Project VELAIA

On the VELo cycling for and around gAIA


Archive for the 'plans' Category

End of news on VELAIA.DE

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My dear readers,

as you might have noticed, I don’t post any more on this travelogue of my great tour around the world. There’s still more than a month missing to the end of the trip in La Serena in Chile, where I finished together with my father at the beginning of December 2008.

Even if I want to, I can’t continue the writing, as writing about the adventures of a single day in sufficient depth took me about 2 hours for the English version alone. Then another 2 hours for the German version and some more time for picture post-processing and uploading.  The only thing I can tell you here is that I’ve had a superb time on the salt lakes in Bolivia, the lagunas and in the Atacama desert.

I have to look forward now, get to grips with the hardship of the economic crisis where the big tail is probably still ahead and find a vision for my life, how do I want to live it. There will be some lectures in the near future, two at the Special Bikes show on April 25th and 26th and probably some in the area where I live. If you’re at the Special Bikes show, come over to the lecture or meet me at the exhibition - I’m very curious myself about all the new inventions and talking to so many interesting people there.

I will start a weblog under www.BikeLust.de where I plan to keep everyone updated about what’s going on in my cyclist life, about new ideas and issues that are on my mind. I’ll try to spread the word about living in a sustainable and environmental friendly way and at the same time having a wonderful time. I’m cycling on a bike, taking the trains, eating vegetarian and trying to save energy, water and resources. Why? Well, it used to be because of my ideologies, but now I’m so used to it and to all the advantages that come with it and I have a really beautiful and happy life, that I don’t want to change. No way!

There are still a lot of things that I can and will do better, like for example avoiding airplane travel altogether. During the world tour I have made an exception to that because of my limited budget and amount of time and I feel really bad about it. Now I will try hard to stick to these goals of mine. For the planet, for all the interconnected species,  and for myself! Quality of life, that’s what matters to me. People matter to me. You matter to me!

I’ve come upon this wonderful series of fascinating lectures online, called TED - probably a lot of you have already heard about it. It’s my exchange for television. Now today there’s a TED wish from Sylvia Earle about the Blue Heart of the Planet that I want to share with you. I can’t do much more myself about it except for political lobbying and expressing my opinion, because as a vegetarian  I don’t participate in slaughtering the sea species and I try to avoid, reuse and recycle as much as possible. I have to do a lot more myself in other fields. Maybe you can make a change? And believe me, it’s not hard to be a vegetarian even if you have not cycled 40,000 km over 5 continents :-)

Ok, that’s it from my side. Thank you all so much for following my trip and enriching this great experience. I hope I have given something back with the stories and pictures and that I have motivated at least some of you to make changes for the good of humanity while having a fascinating time yourself.

Enjoy life and riding. Love, Peace and Great Adventures,

Daniel

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Day (and night) 594 (2008-12-07): Going home and pictures of Paris @night

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Hey my friends and readers!

I’m going home! Yeah, in half an hour I’m back on the bike and cycling towards home (with the small detour I’d mentioned before).

Because Christmas is pretty close, I just want to inform you that I’ve updated my wishlist. I want to invest quite some time into the website after my return, update gigabytes of high-quality pictures, edit many of them and maybe even do some video editing. I’ll put a lot of data with distances from the trip online and hopefully make the website a richer ressource for fellow touring cyclists and for you, my readers.

Probably some help from my readers might boost the progress of that work tremendously, as I’m not able to do any picture or video editing on the 6 year old iBook I’m sitting in front of right now. Just get in touch with me if you can help me in some way and maybe want to give something back for the work I’ve put into all the postings and pictures or compensate for the operation costs of the website or the investments I had to put in the equipment - maybe you have a quite usable notebook at home yourself that’s just collecting dust? My e-mail is daniel (at) sonnefueralle (pt) de and you can also contact me through the comments section on this post and I have a PayPal account with the same address as the e-mail.

Anyway, here are some more pictures from Paris:

Paris at night, 4 crazy CouchSurfers ready to explore the night

Together with my CouchServer, my host Kamel and two CouchSurfers, Natahlia and Barbara, we went out for a photo shooting session last night, and that’s what I brought home.

Paris at night, Eifel Tower

Paris at night, obelisk illuminated

Paris at night

Paris at night, reflections of the Opera

Paris at night, obelisk

It was an amazing drive through the winter Paris and I say a big THANK YOU to my CouchSurfing host Kamel!

All the best,

Daniel, who’s hitting the road now again!

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(2008-12-05): Back to Europe, CouchSurfing in Paris

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Hello clan, or should I better say bon jour!

In La Serena, Chile, I packed the bike and all the luggage in boxes and we took a bus to the airport in Santiago de Chile.

