No time

The most surprising thing about active travel to me is the lack of time. You would think, or at least I always expect, to have all the time in the world to do what ever you want. And of course that is true. You can decide to do just that. In our case that means we deciced to travel by bike and with a tent.

Here the fun starts. You need to pack your tent and all your belongings every morning. Roll you matress, your liner, your sleeping bag, your kissen. Then pack everything in as small a bag you can. Break down the tent, roll it up and pack it away as well. Then you have to attach all your gear to your bike (which with our Ortlieb paniers is just a matter of clicking them into place, but still). And somewhere in that whole process you need to do break fast, go to the rest room and brush your teeth.

Then you have to decide on the route. Bike all day, or most of the day. See lots of things. Have lots of time to think and wonder about life, but no means of doing anything with those thoughts other then trying to remember those well formed sentences for writing down later. You have to find some shop to do groceries. Find a camp site. Then unpack everything. Set up you tent. Prepare your air matress, your liner, your kissen, your sleeping back. Make dinner. Take a shower if it is available and clean enough to use. And all of a sudden the day is gone. Some nice memories are made. But all the things you thought you had time for like drawing or writing or having long talks with your partner or with interesting people you meet along the routes, for all of those there is only a limited amount of time. You have to plan to write your memories down. You have to plan to take time off and relax. Active travel is hard work. But hard work in an active way of biking up a hill and getting somewhere.

I do want to try and capture more of those brilliant thoughts that come up along the rides though. So I will plan some time from now on. Lets see how well my planning will be.