Green Bike Program Olympics

Robbert Little- San Francisco, CA

The official mission statement of the Green Bike Program is centered “the reuse of old bikes and parts” providing “community members free access to bicycles, tools, repair lessons,” any member will tell you our bike-related events exhibit the spirit of the Pitzer GBP.  Two weeks ago, the GBP hosted the second annual “Green Bike Program Olympics.”  The structure of the Olympics was simple and ridiculous – open to all Pitzer students, teams of two represented countries from all around the world, including Nepal, North Korea, Antarctica, Finland, and more.  Of course, costumes were highly encouraged.  Lauren Phipps and I, representing Antarctica, won this contest hands down.

After taking a Green Bike Program photo, contestants began a series of rigorous bike related challenges. First off – Cog Ninja-stars. Contestants lined up ten yards from a painted target and hurled a small bike cog, some with deadly accuracy. Needless to say, through harsh winters and cold summers, Team Antarctica had plenty of practice and won this contest with the first toss (bull’s-eye!). Scores were taken, giving each team a first, second, and third place. From there, we all moved out on to the grassy mounds for our “Huffy-Toss.” Outside of our shop, bike frames litter the concrete, providing prefect props for an event that mirrors tossing a discus. Teams lined up and one by one hurled a heavy and unwieldy metal frame as far as they could. As entertaining as the distances teams could throw the frame (or lack there of in most cases), interpretive and creative tossing-techniques paralyzed the observers with laughter.  

Baldy Bombing

Robert Little- San Francisco, CA

In high school, I regularly hit 60 or 65 MPH while driving to school.  Sometimes I’d sing in the car, other times Ira Glass would capture my half conscious mind.  The ride normally took fifteen or twenty minutes, and I’d arrive at school no more excited than when I left.  This past Wednesday morning, however, my commute to Pitzer took a good 20 minutes, and I only hit about 45MPH.  Despite my slower commute, I arrived at school wild-eyed, full of adrenaline, and itching to repeat the commute all over again.  No, I don’t get excited about going to school at a slower pace - instead, my elation was due to an exciting Baldy Bomb that morning.

Mount Baldy is Pitzer’s closest wooded and hilly paradise.  It’s home to enchanting views of the Inland Empire, challenging hikes, and a host of fun winter sports.  Pitzer students have a host of oddly entertaining activities with Baldy, including our Cactus to Clouds Bikini Hike (you guessed it, a walk from Pitzer to the summit in swim gear!) the Ski and Surf day (not many places you can do that!), and my personal favorite - the Baldy Bomb.  
A Green Bike Program (GBP) and Pitzer Outdoor Adventure (POA) co-coordinated trip,  the Baldy Bomb trip first begins with a shuttling of students, bikes, sleeping bags, helmets, and excitement to the summit of Mt. Baldy.  After class and homework, students camp out under the stars, telling stories, meeting new friends, and, for the adventurous folks, taking a dip in the ice-melt stream next to the camp site.  At dawn, the sun peeks over the Eastern ridge, just in time for students to pack up their gear, saddle up, and rally for the most exciting pre-breakfast bike ride they’ve ever had. 

With helmets equipped, brakes checked, and classes that start at 8 AM,  students hop on their bikes and begin the thirteen or so mille race to Pitzer.  Although we spent the previous evening all huddled up next to each other on the face of a mountain, the Baldy Bomb is very much an individualistic experience - everyone dives down the mountain at their own pace, screaming and howling as they shoot through the tunnels.  Previously, the fastest biker rode a tandem bike, the extra body mass propelling them at speeds over 50 MPH!  

As I rode down the windy road, the sun steadily crept over the hillside, creating a golden bank to stick to cling to on my right, and a deep misty ravine on the left.  With both hands on the brakes, eyes fighting to take in the changing landscape and also look out for cars, Baldy-Bombing is a truly blissful experience - I can tell you with a full heart that it sure makes 8 AM class a lot more bearable.  

