Like many Californians, Chris Biffle is sick about the looming cuts to education and tired of bickering Sacramento power brokers. And he's ready to fight.

And walk. And walk.

Along with a tiny cadre of students, Biffle, chairman of a community college philosophy department, set out June 21 on a walk to the state Capitol from San Bernardino City Hall -- his own mission of educational reform.

Biffle, 57, began opposing the education cuts after Gov. Gray Davis proposed deep ones in January. The former Sunnyvale resident was one of tens of thousands of educators and students who persuaded the governor to dull his blade in his revised budget in May. But he has no illusions that a statewide walk will persuade lawmakers to slash education any less.

``The cuts are a done deal,'' he said. But, as Albert Camus, the French existentialist writer once wrote, ``You don't have to believe in the success of your cause to fight for it,'' Biffle said.

Smelly socks

He's armed only with a set of gloomy statistics, a free reading game for young students, and a bunch of dirty sweat socks. If legislators still haven't adopted a budget before July 22, when he arrives in Sacramento, he plans to leave a pair of smelly socks on the Capitol steps for every day the state has remained without a budget since July 1, the constitutional deadline for enacting one.

``It's the Big Stinker Award,'' he said.

But poking fun at the Legislature is not the main purpose of his journey, which he describes as a ``children's rights movement.''

Biffle, who teaches at Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa, east of San Bernardino, is the author of eight books on reading and writing. He co-founded a non-profit, zero-budget group called Power Teachers to give free how-to-teach seminars to more than 1,500 teachers. All the group's handouts and video tapes are free.

His 300-mile trip is not continuous. To make sure he hit California's most populated areas, Biffle broke the trip into four legs: San Bernardino to Los Angeles, Escondido to San Diego, San Jose to San Francisco and Merced to Sacramento. He and the student volunteers drive the rest of the way.

At first glance, the volunteers -- wearing ``Save Our Schools'' T-shirts and passing out children's reading games -- look like a bunch of hawkers for a new eatery. But passersby who listen long enough soon realize they're not out to make a buck, but to pass out free reading games.

No requests for donations. No gimmicks. Just take the games, and let your kids or any children you know put them to the test.

``I don't have kids, but I've got two brothers in third and fifth grades,'' said David Rodriguez, 23, a De Anza College student from San Jose who was approached Sunday by volunteer Chris Baltz in front of a Sunnyvale Borders bookstore. ``I'll check it out.''

Arasch Fatemi of San Jose, a computer technician, said he was impressed that ``young people would volunteer their time for such an important thing, early childhood education.''

Along with their 2-year-old son, Daniel, Fatemi and his wife, Elena Lewis, also were approached in front of Borders. ``Our whole education system does have some major problems,'' Lewis said.

Reading help

The reading game consists of 300 ``sight words'' that make up 65 percent of all words children read in school. To lay a solid foundation for their children, Biffle said, parents need to make sure their children can read all the words by the end of third grade.

Sadly, Biffle said, at least 60 percent of California elementary, middle and high school students are one grade behind in reading. In a national fourth-grade reading test, only 28 percent were deemed proficient in reading. In California, the figure was 18 percent. The pending budget cuts will make ``a serious problem catastrophic,'' he said.

Biffle is a former Sunnyvale High School and Foothill College student who graduated from the University of California-Santa Cruz in 1967, the school's first class.

Originally, Biffle's group of volunteers included four students, but two had to drop out because of a lack of money. Baltz, 28, and Joelle Tanguay, 18, of Yucaipa, are the only volunteers left.

Baltz, a San Francisco State philosophy student, said he was a rotten student throughout high school. It was only after he took Biffle's class at Crafton Hills that he became inspired to learn.

Neither of the volunteers nor their leader is discouraged. They say they've passed out the reading games at 27 libraries along the way, and hope to make that 50. ``Not one librarian declined,'' Biffle said.