Project VELAIA

I want to thank the following sponsors very much for the equipment they’ve supplied:

• Rohloff has checked my gear hub and supplied me with replacement parts, lubricants and repair tools at tour start. Continuing the tour after Beijing Rohloff always supplied everything necessary to keep me shifting properly.
• Brando has sent me a foldable bluetooth keyboard and a case for my Dell x51v PDA at the beginning of the tour. Several times Brando subsidised when I had to purchase technical stuff, like the Canon Digital EOS 450D camera. After the tour Brando sent me a smart phone with GPS where I am doing OpenStreetMap cartography with.
• Ortlieb Waterproof gave me a waterproof camera bag and two Front Roller Plus bags (GREENPEACE) edition. After finishing the first part, they gave me new panniers, a handlebar bag and later on a new camera bag and sleeping pad. All the supplied gear is still in usage either by myself or my father, great, waterproof and durable stuff.
• Schwalbe has supported me with kilos of tires and tubes. They have been very generous and also given tires for my father. I came to appreciate especially their Marathon XR tires in the rough Andes and had incredible experiences with the slightly heavier Marathon Plus (22,500 km to the first puncture with the first tire!)
  For commuting and ongoing tours I will get a new and specially for recumbents designed set of waterproof bags from Ortlieb.
• From the Adventure Company in Heilbronn I got a 200€ gift card. I’ve encashed it through a sleeping bag inlet, a biwak sack, Luxeon headlights and a knife. Due to a tight budget they couldn’t continue supporting me.
• From the Radhaus Ilsfeld I got a pair of long windstopper and one of short trousers, an undershirt, new cycling shoes and clips for the shoes. They put together the mountain bike I was riding with for the second half of my trip and sold it to me for just above trade price.
• Magura has sent me spare parts and brake pads for my brakes and shirts, long-arm shirts and trousers. They also wanted to send me a replacement for my 2001 front disc brakes which I denied because I’m completely content with them. They couldn’t continue sponsoring me after I had reached Beijing due to used up sponsoring budget.
• HAIDS gave me a discount on the GPS receiver WINTEC WBT-201. Unfortunately I lost the cute little device in Iran.

I want to use this possibility to say thanks to many individuals and organizations (from around the world) who’ve helped me a lot and who I have to credit good parts of my personal developement to. Sorry in advance for all the others I’ve forgotten – please forbear with me! Again the list is in no particular order:

• Personal
  • my family Verena, Martina and Elmar – you’ve withstood all my oddities (and survived ) – you can find my mother’s homepage under www.bpstherapie.de
  • my sister’s friend Andi for many rich in content conversations
  • my cycling and training fellow cyclist Adrian for thousands of shared kilometers and ideas
  • Simon and Paul and many other fellow physics students – have a great time and success in your studies
  • Rudi and Inge Vasek, they have been friends ever since I was a little boy and covered at least all my internet costs since the beginning of my tour – Inge prepares the best “Schwäbisch” food!
• People I met and know
  • Rob Thomson who has cycled a similar route and inspired me a lot
  • Olly Powell, the chief disorganizer of the great Beijing to Paris 2007 Carfree event
  • David Nestle and team from the ISET e.V. institute – I got many worthy insights during the time in Kassel
  • the very companionable team of the deZem GmbH in Berlin (Georg, Hanno, Sebastian)
  • Carl Georg Rasmussen, the inventor and builder of the Leitra velomobil, and Jürgen Eick
    
  • Simon, Maxi and Mathias for the great days we shared in Norway
  • Geir Ellingsen and the team and people of the VikingTour – one of the most beautiful cycling tours in the world!
  • Arne and Martin who I cycled with at the Viking Tour
  • many Norwegians who can’t wait to donate their maps to poor unoriented cyclists and who have often welcomed us warm-heartedly
  • Ulrich Lamm and other cyclists who have made radweit.de possible
• Important Organizations (and the people behind them)
  • Free Software Foundation
  • Robert Jungk Library
  • NABU, BUND, Greenpeace and all environmental organizations for raising awareness
  • the many open source developers and maintainers of countless projects (Linux kernel, Debian, Gentoo, (k)ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, Firefox, Thunderbird, gaim, …)
  • the developers of WordPress (core, themes, plugins)
  • the phenomenal team of WorldChanging.org
  • FoeBuD e.V. and the socially engaged people of the CCC e.V. for their great work in the area of civil rights
  • CouchSurfing.com project and the astounding community behind it
  • the great SomaFM.com internet radio station – spreading love and peace through music!
  • English as a second language podcast – the best English lessons ever!