Packing gear in boxes, Chile
The (recumbent) bike is on the box, ready for takeoff pulling the luggage to the bus terminal in La Serena, Chile
Bicycle box going to Paris, written on carton box

I also sold the frame and suspension of the mountain bike because I could get replacement cheaper in Germanz than what I would have to pay for the transport in the plane! And the mechanics in the bike shop were really helpful and happz to get a cheap frame and fork - win-win situation!

Luggage preparations of touring cyclists - manufacturing a great enough box takes a lot of tape!

Then, together with my father I flew back from Santiago to Paris. Even though Alitalia has a lot of financial problems, that probably won’t get worse with the economic crisis now, they somehow brought us on a Air France flight to Paris and changed the flight to Munich over Rome to a direct one, also with Air France, to Munich - quite funny, I think.

Cama Premium bus in Chile (Marcopolo) - more comfortable than what you can get anywhere in Europe
Aeropuerto express bus from Tur Bus terminal in Santiago, Chile
Duty free shopping area in Santiago airport, Chile dinner on tiny tables at Air France flight AF2322 from Santiago, Chile, to Paris, France

Yesterday I’ve arrived here and luckily I was able to leave the plane and not continue on to Germany. On the other hand the handling on the planes must have been pretty rough and therefore one screw to connect the handlebars to the bike was missing, the switch for the LED light got destroyed and the big chainwheel on the front of the recumbent is also bowed and unusable now! Unfortunately I only realized the loss of the screw at the airport and didn’t make a claim at the luggage service of Air France.

damaged bike box at CDG airport, Paris

Charles de Gaul (CDG) airport train station, Paris, France, with parked TGV in the background
Heavy loaded recumbent bicycle on the Paris train

Afterwards I took the train to Aubervilles, a suburb of Paris in the north, where fellow CouchSurfer and also world traveler Kamel picked me up in the evening from a BP fuel station where I’d gotten lost (only 600 m from his flat). The weather here’s pretty rainy, kind of autumn feeling with all the naked brown trees, the cold and windy weather - what a heavy contrast to the Chilean summer and the Atacama desert!
And today after getting the first good sleep in almost 2 days I went out to find a screw that would fix the handlebars to the frame and front wheel. Not an easy job with the little French I speak and with a recumbent rolling beside you all the time. It took me probably 4 hours and the help of a lot of friendly frenchmen. At the CGI shop in Avenue de la Republique, No. 77 in Aubervilliers, a very helpful man helped me for half an hour to construct kind of a replacement screw and now I’m mobile again, ready to explore the city a bit tomorrow, even though the weather’s everything but perfect - hope I’ll also get some nice pictures without too much grey :-)


On other news I finally got the Feeds on my website running again and have changed the configuration so that hopefully from now on the feeds will contain all the content of the posts, including the pictures. It works on my Google Reader and I hope the e-mail notifications will also include pictures from now on. You can subscribe to the e-mail notification service on the right navigation bar, just above the logos of my sponsors.

IF Core IT Services GmbH

Additionally I’ve asked my friend and webspace provider and man for emergencies (with the website) Felix from the IF Core IT Services GmbH to set up the latest version of the WordPress blogging software. I will try to move all the content to the new version and get some things going again (that) will make editing pages and posts easier and enrich the experience of the Project VELAIA site both for the readers and the editor. Probably I will have time for the administration work when I’m back home around Christmas and New Year.

Too old to die young: Wim Harwig from harwig.wordpress.com

And what will my route look like? First I’ll leave Paris in northern direction, visiting my friend, fellow CouchSurfer and cycling enthusiast (with recumbents and a Quest Velomobile) Wim in the Netherlands. Then I’ll continue on to Amsterdam, the city of bicycles, and from there I’ll probably cycle on a straight way back home. I’m very much looking forward to and can’t wait to see my family, relatives and friends again!

Oq3gIVGFTk4

I hope I’ll be able to edit some more articles from the voyage in South America and put in the pictures I still have on the hard disk online. Only problem beeing the slow iBook that really makes almost every task 10 times harder (except for writing).

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(25.06.2008): News aus San Diego

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I’ve arrived in San Diego on Saturday evening, coming down from the mountains in 40 deg C heat and high humidity, plain suffering! Additionally I’ve had two punctures (only one puncture and a defect valve as I found out later), strangely on the inside of the tube where the rims are!

Lynna and Tom

Then I arrived at Tom’s place. Tom is my CouchSurfing host for a few days and he helped me a lot by letting me send the camera and hardware to his place before I arrived. Tom and Omar live really relaxed and I’ve had such a nice time here. His girlfriend Lynna also made me feel like I was @home, she’s maybe not a good car driver but a genius when it comes to painting and a lot of fun to talk to.

