Winter Meeting 2016 Agenda

Friday Feb 19

coming to the meeting, talking about the agenda for the following days

Saturday Feb 20 + Sunday Feb 21

discussing, deciding - as many people as possible should come for this.

• Look at the feedback from the last years (Category:Evaluation) -> Ola
• Theme
• Rough route: Start in the north or in the south, go to Belarus or Russia? In how much detail an how to prepare the route? -> Michal
• General discussion about the Biketour values. What do they mean to us, is there anything that should be changed? Do we need any additional structures on the tour to avoid conflicts about the values like we had them in the last years? Do we need to be more specific about some of the values? For example about food, where to get it?
• Booklet: Come up with a list of chapters that should be in the booklet. Copy texts from old booklets.
• Daily routine, general schedule, how many rest days, how many kilometers per day, organising work and action days
• How to become a political activist tour again?
• How to organise in the future? Is the approach of an open group working or do we need coordinators again?
• Funding
• Artwork / How to advertise, how to get local people involved..>.Leo
• What will happen until the tour? Another meeting? Regular Skype meetings? Etc.

Monday Feb 22 + Tuesday Feb 23

doing practical work (e.g. finalizing flyers, deciding on the route, assessing equipment, etc.), creating a bike tour booklet – zine with information, how things are organised, how tasks are done, how the tour is prepared - can be a smaller team of people

Knowledge that should be prepared beforehand

• Visa situation in Belarus
• Visa situation in Russia (getting invited as a youth group?)
• How to pick the best route in the Baltic States? (Big roads: Trucks; Small roads: Bad gravel)

Friends accounts of travelling by bike in the Baltics:

I took an unconventional route in some places. I discovered Poland's bike routes are all made of sand, so avoid those. Lithuania was tricky--some sand, some deep gravel (just across the border from Poland), some busy highways (I took a horrible route into Klaipeda). It was also tough to get in and out of Vilnius--I recommend doing that early in the morning. In Latvia and Estonia, I was often on Eurovelo 11 & 13, which are well-developed--surprisingly, getting into and out of Riga was really easy! I ran into my usual trouble finding accommodation because the campgrounds were still closed, but I think they all open by June, and there are a lot along the coast (don't recall seeing any inland). The entire Baltic coast (that I saw) is gorgeous, but built-up enough that wild camping as a group will be difficult. I took a national road through the centre of Estonia and ran out of food. The distances were shorter in Latvia and Lithuania, but it could be hard to find supplies if you take a weird route.

I have route maps and more details in my journal: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/nomoretaxis You can also read other people's journals, just search for the country names in the Journals section.

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Lat/Lith/Est were all lovely to ride through though. Definitely no record of where I rode, but it was almost along the coast from Tallin down to Riga. Then I think I just went cross country on relatively major roads to Kaunas, before getting a bus to Warsaw where I was meeting someone. Sorry, not much to report - I mostly wanted to cover the ground rather than go anywhere particularly lovely. At least a bit of the coastal cycle track/road between Parnu and RIga had been washed away (a nightmare: I had to carry bike over a couple of miles of beach/rocks). Otherwise all was happy. I never had any problem finding a lovely wood to camp in, and getting food, etc, was always easy.