Yesterday, Thursday July 17th, after a solid 6 hours of sleep, we all left Jen and Arthur, John’s sis and bro in law’s lovely home by the Finger Lakes of Ithaca to meet Rob Young. Prof Young was John Zimmer’s green mentor and professor from Cornell who is currently working at University Oregon on alternative energy solutions and nano-technology applications. Following a smashing interview, we headed to RPM Ecosystems where Marv Marshall and his daughter Taylor explained their patented process for cultivating rapid growth, super strong trees. whose success rate of of 90% (as opposed to 20% for other trees) is helping to restore the Mississippi River Basin Area post-Katrina.

After the nursery, we got back on the road to get to Buffalo, in time to meet legislative assistant Jason Kaza, friend of Zimride passenger Michael (London School of Economics grad and Rochester High School History teacher.) In front of a magnificent room with great acoustics and Margaret frantically asking if she could rap the gavel and begging everyone to address her as “Madam Chairwoman”, Jason presented John with a resolution. The plaque officially declared July 17th, 2008 Buffalo, NY Carpool Day and thanked Zimride for all their hard work in promoting alternative transportation.

Next Jason took us the city’s cavernous and bizarrely abandoned Central Train Station, which Trevor kept saying was perfect for “I Am Legend II” (his mind works in a movie kind of way.) The strangely unused facility with SO much potential instigated a lively conversation among the group about our generation’s lack of community which mass transit automatically creates and how important car sharing will be for rebuilding that community feel.

We had some Buffalo wings, like the real ones, for dinner, and drove three more hours to Cleveland where we arrived loopy as all hell from exhaustion (John, completely delirious from lack of sleep) where Marriott Hotel had 3 complimentary rooms waiting for us, a list of their green initiatives in tow, and goody bags (plastic, but beggars can’t be choosers) with snacks and sustenance.

This morning, Friday July 18th, Margaret, Trevor, and Ben let John and Cristina rest whilst they drove into Cleveland to meet up with A Piece of Cleveland who goes to home demolition sites, takes the would-be landfill material and reuses it for beautiful modern furniture. Major shout out to Chris, Ezra, and Aaron (and PJ who we didn’t meet) for their great work.

Our meeting was arranged by Kelly from Hard Hatted Women, an organization training women with green collar skills, who work with companies like A Piece of Cleveland, to raise out of positions of economic despair. Great interviews with her people at one of their demolition sites, whose wood will be recycled for other homes and furniture.

Now we are picking up another Zimrider and hitting the road to Detroit to see what the Motor City has to offer 5 idealistic kids…

Cristina, sporting her Zimride gear, chills by the Prius

We left NYC today, after picking up Zimrider Jesse who was on his way to Ithaca and needed a lift, braved mad congestion and an oddly high number of police cars patrolling Bryant Park. Jesse’s stories about being part of a major layoff by a multinational retailer kicked off a conversation about the state of our economy, prompting us to think about the fossil fuel based economy and Indy-Mac and Freddie Mac and Fannie May and…. ah the humanity! As we all pndered these woeful issues, John Zimmer fearlessly navigated the caravan (the trailing crew trevor and Ben in the Honda Accord lapping our efficient wake) into Ithaca, NY our evening’s destination.

In downtown Ithaca, we picked up another Zimrider, Mike Brown, whose energy and zest for life is downright contagious. Mike has been a 9th grade history teacher in Rochester, NY for the past 3 years and one can only imagine the impact he has had on his students, considering just the impact he has had on our documentary Zimriding crew, already.

With Mike, Jesse, and the fearless five in tow (Cristina, John, Ben, Trevor, and Margaret) we all arrived at John’s sister Jen’s lovely house where she and her husband Arthur had made a delicious meal and set up tons of beds for the tired crew.

Off tomorrow to a rapid growth forest, a subway system time forgot, a city wide day of carpool as declared by the Buffalo City Council, and more good times.

Zimride is also being featured on the Sierra Club website, thanks to a fantastic story by our friend Tom Valtin: http://www.sierraclub.org/grassroots/stories/00036.asp

The Zimride Team waves goodbye to New York City

Freaking fantastic last few days here with team “The Change We Seek” a documentary that we will be Gspotting along with for the next 10 days. Who would have known that so much work goes into making a documentary, and driving cross country; and trying to do it all for free.

We started Sunday night with a bang up interview with Huffington Post green writer and noteworthy green media mafia member, Olivia Zaleski.  As we were all trying to find our own filming groove, we were simultaneously hearing gems from Ms Zaleski regarding her personal genesis to being a green writer, public response to the work she is doing at the Huff Post ( 4 million unique visitors a month so, that means a lot of eyes on her words).

The team that will be driving the whole time includes Trevor White, a filmmaker who went to Cornell with both John Zimmer (our film’s hero and founder of Zimride ridesharing company) and Ben Lapides, the quick witted cinematographer and schedule master. Next we have Cristina, John’s incredibly kind and beautiful Spanish girlfriend working diligently on her English. And finally, myself, Margaret Teich, a sapling of a green writer working on growing into a full fledged tree.

The next day found us ironing out details, having last minute contact with our sponsors, like the Vermont Clothing Company who are generously contributing a shit ton of ”The Change We seek” organic cotton apparel and car decals. And then it was onto a fabulous dinner at Bobo with the team, a few extra friends and Tim White, Trevor’s brother esteemed filmmaker himself.

Bobo is a sustainable restaurant in the West Village (w10th st and 7th Ave) where Owner Carlos Suarez and sustainability director Emma Allen (who went to Asheville High School with Margaret, totally flipping the latter out!) cooked and explained respectively the otherworldly delicious fare. The food served at Bobo is mostly from small organic farms in New York state and the menu changes frequently to accommodate the local growing season. Delicious meal, and all the better considering everything from the water on the table to the restaurant’s collaboration a local public school with teaching school children about natural agriculture was mindful and awesome.

On Tuesday morning, brother Tim joined the team at The Riverhouse, a luxury sustainable condominium complex in Battery Park City where famous folks like Leo DiCaprio and Tyra Banks have energy efficient, healthy indoor air quality apartments.

We went to The Riverhouse to interview Josh Dorfman, the CEO of Vivavi, an eco friendly furniture company whose store front is in the green condo complex. Josh is also the host and author of the Lazy Environmentalist, formerly on Sirius Satellite Radio, now going into production on The Sundance Channel. After Josh told us his take on everything from travel-induced epiphanies and eating dog food (organic) as well as ”unexpected green” we interviewed Vivavi’s New Projects Director Aron Kressner, who delved into the deeper philosophies of being a conscious entrepreneur in our generation.

Today, Wednesday, we begin the car-part of the journey, in our Prius kindly donated by Zipcar and drive to Ithaca, NY to see where the magic friendship began at Cornell for the three boys on the team.