Writing about Pedal the Pacific has always been on my to-do list for Be Well. It feels like I’m Hannah Montana and this is the best of both worlds, combining my two favorite things I’ve been a part of in Auburn Campus Rec and Pedal the Pacific.

Now that I’m actually getting around to it, though, I can’t help but think about the first draft of what this article was supposed to be when I started writing it back in February.

Back then, I was sure that my summer plans would be a go. They were pretty amazing plans, too: I would be cycling 1,700 miles down the Pacific coast with a team of 12 other “hilariously un-athletic” young women in an effort to bring visibility to and to fight against domestic child sex trafficking. We would be riding from Seattle to San Diego, sleeping in tents, and raising donations for our beneficiaries of The Refuge Ranch (a holistic rehabilitation center for trafficked girls) and The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Like I said—pretty amazing, right? I’m sure you all can guess what happened next, though, and it’s clear by the title of this article that I didn’t actually get to go down the coast this summer.

I’m absolutely not alone in the cancelled-due-to-COVID plans department, I know that for sure. However, when Pedal the Pacific was cancelled, it was hard not to feel like this was a personal attack on me. I won’t pretend that I took it completely in stride—I mourned the loss of what might have been for more than a little while. Fortunately, though, my teammates weren’t going to give up that easily. We are all very much ingrained in the fight against trafficking, and with all the education and preparation we had done to learn as much as we can about America’s most vulnerable populations, we decided that no coast didn’t equal no activism. So, we came up with Pedal in Place. Each of us has been cycling at least 500 miles in our own communities, mobilizing our friends and families to get on their bikes with us for our brand-new community team and learning together in online webinars with experts in the field. At the time of writing this article, there are 404 people signed up for our Pedal in Place community team, $78,000 raised, 38,000 miles ridden of our 50,000 mile goal, and a week and a half left of Pedal in Place. 13 college girls never dreamed that we could have this impact, and in a lot of ways, we’ve reached more people from home than we ever would have on the coast.

I’ve never considered myself a planner. I like being on my toes, hopping from plan to plan like it’s nothing. However, I didn’t realize just how much of a crutch having concrete plans could be for me until that crutch was kicked out from under me. Being adaptable has never been a strong suit of mine, but having no other option but to change my plan was, in a lot of ways, freeing.

Building something new out of the metaphorical wreckage ended up giving me one of the most impactful summers of my whole life; and applying the lesson I’ve learned here is something I know I’ll have to do again as we change up our fall semester plans seemingly by the hour. COVID-19 is not something to rejoice, and I definitely am not grateful for that. But what I am grateful for is the opportunity to change my perspective, learn something new about myself, and to begin again.

Change the world, and as always,

Be well, Auburn.

Photography: Hannah S.