Tasks

ideas:

a description of the tasks, also good to print in the booklet missing till now:

the money person, facilitating the circle

please go through the texts and try to find more precise formulations and shorten it a bit

a general text about the ideas of everyone taking tasks but not only the task person is responisble to make them happen and everyone should help everyone would be a good extension

text:

breakfast and lunch or dinner cleanup

People HAVE TO BE MADE AWARE about how to use food! Too much food gets spilled, this attracts wasps and other animals, this results in people getting stung more often than necessary. Empty jars and jars that are not being used should be closed!

This is something that you as a Cleanup crew have to try to solve. BE CREATIVE!

Ask people friendly, tell in the morning circle after breakfast that you refuse to clean after such pigs, serve people jars filled with bees and confront them with the problem they are causing themselves. The cleaner you get the people to be the easier cleanup task gets done. (and thats how it should be, right?)

Breakfast and Lunch Cleanup

After Breakfast, the crew doesn’t really clean up yet because the lunch will be made soon after. They will put the lids onto the jars to prevent the insects from coming. They will also clean most of the spilled jam and other sweet stuff and can already clean empty packages.

After the morning circle the lunch will be prepared and then you will clean everything, tables, floor, Biketour cutlery, pots used for tea and porridge (when empty). Everything used for breakfast and lunch. You will clean all jars and separate all possible waste on the garbage collection point with the beautiful signs, which are in the kitchen. It is also your task to dispose the garbage in a sound way.

Dinner Cleanup

When everybody ate:

• The dinner cleanup team will clean everything used for dinner.
• RECYCLE TO THE MAX!
• The dinner cleanup team will inform the Break

PREPARING BREAKFAST AND LUNCH or DINNER

These tasks are carried out in a small group and needs some preparation.

If you volunteered in the morning circle

• to prepare breakfast means tomorrow’s breakfast.
• dinner means today.

There are a few things that seem to be hidden rules to a successful Biketour food preparation. Firstly, take your responsibility seriously. If you have promised to do something, do it. There are 40 people's meals depending on this...

How to get the food

• First of all: you look in the Biketour booklet if there are no addresses for stores or farmers. Maybe the Coordinators already managed to arrange some discount or free food.
  • If yes: perfect, you will have an easy job.
  • If no: YEEHAA, you are going to have a hell of an adventure:)

• old info from 2004
  • This year we have a new wish: we want to make a how-to-life-4-free guide (Suggested change to: We would like to make as much use of other people's wasted food as possible)(in western european cities - in eastern europe it is not so easy and if you find free food you should think of whether there might be someone who needs it better than biketour).

Once in the "shopping zone" you go out and see what wasted food you can get and then you will think with your crew about what the hell you are going to cook with that. Don’t be scared be creative! We ask every breakfast, lunch and dinner team to write a report of their quest for wasted food.

• The best is to leave early with a group: all food people together and the trailer people.
  • You really need trailer people to carry your food, so you could make an appointment to meet up but this often results in a lot of waiting so it is much better to ride together. And make sure the person(s) with the pot clearly know that they have a special responsibility to turn up at the sleeping place on time, otherwise the cooking cannot start.

• You see on the map in what place we will stay that evening and try to predict where you can find stores or farmers. Think carefully about opening times. Don't assume you can get to the sleeping place and then buy food, this will result in either a very late dinner or no dinner at all.

• You take off and have a normal cycling day with all the same fun and breaks, but because you left early you can make sure to be in time in the places where you will look for food!

• You might find locals selling home made products along the way. It is VERY OK to support these small businesses (they suffer a lot from the big corporations). So please do so if we have the money to spend.

• You also might encounter wild fruit trees and herbs for tea, don’t hesitate to stop for a while, eat some and than collect a whole lot for the group so we don’t have to buy it. (Self supporting.)

• You might want to find:
  1. Organic stores and farmers: they are often friendly and helpful.
     • (If you think it is appropriate to ask for food donations), Wait till a moment when there are no or not so many customers in the store and than go in and tell your creative story about who we are and what we stand for or you can give them a special "Food4Free" Flyer and hope for the best, practice a song, or maybe even put up a small theater play in case you don’t speak the language that fluently:) (Talk about strategies with your group)
  2. It is also a good idea for the Breakfast and Lunch crew to search Bakeries and try to secure some free bread for tomorrow in the same way as described above.
     • Containers from big corporations (this is nothing strange or new, it is called dumpster diving): they are often filled with stuff that is still perfectly useful, only the consumer society Brainwashed most of us and now we think that a small spot on an apple is going to kill us. Just find the containers somewhere around the shops, they might be hidden away behind a fence or even locked. If you can get to the container, just give it your best try (one person might want to check out if there is something to get) If somebody tells you to go away or the containers are locked, ask for the chief and do your Biketour thing.

