It's day two of the Mercury Online Charity Auction, and a few items are hot, hot, hot.

Like the package featuring a new bike from River City Cycles, a bike ride with BikePortland's Jonathan Maus, and lunch with Mayor-elect Sam Adams at the Little Red Bike Cafe? It's at $632 as of this posting.

samonMiniBike.jpg

photo via BikePortland.org

That's fantastic. Want to know why? Because the Portland Women's Crisis Line gets all that cash.

With $500, they can fund 40 hours of response to their crisis line. $1000 "funds two long distance Danger to Safety" transportation vouchers. In smaller terms, $7 is the cost to fund a single crisis line call. (If you aren't the bidding type, why not give $7 right now directly to PWCL? Or how about $50, which provides 15 hours of on-call sexual assault advocacy--i.e., people ready to meet survivors at the hospital or police station, any time of the day or night. Plus, you'll get a Mercury tiger t-shirt.)

If we can raise $10,000--and I think we can, if past years' generosity is any indication--PWCL can provide "200 nights of emergency housing when local domestic violence shelters are full." And those shelters are often full, PWCL's executive director Rebecca Nickels tells me. They've seen a jump in how often the shelters are full, since July 2007.

Bonus: Up to $10,000 in donations via the auction will be matched by the Collins Foundation Empowerment Challenge. And there are still tons of deals to be had, like Steve's favorite Cindy the Erotic Pleaser pillows, and the Narcissist package ("your name or face on every single page of an issue of the Mercury! An entire issue! Your name or face! Every stinking page!")--both just $1.99 at the moment.