then slip on his Toms for walking around. This is definitely more creative than my invention (I drilled a hole in one of my water bottle tops, stuck a Crazy Straw through and can now sip my water without having to take the bottle out of the holder on my handlebar). I hope it works out for him. Tony also created his own rack trunk. It’s all wood with a top to put other supplies on and hooks on the sides so he can bungee things on top. Pretty legit.

As far as events go, Tony has been rocking the planning of events for Falling Whistles along the first third of our route. I’m really excited for some of the connections he’s been making. As for Ben and I, things have still looked a little difficult in the smaller towns through Texas and Arizona. But our bigger cities are going to rock (we have a big benefit event in Austin and a benefit show in Phoenix, as well as some good speak-easies). So I feel pretty confident about getting into the groove of raising awareness for what’s going on in the DRC. We’re also working on some good tangible ways we can get people involved while we’re there (whether that’s through letter writing or encouraging people to spread awareness in their communities). I’m really interested in a campaign put on by The Enough Project which Falling Whistles has been supporting. They are raising awareness about the use of “conflict minerals” mined from the DRC and used in our electronics and working to get the big electronics companies to stop buying metals from the Congo. So while we are still a little curious about how our events will work, I’m excited about the things we can get people involved in advocating for.

These are some of the things we’ve been thinking/working on this last week in St. Augustine. Our next update will most likely come from the road, but I would like to encourage you all to check our twitter daily once we leave as I will be posting videos and photos from my phone (you don’t need to be signed up on twitter to just check our page for updates): www.twitter.com/fwbiketour. I want to thank you all again for your support and prayers, and we are always welcoming more money and supplies (see a couple posts down to send care packages). We also will love hearing from you as we ride, so please feel free to send us messages through email, facebook, phone, anything.

In joy and excitement,

Seth

The Falling Whistles Bike Tour Support group on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502795057&ref=name#/event.php?eid=75824864043

The Falling Whistles Bike Tour Blog http://www.FallingWhistlesBikeTour.com/

A UN base in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been fired on by army soldiers in a dispute over pay.

It is the latest in a string of mutinies in North Kivu by soldiers who have not been paid for six months.

A senior UN peacekeeper told the BBC that army commanders are not handing over soldiers’ wages.

The army and UN forces are conducting an offensive in the region against ethnic Hutu rebels many of whom fled to DR Congo after the Rwandan genocide.