I was one of more than 1,000 Rotarians, staff, and guests who watched Bill Gates give an inspirational speech at the 2009 International Assembly, where he announced the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s US$255 million grant for polio eradication. I was also fortunate to join writer David Rensin for The Rotarian ’s exclusive interview with Gates shortly after his assembly address (page xx). Gates was humble, considerate, and personable, but more important, he was extremely well versed on all questions thrown his way about Rotary and polio.

Shifting gears now, do you remember our Route 66 article last May? In it, we chronicled our writer’s drive from Chicago to Los Angeles, highlighting the Rotarians he met along the ride. We wanted to take that concept to the next level this year with Jim Petersen’s “The Motorcycle Diaries” (page xx).

Our “road map” to this article started with a single phone conversation. Deputy Senior Editor Janice Chambers called Ken Frantz, of the Rotary Club of Newport News, Va., USA. (She had worked with Ken on our August 2008 article about building footbridges.) During their conversation, he told Janice that she should talk to Ken Hodge, a fellow club member who was planning to take his stepson, daughter, and a young friend on a motorcycle trip through Central and South America to raise money for footbridges in Zambia. Janice mentioned it to Senior Editor Barbara Nellis, who immediately knew the exact person to tag along on the trip and meet Rotarians in places we don’t often cover.

Next stop: Managing Editor John Rezek’s office. Jim and John were college roommates and had a long working relationship at Playboy magazine. Confident that we could overcome all the logistical hurdles involved, John gave Barb and Janice the green light.

Jim, a Cycle World and Rider magazine motorcycle expert, has also been published by the New York Times , Chicago Tribune , and Sports Illustrated . We coordinated his travel and meetings with more than 30 Rotarians along the way, while he and Ken worked out how to get the bikes from Newport News to Peru.

Jim rode 8,000 miles in five weeks. He stopped in Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Honduras, where Rotarians were eager to show him projects, most of which were supported by local Rotary clubs. Rubén Berrospi, past president of the Rotary Club of La Molina, Peru, told him, “Rotary here attracts people who have reached a point in their lives where they want to give back.”

We are always searching for ways to inspire and motivate our readers with Rotarians and projects they may not be familiar with. Sometimes, your phone calls are the ignition that starts our engine.