• Do you think there are more ways to get food for free (maybe it is better to not steal food for 50 people) please demonstrate them on the Biketour and write a nice, funny, adventurous report about it so we can share this information with the world.

GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN!

Now the dinner crew has to decide if they have enough food, if they want to search for more free food or if they want to buy the remaining food.

• The breakfast and lunch crew doesn't have to buy anything yet (only if we are going to sleep in the middle of nowhere and it would be to far to cycle in the morning) but has ideally established some good contacts in town. (You can offer friendly people to come and have a look at our camp).

How to cook the food

When the dinner crew enters the camp:

1. A spontaneous volunteer should have already made a fire.
2. They go to the fireplace with the trailers and start to cook.
3. They will basically be the first who will produce waste, so they are expected to create a waste collection point, somewhere close to the fire (not to close but good visible, clean and structured on a central point.)
4. More spontaneous volunteers help to chop up vegetables (Hint for silent people: to volunteer spontaneously is a good way to mix with the group, it is highly appreciated within a community)
5. Dinner crew calls for food and then counts the people or asks if someone is missing (we have to save food for everybody who isn't there yet)
6. Explanation of how much from everything you get
7. The dinner crew will start serving.
8. The dinner crew writes down how many kilos or pieces of whatever was needed to feed what number of people and if it was enough.

after dinner

When everybody ate (in a circle where every body is able to sit in and is on the same distance from the fire):

1. The dinner cleanup team will clean everything used for dinner.
2. The dinner cleanup team will inform the Breakfast and lunch crew about the leftovers, they have to try to find a way to deal with the leftovers. We don’t like to throw things away and especially no food! Often you get tasteful bread spread if you throw all old food together and MASH it. You can optimize the taste of the spread with a bit of salt. The making of the spread can be best done in the evening already so more people can help with making it tasteful.
   • (WRITE DOWN WHAT KIND OF FOOD YOU MANAGED TO TURN INTO A NICE SPREAD AND HOW! This is essential information for the rest of Biketour's existence)
3. Than the Breakfast and Lunch crew has to get the trailers, and the trailer attachments and lock them to their bikes. It is not nice to have to wake up people too early in the morning.

breakfast - lunch - dinner

morning

In the morning the Breakfast and Lunch crew has to:

1. Wake up first,
2. Maybe restart the fire for tea,
3. See what things were left over from yesterday's breakfast and decide what you need to buy. (People like to eat porridge or muesli in the morning. Learn from the list of last breakfast how much milk, bread, spread, vegetables and fruit you need to buy.)
4. Buy it healthy and cheap.
5. The crew has to write down how many breads they bought, how many liters of milk, how much of everything and add this to the Breakfast and Lunch paper.
6. Make sure the breakfast is in time.
7. Make sure the breakfast is not being started less than 20 minutes after wakeup call.

other ideas

The task of taking care about food is clearly calling for your responsibility.

When you are ignorant, the whole group will eat unhealthy

Try to make healthy food that will give us the power to cycle.

And please, think about vegans, they need more attention paid to proteins and calcium than other people. If you are not sure what to get, ask them.

Fresh flower salads?

call for the circle

• This is a task, which is necessary when the group doesn't feel the importance of circles.

• Ideally, the morning circles will take a bit longer in the beginning from the Biketour. When everybody participates from the beginning and tells her or his opinion about the discussed issues to work out a common code, there will not be so long morning circles and more time to talk about nice things.

• Experience teaches that people who have the nice habit to come to the morning circle will automatically start to call for a morning circle. The call works the best if you ask the people personally and very friendly, but this can easily forgotten when you have to ask the same people, personally everyday.

• The sooner that people get to the circle, the faster it is over.

camp cleanup

u walk somewhere on the campground and you see some dirt on the ground; you feel an urge to pick this up.

