About the Trip

Abbi here!
Thanks for taking time to find me. If you’re new to the blog, this post takes a little bit of time to introduce my project and its purpose. If you’ve been here before, just pop down the page for current content.

At the end of August, I embarked on a trip across the country. Traveling by bicycle, I started in San Francisco and will end in Yorktown, Virginia. Although I’ve wanted to try a long bike trip for a few years, it only became a reality recently. With my undergraduate degree complete and nowhere to be, now seems the ideal time to have an adventure.

As I became more serious about actually biking across the country, I realized that I could use this trip as an opportunity to raise funds for a good cause. Living in minneapolis has opened my eyes to the staggering number of people who are homeless, and a good friend of mine helped open my eyes to the fact that so many people who are homeless are under the age of 21.

My good friend’s name is Michael, and he is a youth counselor at Avenues, a shelter for homeless youth based in north Minneapolis. This shelter houses, on any given night, 15 homeless youth, and has two host home programs–one aims to house homeless youth who are members of the GLBT community and the other aims to house homeless youth in suburbs of minneapolis.

For a state estimated in 2009 to have 2500 youth homeless on any given night, any effort to bring the number down is imperative. Avenues provides transitional housing and works with its youth to prepare them for an adult life in which they will be independent, living without the indescribable burden of not having a stable home.

So as I travel across the country I will be voluntarily away from my home–I moved out of my apartment, leaving behind everything but the bags on my bike. Thousands of youth in Minnesota leave abusive or otherwise unsafe households with only what they can carry–this includes the knowledge that they likely won’t return.

All this said, I urge you to consider making a donation to Avenues. Their suburban host program is getting off the ground, and their other shelter and transitional housing programs are making big differences in the lives of Minnesota’s youth.

This trip is an important opportunity for me to grow, but also an amazing opportunity to raise funds for a great cause. Stay tuned for updates.

the website for Avenues is www.avenuesforyouth.org.

my fundraising page is www.razoo.com/story/abbiacrossamerica. You can make a one-time donation there.

lastly, any contact related to this endeavor can be directed to abbiacrossamerica@gmail.com.

-Abbi