At the end of this very long ride, Gunn has learned that the rest of the world is not something to fear. In detailed accounts of his travels posted online, there is an unfettered joy and unrelenting optimism in what Gunn sees. The journey has made Gunn, a former Castro Valley resident, a devout pacifist and left him with an abiding love for humanity.

The most dangerous place, Gunn says, is here at home in America.

“I’ve had more aggressive things happen to me here and more threats physically…than I’ve had anywhere else in the world,” he said. “I believe that people have an idea that the world is a really dangerous place when in fact it’s extremely safe.”

Still, he recounts moments that almost ended his trip, such as a breakdown high on the Tibetan plateau, halfway between Kashgar and Lhasa, that left Gunn stranded for four hours.

“That was potentially life-threatening because the weather’s wicked up there,” he said. Other cyclists have died on that road. He paced as the temperature dropped, until he found a footlong strand of bailing wire strong enough to hold his bike together.

“That piece of wire saved my (expletive) in Tibet,” he said Saturday, pointing to a spot on his beat-up bike frame, where the wire is still attached. “I was stranded on the side of the road, and the only reason I was able to continue is that I found that piece of wire. In Tibet, there’s not a bicycle shop for 1,200 miles.”

Twenty years ago, Gunn’s mother, dying of cancer, tried to take a last trip to Europe. She never made it. Arriving in London, she immediately fell ill and had to return home. She passed away a short while later.

Even with that motivation, it took Gunn another two decades to set out. He’d traveled extensively, but not on the trip he wanted. He worked as a photojournalist for 14 years, most recently at the Nevada Appeal in Reno.

“The hardest part of the whole trip was just getting out of the driveway,” he said. “The realization took place on my 4,000th commute, during my 14th year as a small-town daily newspaper photographer,” Gunn wrote in his second blog entry. “For nearly a decade-and-a-half I was paid below-average wages to record history through the lens of camera, shooting nearly a million photographs. Following each day, my photographs appeared on the sheets of recycled paper that the better part of 15,000 souls complained about on a daily basis.”

The daily grind of tragedy and banality was getting to him.

“Something deep inside me was saying that there was something more to my photographic capabilities than the visual documentation of lackluster events that repeated themselves seasonally ad nauseum. Christmas bake sales, service club check passings, first babies of the year, senior volunteers of the week, groundbreakings, ribbon-cuttings, pets of the week, dimly lit high school sports events and local government meetings — the meat and potatoes of my job,” he wrote.

So he quit.

On July 1, 2005, he crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. It was cold and foggy. He and Matt Haverty, a friend of 25 years, rode through the city, took the ferry to Vallejo, then turned east toward Sacramento.

At the end of the journey, his back to the ocean, Gunn is still processing everything he saw. “I’m still unfolding the whole story in my mind,” he said. He is hesitant to pick a favorite place, though in conversation he drifts back to the Silk Road: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Western China.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said, about to mount his bike and recross the Golden Gate. “This human family out there wants to see their brothers and sisters. They want to come and meet you.”

Photo by Ray Chavez, Bay Area News Group. This story originally ran in the Hayward Daily Review.

Shanghai took the men’s cup, with Dalian coming in second. Beijing won the women’s division, beating Shanghai in the finals.

For those who’ve never heard of Gaelic football, let alone played it, here’s an overview of how the game is played. Below, Joe Keating, a staffer at the Irish Embassy, explains the rules of the game:

I recommend using headphones if you have them. The wind was awful and I did what I could to fix the audio. If you can’t make it out, here’s what he’s saying:

Unlike soccer you can catch the ball in Gaelic Football. However, after four steps, you have to release it. That can be a bounce, or it can be a kick. It can only bounce once and then you must kick. However, as you’ll see in the game, you can kick to yourself, and the better players will continually kick to themselves. Others find it easier to bounce.

So, four steps then bounce or kick. Second four steps, you must kick, but can kick back to yourself.

At any time you can hand pass the ball to one of your teammates.