Hey everybody,

it’s not listed in my Technical->Hardware section yet, but pictures it can take, see:

Some call it “pedalers’ paradise”, but to get that you have to leave the main roads! One big question when cycling in New Zealand is, how to divide the time between the two countries and when you do not have a lot, whether to visit the North Island at all.
I had 2.5 months, so I decided the first 1.5 months exploring the South Island and the one month left in the north.

There are two small books, “pedalers’ paradise”, one for the north and one for the south. I got both of them from my friend Olly in Adelaide, the chief desorganizer of the Beijing to Paris 2007 Carfree Rally, born in Kiwi country. They are written in a very basic way but contain all the necessary information and are easily obtainable in book and map shops throughout New Zealand as I have seen while I was there. Additionally there is a good book about mountain biking in New Zealand which I had bought a copy of, nice for the occasional off-road ride and for contacting land-owners who’s country you’ll be crossing.

The traffic in New Zealand can be deadly as I’ve heard several times … a lot of cyclists are dying on the roads every year, so try to avoid traffic, maybe wear a reflector west and some cyclists even prefer to ride with a little mirror attached to their helmet so they can keep an eye on the traffic from behind and get off the road in emergencies. My main strategy was to avoid the busy streets as much as possible and it was fine.
So equipped with these information you can set out to explore the two islands and enjoy the wonderful countryside of New Zealand. Camp on the DoC (Department of Conservation) camp sites, they are cheap and can be found in many places. Wild camping was possible for me as I had been traveling in a small, green tent, but there’s a lot of barb wire and sometimes it’s quite tricky to find a campsite. Whenever I’ve asked a farmer or a local they were extremely friendly and nobody ever said “no” when I asked to camp on one of their fields – instead they invited me in to sleep in their guest bed!

Going off-road into the gravel you often find DoC huts which I’ve only used once, but which can be a great thing after a long and cold day on a bike. They work with a ticket system where you have to buy the tickets before or get a season pass if you intend to stay more often (it’s more economic when staying more than 10 times as I’ve been told).
The main season, New Zealand summer, can be very crowded with cyclists, but I somehow arrived too late for that and didn’t get to see the cyclist masses others have told me from. Instead the weather got a bit worse in places, but I didn’t even get any of the 14 000 mm rain on the West Coast of the South Island.
The East Cape on the North Island was also a remarkably nice ride with very little traffic, and Rotorua is definitely the MTB el Dorado of New Zealand, you can hire bikes there.

After a dry night under a farmer’s roof I set out into the rain. I had to reach Joigny sur Meuse today because in Brussels I’ve met Claude and his wife and we agreed on a meeting on May 7th in the evening.

I think I cycled nearly the whole time on a road forbidden for cyclists – but nobody cared, not even the police! At the middle of the day I took my headlights and put it on the bike pointing to the back. After that all cars overtook me with a great distance – great! (secret tip for touring cyclists
The GPS gave me the shortest way but didn’t care for the hight meters. When I left the N51 I got stuck in the Ardennes and at the end of the day I had made 1400 meters in hight!

After 126km I arrived at Claude’s home at 21:30 and we had a French dinner prepared by his wife and daughter – delicious!
The Ardennes area has been really wonderful nearly not traffic, much green everywhere and perfect for mountainbiking. Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to take pictures due to the enduring rain and the tight schedule.

This got to get a great day! All my devices were charged and I started with a 30km ride on a plane cycling path going through a beautiful “flatscape” – everything appeared in a beautiful green and even the rain didn’t matter because it was warm rain! You have to check this cycling path out if you come to the region – absolutely recommended

! So I arrived in Bordeaux really fast and even the headwinds had slowed down a bit!
In Bordeaux I met a guy who’s organizing Critical Mass bicycle rides there and we had a short chat – I wanted to go on the internet but it was raining and that’s not perfect for the laptop.

So I left Bordeaux, the city with many bicyclists, and there were only 60km left to today’s goal, the Atlantic! I was expecting some hills because I’ve always had them until now but there were none! So I arrived in a big tourist town within 2 hours and cruised a bit through the city center and suburbs until I found a place to sleep near a dune when the camping centers had stopped after a few kilometers.
It’s fantastic to be at the ocean! Hearing the waves in the night and smelling the salt in the air – that’s the feeling of freedom man!
I ate for nearly 10€ (supermarket) today! The baguette, chocolate crossaints, apples, chocolate pudding, musli, milk was gone in no time! I have to take care not to _increase_ my wight too much on the trip
166km with a 18,3km/h average and about 600 hight meters.