Lynna and Tom at the beach

Having tested the new Canon Digital Rebel XSi camera with a nice travel lens, remote control, battery grip, filter and more, we set out for the beach and soccer field the next day.

Dog and owner (guard) watching the waves at beach

 

It’s so much fun with the new DSLR camera I just don’t want to stop shooting any more! It fires fast like a machine gun and the quality of the pictures is phenomenal. I enjoy all the manual controls, the analog zooming by rotating the lens, the new circular polarization filter and remote control. I can’t wait to use it in South America!

Template of banana eating girl with ancient bicycle in the background

UCSD / University of California in San Diego sticker on an MacBook with art strip San Diego at night oil painting by Lynna

And as some of you might already know, my father will join me in a few days in Caracas, Venezuela. Together we will cycle down the Andes to Chile for half a year.

Liegerad zurück aus Peking 002Liegerad zurück aus Peking 005

The recumbent arrived back at home after a several month journey by container ship from China to Europe, just about 2 months ago. Norbert Gurt, my neighbor, made sure it would arrive back at home. The cost for sending (almost 800 Euro) got kindly paid for by my father - thank you so much!

And even though my father had a lot of things to do before leaving the country, he still managed to make a DIY 4x 1 watt Seoul P4 LED light, that looks just frightening:

Liegeradbeleuchtung 001Liegeradbeleuchtung 004

I can’t wait to scare the crazy car drivers away with the immense light beam resulting from the setup!

Just today my sponsor and producer of my beloved Speedhub 500/14 has posted a news article about the Project VELAIA and the unification with my father. It’s really a pleasure to work together with the Rohloff team.

Rohloff News

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(13.06.2008): Die 30 000km sind geknackt

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 DSC00780

This morning, just after passing the village of Hope, ”Beyond Hope” in fact, I looked down on my kilometer counter and found that the 30.000km are full - 3/4 of the way around the planet (along the horizon)! And I’m looking forward to the last quarter in South America.

DSC00784  

There just happened to be a cafe while I still had the 30.000km displayed on my screen and so I went in and got a small reward for that: a stack of pancakes with syrup and milk - yum!

DSC00787 

A BIG THANK YOU to all my readers who’ve gone through all of this with me! You are great!

Now I’m sitting in the library of Quartzsite, Arizona, and browse through many DSLR cameras on amazon.com - you can look forward to better pictures. If the money’s enough I’ll also get a wide angle or fish-eye lense and a tripod with remote control.

I’m not sure whether my last savings will be enough to buy a laptop, but maybe … we’ll see. Otherwise I hope my father will bring an old iBook that could also work out - he hasn’t updated me on that yet, though.

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Tag 366 (24.04.2008): 1. Jahrestag! :-)

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I can’t believe that I’ve been on the road now for that long already! A year ago I’ve left my home town of Gundelsheim near Stuttgart, a tiny place in a tiny country. I rode away from home at 6pm, cycled 200km in a long night ride to reach Frankfurt and the rest followed.

Departure from Gundelsheim on Speedmachine GT recumbent on 17 000km tour to Beijing

(Leaving home with my StreetMachine GT recumbent)

The time I’ve had and the wonderful people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve gone through, all the things I’ve seen - wow, stunning, amazing, unbelievable. I want to thank all these people I’ve met, especially the wonderful ones I was allowed to cycle with and my great hosts in so many places. I also want to thank my readers and especially the ones who often comment on my pages, my sister Verena, her boyfriend Andi, my fellow  (special bike) cyclist Wim Harwig, Rob Thomson (who’s skateboarding through China now with a TRAILER!), Mathis, Jinfeng, the Schlossgeister (David, Sarah, Otmar and Gabi), Michaela and Alex Lee and many more.

Ryan entertaining children in a cat's costume :-) 

I am in Rotorua right now and I’ve found another fellow cyclist, Ryan, a total cycling nut, and his girlfriend Gudrun from Germany who’ll host me for a few days so I can explore the wonderful single trails in the forest and watch the first New Zealand Single Speed Championships! Thank you Ryan and Gudrun!

DSC08689 

 

(GREEN PEACE to all my readers)

The preparations for the connection with my father at the end of June in Caracas, Venezuela, are going into the final phase. Probably we’ll be on recumbent bicycles both - that will be a lot of fun!

And for all of those who want to test a recumbent bike, have fun and are living in the are: The Spezialradmesse Germersheim (Special Bikes Show) is just taking place this weekend in Germersheim in the south-west of Germany near Karlsruhe. 

Verena, me and Andi next to a velomobile

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