As I’ve blogged before, I’m interested in the intersection of disparate ideas.

Today’s intersection relates to the good folks at Barf Blog, and the cross-country adventures of a fellow food safety microbiologist.

Many professional food safety scientist readers of this blog may know Dr. Tom Montville. He’s the coauthor of Food Microbiology: An Introduction and co-edited the first two editions of Food Microbiology: Fundamentals and Frontiers.

But the reasons for this post don’t have too much to do with food safety, although they do have a lot to do with food, more specifically food security.  And when I say food security, I don’t mean defending the food supply against bioterrorism, although this is also one of Dr. Montville’s research interests.  No, when I say food security, I mean it in the original sense, "availability of food and one’s access to it".

Tom, you see, has managed to combine two of his passions: food, and riding his bicycle.  He is currently riding his bicycle across the county (west coast to east coast) to raise funds for Elijah’s Promise, which began as a small soup kitchen and has since become a multi-service agency that moves people out of poverty.

And (here’s the intersection) he’s about to pass within 30 miles of Manhattan, Kansas!

I find his efforts very inspiring, and I hope you will too.  Check out his blog to learn more.