How You Can Assist/Help Western North Carolina

The MTB Community is Helping and Needs Help, Too

I lived through Hurricane Mitch when it hit Honduras in 1998. It devastated the country, dropping upwards of 90 inches of rain over the course of a week. I saw tiny trickles of mountain streams turn into raging rivers that tossed massive trees around like toothpicks. Those were the Peace Corps days, when we had access to evacuation resources, after it all cleared out.

Privilege.

In WNC — Western North Carolina — the terrain is mountainous, if you’ve never been. It is home to what is some of the best mountain biking terrain in the USA. When word started getting out about what happened, my mind went back to Honduras, the most mountainous country in the Central America.

Water, my goodness, the water. Hurricanes on TV might show the power of wind, but water, in my experience, especially when it falls on mountains with deep folds, well, that water has to go somewhere.

We featured Shanna and her Endless Bike Company here on Paseando MTB. She offered discounts to subscribers. You can read that here:

I reached out to Shanna. She and her house are okay, but very close by, others are not. She is assisting local community members in this incredibly difficult time. They are ripping out wet/moldy insulation, for example. At the same time, Shanna is deeply concerned about her future. The mountains/trails where she ran her coaching business are closed. She does still have inventory for her Kick Ass Cogs, though, and she has rings. She did not ask me to do this, but I’m doing it.

Go to her website and buy her products. Even if you don’t need it/can use it, buy something. She lives there. She is helping her community to try and turn the page. At the same time, her humble spirit needs assistance, too. Reality is, if you don’t have income, it breaks your spirit.

Help Shanna out so she can stay living there and keep on helping others out.

Her website is here: https://endlessbikes.com/

She also suggested that if you want to donate to local efforts on the ground, where your money will actually get to those who need it, check out these orgs, per her email:

“Organizations that I see have been doing great efforts are Beloved Asheville This amazing organization was originally working to help house unhoused people and now their efforts seem to have seemlessly moved into helping with the hurricane recovery efforts. I'm hearing lots of good things are happening because of them. I've been working to help El Centro Brevard which works with supporting the local hispanic community as well as Caja Solidaria who makes sure that the Hispanic community in Hendersonville has fresh fruits and vegetables as well as other support prior to the hurricane. They are also doing relief efforts for the Hispanic community. Another organization is Brother Wolf Animal Rescue their location was completely destroyed by the hurricane and they had to move all of the animals out in the middle of it.”

Thank you, Shanna, for everything that you are doing.

Okay, one more to add. I9/Industry Nine calls Asheville, NC home. This is what they’re doing, per an article published on The Radavist:

https://theradavist.com/industry-nine-is-donating-10-of-sales-to-hurricane-helene-relief/

Support I9, their workers, the efforts they are involved in, by going to their website and seeing if they have something you need:

https://industrynine.com/

Pisgah National Forest, NC

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. Now it’s time to get out the credit card and make a few clicks. Zap cash to those in need.

Peace, James

Please share this far and wide. Thank you.