Booklet/A Typical Day on the Biketour

Cycling day

The first people to get up are the people preparing breakfast. Often there is a fixed time when breakfast should be ready. The breakfast team get out the food that has been stored animal- and rainproof the evening before and maybe make a fire in the rocket-stove to make some tea, coffee, or cooked porridge. Sometimes, the breakfast team has already soaked some oats the night before to make cold porridge.

When breakfast is done, the breakfast team or the wake-up person walks around playing some music and trying to wake people up, without being too annoying. People get up and start having breakfast.

If lunch hasn’t been prepared together with dinner the night before already, the Lunch team start cooking now.

The scouts make an announcement of the route and people who don’t want to get lost write down the names of the villages that we pass. In a round, everyone says what their needs are for the day, if they would like to cycle alone, in a group, fast or slow, taking long breaks on the way or cycling without stops.

When breakfast is eaten and lunch is cooked, everyone fills their tupper wares, and the cleaning team (with everyone’s support) cleans up the pots and starts to pack the trailers. If there are leftovers (or some people are still sleeping), they are moved to a big tupper-ware that is taken by the late-risers or the tail. The scouts don’t need to help cleaning, they will get going as soon as possible.

While the scouts are already cycling and marking the route with arrows on the street, people slowly pack their stuff and get ready to cycle. People leave in different groups at different times, depending what they feel like. At some point one or two hours after the scouts, the tail will announce to leave soon, make a last walk around the camp to make sure nothing is left behind, and then leaves together with the last people.

On the way, lots of things will happen. Some people will take detours or short-cuts, some will catch up with the scouts and take a lunch break to give them some time, some will go to a café to use the internet, some will go for a swim in a lake, some will cycle alone and then meet some people on the side of the road having lunch and join them, some will buy or dumpster-dive some food for dinner, some will have a puncture and wait for someone to explain to them how to fix it, and some will get lost and need to call the scouts to find the way.

When there is no fixed sleeping place for the night, the scouts will call the tail once they have cycled a fair distance. If the tail is not far behind, maybe they will go a bit further. Then they will probably split up to search for a good wild-camping spot. Once they have found it, they mark the route and the last drinking water source before the camp and start collecting fire wood.

After a while, people will start arriving, and once the trailers with the rocket stoves are there, someone will start making a fire. The cooking team will start chopping vegetables and whoever feels like it helps them, while others are pitching their tents, going for a swim in the nearest lake, or simply recover from a long cycling day.

When everyone has arrived and it’s not too late, maybe a circle will happen to make decisions about the tour and the upcoming days while chopping vegetables.

When everyone has had dinner, the cleaning team and everyone who feels like it will clean up the pots and cover all the food and equipment so that no animals will eat it in the night and it will not get wet in case it rains. Some people will still hang out together until late, others will already go to sleep.

Rest day

The daily structure on rest days is a bit different than on cycling days: We get up later, we don’t have to pack lunch in the morning but can prepare it in the afternoon, we don’t need scouts and trailers, and obviously we don’t cycle.

During the day there can be different activities, depending on where we are. On some days we decide not to have any communal activities, and people just chill out, or visit the closest city or a lake or other natural place. In the cities, there are often different projects to visit, so we arrange meetings with them. Sometimes we host our own events, such as info presentations or bike-fixing sessions. We might join a protest or other political action or make our own. When we are staying at projects on the country-side, we often do some physical work for them, such as helping to build a house or clearing up a space. When there is time, we do workshops where members of our group can share their skills and knowledge, or we discuss about the general values of the tour or about the upcoming days and weeks in a circle.