Wednesday morning’s exhilarating ride serves as a small glimpse into Pitzer’s wild culture - one that embraces the great outdoors, sustainability,  adventure, and a hair of insanity.  It can be spotted in the thoughtful FemCo discussions, experienced in the ResLife program, and heard Friday afternoons on the mounds.  People often ask what a “typical” Pitzer student is, and what has become all too clear in the past few years, is that  the “typical” student is atypical - and they embrace it.

Groove at the Grove

Robert Little- San Francisco, CA

“And this ten room house, built in 1902, was put up for auction,” I beam at the 10 am tour group.  “Inside it features all antique furniture.  Pitzer students convinced the city of Claremont to put the house up for auction.  Students and a professor showed up to the auction, bid, and won the house.  Any guesses on how much we paid for it?” I ask with a grin.  “You bought it in the 1970s?” a parent asks.  “Probably $80,000?” “$5,000!” a student adds.  “Kind of close.  Well no, not really.  We bought it for a dollar.”  Reactions to the statement are always mixed – a combination of acute shock, collection of shrugs, and the occasional follow up question – “Well, how much did it cost to move the house to Pitzer?”

I refer to the grove house as a Pitzer student’s “home away from home.”  Complete with ten or so rooms, a fireplace, and the tastiest homemade cookies that keeps graduates coming back, a Pitzer student can spend their whole day at the Grove House, and consider it very well spent.  Aside from the story slams, the peculiar purple pickles, and occasional guitar player on the porch who knows more than four chords and is worth listening to, I find myself frequenting the Grove House after the sun has set.

One of the most enjoyable jobs I have at Pitzer is working as an Event Staff manager.  This line of work has me managing multi-thousand dollar soundboards, dancing backstage with band members, and of course, playing my favorite tunes in between sets (you can tell I have potential when my mini DJ set gets the crowd moving with “Dance Yrself Clean” better than a live band called “Merry Christmas").  Although I have the opportunity to work some of Pitzer’s biggest parties, like “Kohoutek” and “Earthquake,” I often opt for a more stressful, yet fulfilling bi-weekly Groove at the Grove.

First started in the Pitzer orange grove to celebrate the harvest season for fresh PZ oranges, Groove at the Grove is a regularly occurring party at the foot of the Grove House porch.  Artists run the gamut, from professional acoustic punk artists (check out the October 11^th Barry Johnson videos on YouTube, you might see me!) to first time student performances.  All Groove at the Grove events are always open to students from all five colleges in addition to the greater Claremont/ LA community. 

Groove at the Grove exemplifies what Pitzer is all about.  Students contact artists, or organize to feature student clubs or bands themselves.  They hire student Event Staff workers to manage the sound, employ New Resource Students to serve beer to students over 21, and celebrate aspects like the season for ripe oranges, which most communities would overlook.  Whether gathered for an intimate evening to support friends explore their creative side, or ready to celebrate the weekend and dance on the trash can that you tossed your food scraps into after lunch earlier that day, the Grove House and Groove at the Grove are undeniably and uniquely Pitzer. 

Campus-to-Coast

Robert Little- San Franciso, CA

When I arrived here in early August to prepare for the arrival of our new first years, Pitzer’s campus was eerie. “Pitzer is a shell without you students” was the go-to elevator speech administrators used in lieu of a simple “Welcome back!” I could see it, yeah, the school is a lonely place in the summer – no students clumsily slack-lining on the mounds, no barefoot Pitzer folk walking to class, and no Grove House sandwiches with home roasted turkey and balsamic parmesan spread for several months! 

 When I took a stroll through campus, however, I felt a loneliness that no one else had mentioned. NO BIKES. ANYWHERE. Whereas I occasionally had to resort to locking my pitzermobile (an orange single speed, so fresh) to handrails or my friends’ bikes, the sight of my bike all alone on the ribcage rack outside the residence halls caused me a tiny bit of anxiety. I felt like that dog owner who locks their pup up to a pole outside and walks away (HOW COULD YOU).

At the risk losing your attention by talking about bikes in all my posts, they’re kind of a huge deal here. Students, faculty, and staff ride everywhere – around the campuses, out to L.A.’s monthly Critical Mass, and of course bombing down Mt. Baldy before 8am class. 