You eventually score either a goal or a point. The goal is equal to three points.

After that, it’s easy. Just hit the ball, kick the ball, over the bar, under the bar. What else can you say?

The game often gets described as a combination of soccer and basketball. To me it looks sort of like rugby, but since I don’t actually play any of these sports (tennis, anyone?) I’ll leave it to others to explain.

School Board President Fred Heslep refused to hear an update on the lighting project at Thursday night’s meeting, since the school board has never officially voted to endorse the project started by Vasquez High athletic director Tim Jorgensen.

“It doesn’t exist as far as the board is concerned,” Heslep said in the meeting.

Jorgensen bought the lights from Georgia Tech in an eBay online auction early in the summer and picked them up himself from Georgia. Parents and supporters funded the project — which has cost about $17,000 so far, although the district has paid nothing — and Jorgensen brought in contractors, engineers, and architects to handle construction. Everyone is working for free.

Jorgensen still plans to have the lights up and running by Sept. 2 for the first Vasquez home game, if not sooner. The lights were to be all in place on the poles Friday night and the plan was to do the wiring Sunday. If everything checks out, a barbecue under the lights has been planned for Wednesday night.

Trustees first learned of the lighting project in a principal’s report on July 16. Jorgensen told the school board he purchased the lights and would soon drive to Georgia to pick them up. At the time, no one on the board objected, although they told Jorgensen to make sure every piece of paperwork was in order.

This is not the first volunteer-initiated project at Vasquez High. The all-portable campus of about 600 students got its baseball field from parent efforts and almost gained a softball field the same way. Students did most of the campus beautification.

Acton-Agua Dulce Unified has no consistent policy on what must come before the school board, and the shifting foundation of debate kept trustees, community members, and administrators arguing well past the meeting’s 11:00 p.m. adjournment.

Heslep expressed concerns that the board isn’t being kept in the loop on projects. High school administrators grumbled about being micromanaged.

“I’m not against the lights, I’m against the procedure. It should be on the agenda,” Heslep said after the meeting.

Vasquez Principal Martin Young interjected: “If we replace some chairs, is that before the board? Everything we do at the high school can’t be before the board.”

“If it requires kids walking around cranes and 7,000-lb poles, it should come before the board,” Heslep shot back. “We approved putting up volleyball nets.”

Trustee Steve Harbeson said the school board had plenty of notice.

“It should have been (on the agenda for a vote), but that’s our fault,” not Jorgensen’s, Harbeson told Heslep outside the school multipurpose room after the meeting ended.

Heslep responded: “He knew how the system worked and he circumvented it.”

After 20 minutes of arguing, the debate came down to two questions:

“Did he come and tell the board what he was going to do?” Harbeson asked.

“Did he put it on the agenda?” Heslep asked back.

In the background of all such discussions is the Vasquez High gymnasium, which has sat empty and unused for nearly a year since the district learned the building lacked state approval. If a student were hurt inside the facility, trustees might be personally liable.

The lights at Vasquez aren’t tall enough to need approval from the Division of the State Architect, which oversees school construction. DSA is staying clear of this project, except to say what the rules are.

“We don’t normally get involved in these types of issues,” Spokesman Matt Bender said when asked who would be liable if a student gets hurt during construction.

“The best way to deal with that is to make sure those light posts never fall down, and the best way to do that is to have licensed professionals oversee it.”

Superintendent Linda Wagner said the district is insured against such a tragedy.

“This is the type of project that definitely warrants board approval,” she added. “The board has been fully apprised of the project and kept well informed.”

Jorgensen was back on the field with the football team Friday and he said the last lights would be up by that afternoon. He said he understands trustees’ concern, but said he is making sure everything is done right.

“This is adults getting in the way,” he said. He added that the school board needs to trust its employees to do their jobs.

Student Trustee Mansur Ivie, a Vasquez football player, said the lights will benefit more than just the football team.

“We’re not doing this for 60 kids,” he said. “We’re doing this for 600.”