Cross-country ride propels search for 'simple life' in U.S.

By Scott Merzbach
Staff Writer

Published on September 04, 2009

AMHERST - A San Francisco couple's 12,000-mile bicycle tour around the country has connected them to a simpler life. It is also teaching them how to live a more sustainable lifestyle, a lesson they hope to spread via a feature-length documentary they are producing.

During their "bikepacking" journey, Mandy Creighton and Ryan Mlynarczyk are visiting more than 100 sustainable communities and co-ops, where they will be living and working alongside the residents, while also filming footage for a documentary titled "Within Reach."

"The impetus for this journey was we wanted to find a more simple life in a community," Mlynarczyk said.

This week, Creighton, 31, and Mlynarczyk, 33, have added the Pioneer Valley Cohousing on Pulpit Hill Road in Amherst and the Sirius Eco-Village in Shutesbury to the 73 communities they have already visited.

Creighton said their stay at the Amherst cohousing was a remarkable experience.

"I feel like everyone there takes some kind of happy pill," Creighton said. "Everyone is so happy all the time."

She said this state of mind is likely because residents have jobs that make a decent living while also being part of a place with amazing gardens, a walking labyrinth, pigs and play space for children. It is a mainstream environment where the members live as sustainably as possible, noting some of the original buildings built in the early 1990s are being converted to net zero on their use of energy.

Mlynarczyk noted that at the cohousing community, residents raise enough food that members only have to go to a store once a month during most of the year, and twice a month in the winter.

Peter Jessop, owner of Integrity Development and Construction who lives at the Pulpit Hill cohousing site, said he found the couple to be on an intriguing mission.

"They were quite inspiring to us as people who are walking the walk, or in their case, riding the ride," Jessop said.

During their two-day stay, residents were able to describe aspects of life on site, such as the new installation of photovoltaics on the homes to having half a dozen lawnmowers shared by the 32 units.

In turn, Jessop said the residents got to learn about the model communities Mlynarczyk and Creighton have seen, presenting a slideshow of their tour that shows the Pioneer Valley Cohousing fits somewhere between mainstream America and a communal farm.

At Sirius, Creighton and Mlynarczyk gave a presentation titled "Burgers and Bikes," in which the couple detailed their trip while making homemade vegetarian burgers for their hosts.

While in Amherst, they also interviewed Living Routes executive director Daniel Greenberg, whose Amherst-based organization provides opportunities for college students to earn credits for working at eco-villages around the world. This is close to their own experience; Creighton and Mlynarczyk, now engaged, met while part of a work study program in Central America a decade ago.

Both came from corporate backgrounds before deciding to turn toward a more simple life. Creighton said she flew regularly from city to city while working for Main Dish Kitchen. When she faced a health crisis three years ago related to exhaustion and overwork at her job, she sought an immediate change by starting an organic farm.

After having studied environmental policy and becoming a paralegal, Mlynarczyk said he was not fulfilled. He gave up that career and went to art school. Then, while visiting a friend on Orcas Island in the Pacific Northwest, he decided to undertake the cross-country trip.

Creighton and Mlynarczyk left San Francisco Oct. 5, 2008, riding tandem recumbent bikes. In Austin, Texas, they switched to separate Novara Safari touring bikes, heavy duty bikes that allow them to carry more than 100 pounds of gear between them.

On their bicycles they carry all their equipment, including a cell phone with a GPS, two laptop MacBooks, flash memory cameras, a microphone and solar panels to charge all this equipment. "I think we carry more electronics than food and clothes," Mlynarczyk said.

They have a sleeping bag, a tent, and use their limited amount of clothes as pillow. They eat mostly raw food, such as carrots, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, spaghetti, trail mix and sprout their own beans.

They have divided their time on the road among the communities, finding people to stay with using the warmshowers.org Web site aimed at cyclist travelers, and camping.

Their own Web site, available at withinreachmovie.com, has a teaser for the documentary, as well as links to social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, which they say are important to informing large numbers of people.

Mlynarczyk said the film should demonstrate the possibilities of sustainable living to those unfamiliar with it. "We don't see any reason that it shouldn't be the main option for living in this country," he said.

The couple expects to end the trip on Earth Day 2010, at which time they will begin a year-long process of editing the material into a film they hope to distribute via film festivals. Already, they have more than 1,000 hours of footage and have completed interviews with more than 530 people.

At the end of the journey, they will also choose a new place to call home. "Of the 100 we visit, we hope to have one that we'll join," Creighton said.

And while they say both the Sirius and the Pioneer Valley CoHousing communities are wonderful places (they say Pioneer Valley is their favorite cohousing community), they are unlikely to settle here. They describe the Amherst area as the Berkeley of the east coast. "We want to go someplace that needs us," Creighton said.

So far, Hummingbird Ranch in New Mexico, a spiritual eco-village in the northern part of the state, and The Farm in Tennessee, a former commune, are the frontrunners.