One of the most ambitious rides is the first-year orientation trip Pedal to The Pacific – a trip where students bike from a starting point to a handful of beaches over several days. The title is deceiving, however – we don’t actually bike fromPitzer to the beach, but bus from campus to a park along the San Gabriel river and start from there.

Although I had participated on this orientation trip three times now, this Saturday was the first time that I actually pedaled to the pacific. As part of Pitzer’s 50th anniversary celebration, 50 students, faculty, staff, and Claremont community members set out for a casual 50-mile Campus to Coast ride. Starting from the lot adjacent from the Green Bike program, a diverse amalgamation of road bikes, cruisers, hybrids, and even one tandem set out for a pleasurable four hour, mostly down hill ride to seal beach. We toured through sunny Claremont and San Dimas before hitting the San Gabriel River trail, took a pit stop at Liberty Park for lunch, and planted tires in the sand just after one in the afternoon. I felt like a first year again, biking next to fellow Pitzer folks who I hadn’t met before and eagerly tried to get to know. At the beach, students swam and surfed (an awesome reward after a half-century ride!)

Aside from the fact that I can honestly say that yes, I’ve pedaled to the pacific, this ride incorporated so many aspects of why I love this school.  For one, yeah, there’s a collective effervescence when a large group of people hit the road on bikes.  This, of course, happens all over the place; what was unique about this ride was the diversity of participants.  Students from all four grades, graduates, faculty, professional staff, deans, and even two moms who “new some nice kids who went to the Claremont Colleges” came together and bonded over some exercise outside.  Some wore spandex suits.  Others wore flip-flops.  Everyone biked 50 miles; everyone pedaled to the pacific!

The Green Bike Program

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Little – San Francisco, CA

Once a week, I slowly walk backwards down the Pitzer service road.  “And you can see all around you, Pitzer students love bikes!” I shout, motioning to the filled bike racks to the left and right.  “Each year, the Green Bike Program raffles off one hundred and fifty used bikes for free - you just show up and grab whichever fits your style!”  The members of the tour usually look surprised right about here.  And they should; 150 working bikes is a tall order coming from a student run organization like the GBP.

When I first started here two years ago, 150 was no joke; early one Sunday morning, I sat with dozens of students on the service road, silently picking out my new favorite bike after another student selected my previous favorite.  I ended up picking third from last, riding a Fiori-Frankenstein bike with one wheel bigger than the other, no breaks, and a fixed gear.  Needless to say, I ended up with the most fashionable bike, if not the most functional.

Fast forward to today, I’m a manager at the GBP and in charge of the bike raffle; however, a lot has changed since I was a participant.  As part of the Gold Student Center renovation, the GBP has moved down south for the year to our old vacated residence hall – Holden – and is in rough shape.  Our tool racks are un-mounted and dilapidated, our supplies mismatched in unlabeled drawers, and our decade old Logitech speakers finally blew out (on the bright every song is a dubstep remix now).

Understandably, the task of organizing a makeshift shop and fixing up a few hundred bikes isn’t a good advertisement tool to recruit and retain GBP workers.  I’d been overlooking this reality until the night before our raffle this past Saturday when only five other workers showed up for our final bike fixing party.  With 13 hours to go before our big show, I walked into the shop where eight bikes were in functioning condition.  Pitzer students aren’t known for their math abilities, but we all knew 8/150 bikes for the next morning’s raffle combined with our average fixing speed of three bikes per person per hour meant we had a long night ahead of us.  It was time to change the music in the shop from Frank Ocean to LCD Soundsystem and get to work (FYI ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ is the GBP anthem).

By the end of the night, we had some thirty-odd bikes ready to raffle.   I’ll skip over how 35 bikes is not quite 150, and instead focus on why I deemed this fraction a personal success.  Of the five workers that showed up Saturday night, four of them had participated on the Pedal to the Pacific orientation adventure (OA).  I’m sure all Pitzer students claim their OA they participated in their first year was the best one, but Saturday night I solidified my superlative claim.  As first years, our “69 sexy mile bike ride” down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) cultivated not just a love for anything bike related, but fostered the growth of some of the closest friendships I have here at Pitzer.

