SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — The developers of epical (http://www.epicalinc.com/), the location-aware social discovery application, are pleased to be an important part of Type Rider II: The Tandem Poetry Tour, a grassroots poetry and bicycle tour across America's Great Plains and Upper Midwest. Poets and educators Maya Stein and Amy Tingle will be using epical to broadcast their movements, mark noteworthy locations and communicate with friends and social media followers as they peddle on their tandem bike, with their typewriters in tow.
The Type Rider II project easily met its Kickstarter funding goal in March; the ride officially kicks off on July 1 in Boulder, Colorado. Along their 1,400-mile route, Stein and Tingle plan to make about 40 or 50 stops to participate in poetry readings and create personalized poetry on their vintage typewriters. Thirty days later, the riders will arrive at their final destination in Beloit, Wisconsin. More details on the pair's mission are available at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/MayaStein/type-rider-ii-the-tandem-poetry-tour.
Besides poetry readings and writing sessions, Stein and Tingle will also be constructing more than 20 Little Free Libraries. Little Free Library (http://littlefreelibrary.org/) is a nonprofit organization based on the principle of "take a book, return a book." The founders estimate that today there are nearly 15,000 self-contained book boxes around the world, helping to bring cultural richness and the exchange of reading material to communities. When Stein and Tingle learned that as many as 11,000 towns around the country lack a public library, they wanted to work on reducing that number.
Epical will support the Type Rider II project by providing each Little Free Library constructed by Stein and Tingle its own geolocation on the app; the library's stewards can then use epical to share news about their library. Previously, many of these book boxes were difficult to find and known only to a handful of locals. Epical will make discovering these unique institutions much easier. Epical's social tools will also give stewards and library patrons the ability to communicate directly, in real-time, something not possible before.
The genesis of this partnership began when epical learned about the remarkable work being done by Little Free Library, whose nonprofit model offered an ideal usage scenario for the geo-social network. Soon, epical will be populated with library locations across the country. Epical is additionally providing funding for some of the libraries that Stein and Tingle will build.
Stein and Tingle are already ruminating on a possible Type Rider III. Should that project come to fruition, epical will once more be along for the ride.
About Type Rider II: The Tandem Poetry Tour
Type Rider II is about creativity, collaboration, and community. We hope to serve, especially, those small towns along our Boulder-to-Beloit route without an existing public library, and to build on the work of the Little Free Library movement, which aims to promote literacy and the love of reading for children and adults everywhere.
About epical:
Epical is a geo-social network created by ecom enterprises, inc. Ecom enterprises is a software development company founded in 1998 and located in the Silicon Valley. The company has built enterprise level applications for several Fortune 500 companies over the years as well as pioneered some of the earliest ecommerce software systems. The epical geo-social network is the result of the company's co-founders frustration in not being able to document and share their remote travels, adventures and experiences like favorite snowmobile locations and secret mountain bike trails.