Project VELAIA

I’ll have to modify my start date at home quite a bit because the producer of my recumbent, HPVelotechnik, has agreed to check the bike before I leave. It’s not far from my home, so that I’ll be able to get there in a reasonable time. Therfore I’ve updated the route page in Germany.

Thanks to HPVelotechnik for working hard to make this possible, even though they’re in a hard situation (moving to another production facility) right now!

Hey my friends and readers,

I have to wait for my Uzbekistan visa – still! Therefore I have taken a bus to Esfahan/Isfahan where I am getting a bit more familiar with the Iranian culture and history. The internet situation over here is not perfect to say the least. It is nearly impossible to upload a picture to flickr from Esfahan internet cafes – but I won’t give up.

Tonight I will take a bus to Shiraz and explore the ruins of ancient Persepolis over there, setting out by bus to Yazd the next day. I will hopefully be able to pick up the Uzbekistan visa before next Wednesday because Wed and Thu the travel agency is closed as far as I know.

I also have a mobile with an Iranian number and SIM card now – for security and management reasons My number here in Iran is 09192671563 – the predial for Iran is 0098. From Germany you can predial 01017 and pay 5,94 ct/min to call into Iranian mobile networks (information from billiger-telefonieren.de)

So stay tuned while I will be trying to upload the pictures of these phenomenal mosques, palaces and gardens during my stay in Iran!

We were not in partying mood when we had arrived at the Titicaca lake. No sleep for days and always taking care for the equipment that lay in the bus luggage compartment unprotected. The landscape had changed a lot: The green had gone, the steep mountains had gone. Only hills left; the brown landscape and the blue sky. Altiplano now, 3800 m altitude,  almost unrecognizable. The highest peak in Germany, we would be on the top now but here felt almost like riding along a coast.

First we had to ride along the Lago Grande northern part of the lake, later on along the Lago Pequeño which together form this 190 km long lake on 3,812 m.

Still a lot of indigenous people living here, almost only indigenous people to be correct. I didn’t closely observe the cultural differences between this part of Peru and the one we had just left with the bus. One thing probably was that here they didn’t shoot any longer at festivals, there was still music, of course, a loft of music indeed. Music everywhere as the cycling observer should find out during the exhausting altiplano ride ahead.

Almost all buildings here are made from adobe, but the roofs are a lot more sophisticated than what we had seen at Cordillera Blanca. The atmosphere had changed as well: Warm, totally dry days, non-stop sun from above and a seemingly less clear air. The smell was a different one, especially when coming close to the big lake which slowly passed by to the left.

Flat roads, often pretty straight for many kilometers. High speed riding compared to what we had experienced the weeks before. I put more pressure into the tires to ride more efficiently. In parts the road got really wonderful with almost no traffic or wide shoulders, but in other parts we also had dangerous sand on the road and simultaneous overtaking maneuvers.

There were plenty of slinging opportunities when stopping for a lunch break at the lake as you can see below. And the skills got more and more sophisticated, but still we missed everything you could miss, sometimes even the water

The weather was nice and my father was cooking, so what better could I do than a small portrait shoot of the recumbent bike in the midday sun, in front of the blue lake and the blue sky.

Yes, I think these quad Seoul P4 LED light installation makes the recumbent bike look more cute, like C3PO from Star Wars.

The control center of the recumbent bike of my father. At the back the green GREENPEACE Ortlieb panniers, the mattress you sit on, the tiny little red bell on the left side of the handlebars together with the rear hydraulic rim brake. Now switching over to the right side you can see the Rohloff Speedhub shifter on the top of the handlebar, then the hydraulic front brake with some protection on the bottom.

In the center you find the rear suspension element and below the rack for the little panniers. The black teflon tubes tell the chain where to go and the small black wheel redirects the chain when the suspension element gets compressed.

Now here you can see the Forumslader black box with the 6V and 9-20V output, with the black shifter for the light and another tiny shifter for ON/OFF. There’s a steel feather inside the front fork for trouble free suspension, with the drawback of being really heavy and not very sensitive.

When they were not dancing you could often see the local people hang around with their sheep or goats making for nice countryside-culture pictures and a lot of communication opportunities. Always very communicative and not letting you go whithout throwing a thousand questions at you

The camping like the people was wonderfully pleasant here. Often the locals told us where we could camp and so we found this nice spot about 30 vertical meters above the road leading along the Lago Titicaca. Nice mornings, nice days, nice evenings and no concerns about bad weather any longer.