As our fixing party dwindled and lost three of the volunteers, I found myself dancing and singing along with James Murphy, “Present company…just laugh it off, it's better than it seems.”  Hours passed.  We were sweaty, greasy, and happy.  By the night’s end, only two of my closest friends and I remained, and we had enough functioning, Frankenstein bikes to equip the Pitzer community with.  
 
I’m not sure what this “Admissions Unpeeled” blog is supposed to look like; it hasn’t been around since I’ve been a student here.  What I can surmise, however, is that it is a space to share not the polished statistics and LEED-certification monologues that make Pitzer look like the best school on earth (disclaimer: it is!)  It’s not a space to say that yes, without fail, 150 free bikes are magically fixed and distributed to the community by the will of a few kooks in their spare time.  What I hope this blog shares are the personal stories that don’t add up nicely in flyers; stories like how I had more fun getting dirty with some OA pals fixing bikes than I did skiing and surfing in the same day (also, awesome).  The reality is that no school lives up to all the statistics it puts forward (which isn’t an inherently bad thing); instead, the people and moments and like these are what make Pitzer an incredible place, and in the words of

LCD Soundsystem, “Present company, makes me want to stay.”

Summer Research at Pitzer College

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Little – San Francisco, CA

 

If you’re a high school student reading this, the chances are that you can’t appreciate the deluge of emails that plagues Pitzer students daily.  It’s kind of overwhelming.  Pitzer is a member of a five undergraduate consortium, has hundreds of clubs, dozens of professional offices, thousands of students…and all parties involved want YOU to be aware of their opinions, events, musings, and funny YouTube clips.  Counting the emails I get from students, I probably sift through over 150 – 250 emails, most of which, you can probably guess are junk.  Headings like, “Lost Giraffe Sweatshirt at Deathrection Rage Sesh on Friday at Grove” and “Lost Chameleon” are often mildly interesting, but ultimately consume too much of my time.  However, mixed in with a plethora of “LOST ID” emails and such come incredible fellowship, grant, internship, and job opportunities.

Last semester, one of the hundred and some emails that reached my inbox helped me land the most incredible summer experience I could ask for.  Emails with the subject “Summer Research – Apply Now!” were all too common in my inbox, but upon skimming lines such as “EA Majors,” and “International projects may include up to an additional $2,500 in expenses,” I became mildly interested.  With a few quick phone calls and emails, I decided to apply for a fellowship funded by the “Andrew Mellon Grant” awarded to Harvey Mudd College.  This fellowship, open to all EA (environmental analysis) majors provided a select number of students the opportunity to conduct their own independent, self designed research in the US or abroad as long as it related to the environment.

No less then two weeks later, I had written and polished a request for funding to study sachet water use in Ghana over the summer of 2013.  A few weeks later, I was notified that my funding was approved.  I had the administration’s backing – an engineering college pledging their support and a hefty stipend to a sophomore at a nearby school whose only visits to their campus were complete scouting missions for late night pizza. 

The rest is history; I spent a total of seven weeks in Ghana over the summer.  I conducted autonomous research, bounced from sketchy hostel to hostel all over the country, moving whenever I pleased.  The research I conducted was pre-approved by the Pitzer Institutional Review Board (IRB) and I hope to get it published within the next year.  Most shocking is that I was paid to do this!  It’s going to be really difficult to top this past summer.

The point I want to illustrate, however, is not how cool my summer was (although it was freakin’ INCREDIBLE), but that Pitzer offers an incredible number of resources that you can access from your laptop while in bed.  It’s impossible to capture from a marketing standpoint, but the bottom line is that organizations within and outside Pitzer recognize Pitzer students as motivated, bright, interesting individuals.  Pitzer’s the unique combination of a group of students, faculty, and staff that are intellectually gifted and want to make the world a better place, coupled with one of the most resource-rich network a student can gain access to (assuming they check their email).

Although my story may be unique on the surface, the principal of it remains true for most students here: we do our best inside the classroom in hopes that we can have a real impact outside it.