I am Tino and I will be riding my bike across the United States to raise money and awareness for affordable housing.

Sunday, June 14th, I’ll be embarking on a two-month adventure from Providence, Rhode Island to Seattle, Washington. I will be riding almost 4,000 miles from East to West; Spending about 2 weeks in between rides constructing affordable housing with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding Together. Thanks to Yahoo! and the ybike technology, I will be able to capture and document my entire journey.  I have named my bike Blue Steel, and you can watch my journey through the Blue Steel’s Bike photostream

I have worked with Yahoo! and Uncommon Projects, who have adapted the ybike technology they developed for the original Purple Pedals, to fit my road bike.

The camera phone is the same, and the phone is now powered with a Dyno Hub, as opposed to the solar panels and battery, as this would be too heavy too for the 4000 mile ride across the country.

Take a look at the photos of the “re-making” of the ybike. The beauty of this is that with this technology, the camera will automatically take a photo every 60 seconds, geo-tag it and upload it to Flickr, so you can share my adventure with me.

For this journey, I have also partnered with Changents to tell my story and enlist backers for my cause; with Impossible2Possible, to inspire young people around the world by challenging them to do what seems the impossible; with BeDo, to share the story of how my passion has driven me to change the world and find others who have been transformed by their passions.

Before I get started, I want to share a little bit about myself. I am a social entrepreneur who just graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with my Industrial Design Degree. I was born in Singapore and grew up in Hong Kong, and have traveled and lived all over the world. I served in the Singapore military as a military officer for 2 years before moving to the US to finish my degree at Rhode Island School of Design. Since then, I have taken on a role as a community leader, building ties and bonds within and outside of school. I helped plan and run a national conference called “A Better World by Design” to promote the role of design in solving social and environmental problems.

Since then, I have been invited to TED as a TED Fellow, representing one of 40 up and coming influential people in the world. I have started my own business consultancy to use design and creative thinking to help non-profit organizations and companies reach their potential in bettering the world.

You can also find me and my adventure on the following sites:
Blue Steel’s Bike - http://www.flickr.com/photos/blue_steel/
My Blog - http://www.tinochow.com
My Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/23015148@N02/
Bedo - http://www.mybedo.com/tino
Changents - http://www.changents.com/tino