• • The same when you break down your tent, or just pack your things. When there is some waste lying in front of your feet,even if it looks like it is laying there already for a long time, just make your decision, live the perfect example, bend over and pick it up!
  • Take a hike to the Biketour recycling site and that’s that.

• Normally the cleanup person gets help from the last people.

• After the camp is cleaned and the waste is disposed of in a sound way, the cleanup person gets to the owner and proudly shows Biketour respect for the place, by leaving it cleaner than we found it.

sign maker

Every day a main route is discussed.

• The Sign maker mainly leaves in the front, follows this route and makes signs mainly through cities and on crucial points.
  • Basically, you don’t make a sign if you go straight, if you follow the main road or if there is a bike trail sign that you are following.
  • You make a sign when make a turn, when you change the surface of a road, in case of any difficulties.

• The sign maker can also indicate special points of interest like "Bà Ice Cream" is a appreciated sign.
  • The sign maker can be asked to use creativity to make a sign.
    • Every sign maker is collecting bricks to draw arrows on the street but sometimes you don’t have a brick anymore or you are on a sand road. Use you imagination than.
    • I saw beautiful arrows made from branches, leaves, grass, stones and even Cardboard attached to streetlights.
  • But consider that the point of making signs is that they are seen by other participants.
    • It's tricky to rely on signs and not being able to find any because either the cars or the rain wipe them out...

• When close to the accommodation, you might want to draw more arrows and some arrows under streetlights so that people who have to cycle in the dark have a bigger chance of seeing them. Sometimes the sign maker indicates more routes to the accommodation.

trailors

• This is a task for everyone
  • If you think the trailer will be too heavy, you can try to ask the other trailer carriers to help you by taking some of your trailer stuff on theirs
  • Usually the trailer fits in any bike, but you can check what your special one needs for carrying this very important BT tool!

• If you chose to take the trailer you have to leave early with the food group.
  • You have the responsibility to carry the pots and will have to carry some food in them after the food crew went to shop with you.

• After you arrive at the camp, you will put the trailer next to the fireplace and give the trailer attachment to the breakfast crew so that they can use the trailer in the morning.

• When you are going to take the trailer next day
  • You should talk with the breakfast cleanup crew to make sure that they will have the pots and other stuff ready so that you can leave at your desired time.
  • Make sure that you don't forget stuff at the camp site, as it will be very difficult for non-trailer people to take it!

In the history of Biketour it happened that people with a trailer ended up somewhere alone in the rain and on slippery roads in the mountains and were almost not able to continue. We ask everybody to take care about the people who take the trailers.

wakeup call

I saw people think: "ah, that is a nice task for me, that is easy!"

A wake up call is a task that seems very easy.

Like every task, you could choose to get it over with fast as possible.

In that case you would start to scream "WAKE UP!!" at the appointed time for the wake up call and everybody will "hate" you, or at least your lack of creativity, for the rest of their lives.

Talking about creativity, I know people who are loved because of their creative Wake up calls. (I recall a magical morning, in Croatia, Pula, where we were on the EYFA winter meeting. Uli from Germany and Andre from Portugal were sitting in stereo position beside me softly producing rhythmic sounds with their voices, allowing me to slowly open my eyes.

The gentile contrast between the sweet, warm woman’s voice on the left and the deep, soft, men’s voice on the right made the step from dreaming into the real world nicer than it has ever been. "Ahhh, that’s a nice way to wake up on a sunny morning, Thank you!" I told my lovely alarm clock and jumped out of my sleeping bag. Once standing I was really surprised to find that the sun was hiding behind a big pack of clouds. These two angels went from person to person and sang pure love into our ears until all eyes had finally opened.

This is a perfect example of the power you take into your hands by volunteering for the wake up call and I hope everybody will keep this in mind! You take the power of waking people up with a good or a bad mood! I am sure you can think about a thousand irritating ways to wake up. The challenge here lays in your ability to create a magically loving atmosphere in which people feel like they want to wake up.

On 2004 winter meeting there was a kind of "competition" of who could wake up in the nicest way. Not to be the best, no. Everybody can win this competition for her- or himself, simply by the reward of a group full of smiling, energetic people, ready to start another beautiful day.

Ideas to get your creativity started:

• Singing;
• Massaging ones head;
• Guitar or other musical instrument;
• Telling people softly about the beautiful day that has already started;
• Reggae music, etc

volunteering

This seems to be the most difficult and time consuming task...

its like Biketour:

Just DO IT!