Iron Side Up: Advent in Action - 2016 El Rio Toy Ride

Advent. When capitalized, Webster’s defines it as “the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas and observed by some Christians a season of prayer and fasting”. When not capitalized, advent is “a coming into being or use” and used thusly is a word of action. I prefer that Christians use the term in its diminutive form and act, fast and pray for certain, then put into action the principles of life taught by the One for whom Advent honors.

The El Rio Toy Ride of 2016 was such action. It was advent, the advent of people working to bridge a gap to span the chasm of poverty for the children of our migrant farm workers less than an hour away from Hollywood and Beverly Hills, those cities whose iconic reputations are anything but poor. Make no mistake here. I am not advocating that delivering a couple of toys anchors the bridge to the other side of poverty but I do advocate that by making such a delivery and engaging the children with genuine care and encouraging words and actions, even the simple action of letting them sit on our bikes and imagine a bit, makes poverty suck a little less and plants seeds that others can water, others can tend and nurture, and still others can reap the fruit thereof.

I commuted in to Thousand Oaks to meet up with Tim Robertson, Bev Hope, and Sue Bourquin, our Victory Riders group, early on a crisp and clear morning. Tim led us from the Mobil station on Ventu Park Road to the Food Share of Ventura County where we dropped off food for the facility and our toys for the day’s event. Tim took us along back roads that brought us through Potrero Canyon, by the Cal State Channel Islands campus, and through fields already being worked by the parents of the children we were bringing toys to. The workers had arrived before daybreak to pick up their tools and containers to gather the harvest as the sun crested the hills we had just ridden through.

We gathered, we rode, we enjoyed

Bikers gathered from the surrounding areas, one had ridden in from Arizona. Bikers for Christ sponsors and organizes the event, the 2016 ride being the 16^th edition. Rider groups of all types were represented in full rider regalia. I saw riders from the Tri-Valley Touring Riders, Star Chapter 258, Cal Coast Riders Motorcycle Club, The Blue Knights, various chapters of our host organization, Bikers for Christ (BFC), and the Underdogs whose footnote of ‘We Just Ride’ was overshadowed by their ‘Service and Unity’ moto. I estimated 120 bikes, many of which were two-up, and a sidecar setup with a dad and two kids. At least two toys per person were stacked into a truck that had a base of 600 toys gathered by our hosts until we totaled around 1200 toys, enough for two for each of the 600 kids we’d see at the school.

Inspired to care and interact

He wore a black suit, white shirt, and a blue tie and he is adorned with a close-cropped ring of hair on an otherwise bald pate, reminiscent of the man I see in the mirror. He sports a graying mustache, neatly trimmed, and frames his eyes with a studious pair of glasses and looked like he could have been the President of Oxnard Bank and Trust. Indeed, his job as a superintendent in the schools is more important than that. He held the microphone with a practiced hand as he spoke to the gathering, even delivered a sermon, if you will. He told us a couple of stories of the kids we were about to meet; the two boys who alternate days at school because they have one pair of shoes to share and of the three early elementary aged children who live in a garage, feed themselves cereal with condensed milk because before school they have no electricity and because their parents have both been in the fields before sunrise. He framed our advent by telling us that we were like the fieldworkers only the crops we were tending are the these children and the nearly 600 others that are in the Migrant Education Program. They attend six days a week to allow the parents to work in the fields six days a week and this was a school day.

We paraded the few short miles from the Food Share building through the Oxnard suburb to the school where busses from Ventura, Santa Paula, Oxnard, and the surrounding areas had brought in the children for the event. We close-parked our bikes in the school yard and let them cool as the pre-K and Kindergarten classes were brought in to select their toys and see Santa with his dog, a beautifully tempered golden retriever. We received a hero’s welcome and were fed chicken fajita burritos and salad. The kids came through the bikes in class groups and brought us hand-made cards. I received cards from three; one who likes chemistry, another who liked recess, and still another who ~~likes~~ loves art and who made an awesome card.

At the end of the day, as I find with most advents of this type, I was more richly blessed by those we gifted than they were by me; it is just how that works to keep me humble and my life in perspective. I kept those thoughts in mind as our Victory group took the long way home down along PCH to Kanan Dume Road, up to Mulholland Highway, back out to PCH along Malibu Canyon for a short break at Malibu Bluffs State Park where we said our goodbyes before heading down PCH to Topanga Canyon Blvd and inland until we reached Highway 118 where Tim and Bev headed west toward home and Sue and I east until we reached the 405 where the two of us separated to conclude our rides. I don’t know yet if Sue watched her odometer kick over 40,000 which was part of the inspiration for our long way home. Really though, what more inspiration do riders need beyond a crystal blue sky, the awesomeness of the Pacific, and the winding canyon roads of our Santa Monica Mountains?

Ride with heart, and with that heart advent something today, create an opportunity to bridge a gap. And as always, keep the iron side up. Friends, have a merry and blessed Christmas.

jerry

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