Constable: Environmentalists putting pedal, mettle toward climate change

In 1979, as Environmental Protection Agency was beefing up the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, environmentally minded college student Mark Ailes, his friend Kay Richards and three other residents of their co-op at Michigan State University pedaled their bicycles from California to Michigan. "It was a trip of extremes," remembers Ailes, now 63 and living in Lombard. "It was hot. It was cold. We met some nice people, and we met some not-so-nice people." Forty-one years later, Ailes, who has been married to Richards for 37 years, is embarking on a bicycle trip to Washington, D.C., as part of a Citizens’ Climate Lobby call to peddle legislative ideas to address climate change. Ailes will depart at 9:15 a.m. Saturday from the Starbucks across from Chicago’s Millennium Park with fellow CCL of Naperville members David Gorman , 52, the assistant public works director for Lombard, and Mike Winter, 63, who lives in Wheaton and runs Sedwall precision tooling company in St. Charles. The trio will meet up with fellow bicyclist Michael Cushion in Michigan before completing their 12-day, 900-mile odyssey, receiving training and spending a day lobbying politicians. Ailes envisions the bike ride as a way to bring attention […]

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