The Reality Check

I am currently sitting in my tent in Staßfurt, Germany, after riding another 100km day and I have to say this last day was my favorite day of the tour. I had fun start to finish riding today and my body felt great despite putting it through all the the rigors of the ‘pod rocketship’ yesterday.

An interesting thing occurred today, we crossed into Eastern Germany. Now to me this means very little, as I was very little when the Berlin wall came down so I didn’t even think there would be a difference, we are after all in the country. The difference however very much exists. The buildings are different, more humble, and most have had some renovations done to them in the last 20 years. The age demographic is different as well, apparently a lot of the youth have left for the west and it has left a strange void in the population.

Today when we arrived in the town we were asked to speak at a town meeting of sorts on our cause and the organization. About 12 of us and 12 Germans attempted to communicate through broken English and German as we both tried to teach each other about our world views. Once again I was struck by just how kind and caring everyone was and how they too were very concerned about the state of the world. Continually running into motivated people really does keep us going through some of the tough stretches.

I was also struck by the fact that the unemployment rate here is about 20% and that many don’t have enough money for electricity or extra water. It makes me appreciate our hosts and their generosity even more and I feel like that feeling will only continue to grow throughout the trip. This experience really has left me a bit shocked though because there is a very real possibility that some of the money we have raised for microcredit could be used by people right here. I understand that there are poor people back home that could use it as well but for some reason because it is Germany in my mind I just wasn’t expecting it. I never expected to be experiencing the anthropological ‘other’ syndrome here. It makes me feel very spoiled getting to ride through their country on a new bike with 20 other new friends for two months.

In many ways this experience makes me think that the honeymoon period of our trip is over. Our bodies finally seem to be getting used to the grind we are putting them through and now it is time to start getting around to some of our lofty goals that we started this trip with. We needed time to goof around and learn about each other as a team but now it is time to get back down to the task at had. I am certainly not saying we aren’t still going to have fun, but I feel like our fun will have greater social implications now. Luckily I feel like others are picking up on the same vibe as well as we had a vibrant 4 hour discussion on the death of protests and green-washing. Many of us were so absorbed in the conversation that we actually had to be told twice that dinner was ready!

So our first 8 days were fun, but now it’s time for some serious fun.