Turning our heads to the left we could always spot this massive mountain range behind the lake.

The day before yesterday I went out for a jogging session in the evening, together with my dog Sydney. The countryside looks wonderful these days with a 2 cm snow cover all over the place and a reviving, cold and dry air.
So at 7 pm, it had already been dark for 2 hours outside, I started. I went from my mothers house a bit north, followed the Autobahn 6 to the east and turned north, then, after a few hundred meters, turned west again, jogging towards the village of Treschklingen.
Here I have put a track on my website, which you can view in Google Maps or download to Google Earth.

Click either the image above or here to view the way I took on Google Maps.

So now I was jogging on this long, straight stretch, the snow was clicking under my shoes and the dog was 10 m ahead. I slowly fell in this state of trance where you don’t realize time very much any more, where you’re just enjoying and not thinking (too much).

Suddenly I spotted this yellow light shining onto the snow in front of me, I thought for a second and immediately realized that I was in danger. I turned around while still running forward and these two light circles blinded me. Intuitively I raised my hands and waved with them to make the car – now maybe 20 m from me, slow down. I turned around and hoped that by stopping in the middle of the path and signaling with my hands, I could make it stop and get my dog on the leash, thereby hopefully saving his precious life … as a experienced search and rescue dog with several years of training and some successful searches, he should be worth something at least to society, am I right? And of course there’s this pearsonal binding to this being that’s been around me for many years of my life. I still like it even after being on the road for so long having hundreds of bad experiences with other dogs.

So now I hoped that the car would slow down, that the driver would respect my concern about the dog’s and my own lives, that he would honor human dignity, just a normal thing probably most of the people in this “developed” and “civilized” country will understand.

But I was so wrong. Within no time and without slowing down the car continued driving towards me at an estimated 35 to 45 km/h. I jumped to the right side throwing the leash towards the car right in front of me to make it stop, to make it stop at least for my dog that’s not as aware of its surrounding environment as I am, that is not used to dangerous traffic the way I am used to it.

But the car didn’t slow down for the dog either. Luckily the dog was just sniffing some other dogs tracks somewhere beside the road and the car just dashed by.

Now I was lucky and happy that nobody got hurt. But at the same time I got very very angry about this inhuman behavior of the driver. I hoped he would slow down shouting at me for throwing the leash at his car … but no way. Kind of hit-and-run driving, rules that I was not used to, something I’ve actually never experienced here before and also not on my worldtour. Nowhere.

He must have seen me because of the reflectors on my back and the reflectors on the head torch I had used. He didn’t honk, no light signal and I was running with the back towards him!

What made this driver behave like that? Probably he must have been drunk and knowing that he was illegal in his actions in two ways, namely being drunk and driving on a path reserved for humans and farming vehicles, he reacted in panic. That’s the most likely version of what I could think about.

I’m actually thinking about filing charges now. I know about the type and color of the vehicle, I guess that he’s been a local because he knew this shortcut, I know the time and maybe it would make sense. Sense because of the inacceptable behavior and because of the statistical data about the danger of motorized vehicles to our society, about the suffering and discrimination they cause. But I’m not sure about that yet.

Maybe one of my readers wants to share his/her ideas on that with me, either via e-mail (daniel () sonnefueralle O de) or by commenting …

What if I had been an old man or woman not reacting that fast, not realizing the danger approaching from behind?

This is posting mostly concerns German citizens as there’s a ongoing petition about a basic income. There’s information available on a international site: http://www.basicincome.org/bien/.

Why do I post this here and why did I sign the petition?

Well, I think that a lot of potential in people just doesn’t get set free due to the slave like labor system. There are many things that have a value, especially a cultural and societal value but there’s no room for these in the current system of society and finance. My tour is one of the examples: I could never have done the tour without a certain basic income. My basic income has been built on debt which I have to pay back now slowly. With a moderate but sufficient basic income I could have done the tour and could have kept everyone updated without the need of sponsors (for equipment) or creating this debt I find myself now in.

There are a lot of other reasons for such a basic income that I won’t discuss here because of the lack of time and because I think that generally this is just not the right spot.