Cycling the 360°

We thought that with the scale of this challenging journey we should to draw the attention to some of the things we think it’s important.

We’d like to highlight 3 topics that are pinned to our flag on trip and we’d like to send these messages to more people.  These are:

Family

We’ll go on our honeymoon in the year of the family. Both of us have been brought up in a decent family with good moral and we are very greatful for our parents, grandparents. Unfortunately not everyone’s like this, because many people don’t think about how much the family determines the future of the children, the next generation. A good family is the basis of everything. We’d like to advertise this with our journey.

Bicycle

This shouldn’t be over explained. Those who have been caught by the love of cycling know exactly why we are going on this tour, why we share and publish our experiences on this website. Those who don’t understand why we don’t fly or take a bus or train should have a look into these webpages, then it will be clear that cycling is good and hopefully she/he would have the urge to hop on the bike and ride a smaller/bigger distance, if not elsewhere then to the market or to work instead thaking the public transport or the car.

Discovering the World on a bicycle is fantastic, both for a child or an adult. Most of us forget this by the time we gorw up. We forget to enjoy the moment, live for today and have an honest laugh, real joy. Cycling provides this prefectly – even if  we have to sweat for it, but that’s the beauty in it.

Sustainability

Everyone starts to feel there’s something isn’t right, something is going to happen in our lives, maybe in the not so far future, because our society is mainly oil based, polluting and unsustainable. Here are a few concerning facts:

Firstly because there are limited amount of fossil fuels can be found on our planet so the cost of mining/drilling grows constantly, and in contrast with this the demand keeps growing because there are more and more people with even more needs and the developing countries try to follow the American model of consumer society. We could just say “great, if we ran out of the fossil fuels we could shift towards the renewables faster”. BUT the world today has estabilished itself so much for this cheap, easy to store and unlimited (?! :o) source of energy, that it won’t be easy to jump of this bandwagon. Think about the most basic thing, the food production. Everything we eat today is based on oil: The land where it’s being grown is fertilized with oil based materials, plowed, harvested by diesel fuelled machines, and that might travel few mor 1000 kms to our plate – you won’t guess: on trucks, trains and planes. And we haven’t consumed a single gramm meat, for its the production multiply the previous by 10, because the poor animal has to eat and drink for years, till it’s big enough to be slaughtered.

Of course we don’t have to fall into despair, humans are clever for a reason, there are solutions: commute by bicycle, look after your consumption (at home: water, gas, electricity), don’t buy many unnecessary items, and spread these thoughts. But maybe – it might sound difficult – the best we can do, if we start producing food at home in our garden. There’s something better: they invented the food producing forest garden! If you leave the usual mindsets and do some research, you realize that on a equal size land with lot less work and energy it’s possible to produce the same or more amount of food if you don’t have a grain based monoculture each year, but you grow several different plant, trees, bushes, etc. together in harmony with each other, so at the end of the day you won’t have to look after them, just have to harvest them.
The nature figured this out in a few millons of years and how much we want to change it, it won’t work; it’s simplier to follow the rules of nature rather than change them. The principle should be followed is: permaculture.

We have another concern about the fossil-based fuels; those microorganisms, which have become energy sources, tied a huge quantity of carbon over millions of years, and by releasing it into the ecosystem in a couple of hundred years will result the destruction of our home, the Earth. Endangering several million species, incuding ourselves on the top of the food chain. The shrinking biodiversity, climate change, water level growth, junk-islands on the oceans… There are many problems, but we CAN change, it all depends on us. There are a few great movies on the internet, they are easy to understand and most of them can be downloaded legally. Maybe you will think about the time spent on watching these films more useful, than any made in Hollywood nightmare. Don’t ignore the facts, don’t let yourself  in the dark and be told stupid things about todays biggest problem, it might be our generation who can make a change, this planet will be our heritage for our descendants, and it’s upon us whether we leave a pile of junk or a beautiful, livable planet.

We have only ideas about the solutions for these problems, and how our world will look like, and we only hope this transition won’t be too painful, but this depends on its start. We have some ideas about the place where we have to start: it won’t be started from the top. The people who are on top of all these things don’t have any interest changing this system to a sustainable life. This chainreaction should start in the head of the people. So have a look, read it through, think about the contents of the Green zone, then tell other people too and try to live a more sustainable life than before.

For starters… hop on your bicycle! :)