The past days kept me quite busy in my preparation. I received a beautiful offer with the shippment of my gear to Switzerland, close to my home, which also introduced a time limit for me to get ready with the main structure of my setup and how I have to distribute my travel equipment: What do I need for the bike ride, what do I need already before when I hitchhike to Germany and what can I not decide yet? So I spent some time to take decisions and to have things ready to be tested.
The process confronted me with the fact, that I will have to let go of ‘the perfect setup’, things will also evolve on the tour, once I am on the journey.
Never the less I try to stay with a sentence a friend once told me: Proper preparation prevents poor performance.
After I packed everything, tightened the ropes that would secure the pressuse load, pumped up the tires, got my helmet on, I was finally ready to hit the road.
What a feeling!
It felt very liberating to have everything I needed around me and to be ready for such a journey. I felt so amazing with the sun on my skin and the wind around my nose, I could have just started right at that moment. It filled my heart with great joy and antizipation that this moment will come within less than two months, even though I will have to go through a big challenge first, which is to arrive in Germany in the first place. Nevertheless did this first ride feel like a small first departure into my adventure – just a bit shorter.
So I went into my first tour with the new setup. Important for me was to feel the new weight of the bike and to see, how the bike wants to move and how my body will react to it. I was driving in a mostly sunny and warm environment, both on tarmac and on gravel roads, hills and straight roads, tail – and headwinds, many aspects that I will encounter on the journey. I got a heart rate sensor and collected some data around my endurance, my average speed and my level of wellbeing.
Last but not least I was happy to feel that my body was getting ever better adjusted with the intermittent fasting combined with the vegetarian/mostly vegan keto diet I started around a month ago. I am still experimenting and collecting experiences and patterns of my energy levels to see if I can keep the diet for my tour and if I will be able to nourish my body sufficiantly. I am still puzzled on how this diet positively effects my endurance, my alertness and overall wellbeing. I recently was cycling for 4 hours straight without refuelling and came home feeling still charged.
One thing I found interesting is that I could keep the state of ketosis best when I was riding at a lower intensity level, which I felt was fitting very well with my overall intention of this journey.
If you are interested to get more info’s on intermittent fasting and the vegetarian keto conzept, you can check out this very informative youtube channel. I might post a different article on that issue.
I am very happy how this project is unfolding and it is a nice line to keep while me and my colleagues are preparing our annual youthcamp in Tamera. We have a lot of teenagers that want to come this year and we have quite some from other communities and collectives that are working in a similar direction as ours.
Hope this finds you well, feel free to get in touch and ask questions if you like, I am happy to see you visiting my site and wish you a great time until the next one.
dusty road stories 