Final Thoughts

One of the highlights of this trip has probably been to observe how people reacted when seeing our solar powered bikes for the first time. When we would overtake fellow touring cyclists (mostly on a hill due to all that heavy gear) you could observe the face expression from “what is that” to “ah, these are apparently solar panels” to “damn, I wish right now I would also have that assistance to go up this hill faster”.
A funny reaction was sometimes triggered by small children as they would literally drop their chin and stare at you with an open mouth like if you are from another planet.

Cars sometimes would occasionally stop and take a picture or show a thumps up while overtaking.
Of course we passed some people who were simply not impressed or didn’t even find it strange that a vehicle as long as a car, but pulled by a bicycle just went past them. But in general, the responses were overwhelmingly positive. In total only four times a middle finger was pointed towards us in contrasts to an uncountable amount of cheering words or positive signs more or less every day. This actually helped more than I thought and cheered us up from time to time when moral was a bit low.

We have had people assuming that we are anti-capitalists or some praising us that this way of travel is the future of sustainable travel. We are of course neither hardcore anti-capitalists nor was our plan to cycle around the world sustainable in any way. We do travel by bike, use the sun and live in a tent most of the time. Never the less, flying three times across the ocean with all the extra shipment completely ruined our climate footprint.

The question number one we got was, why are we doing it?
If you have seen the movie Forest Gump then the phrase “because I just felt like running” is fairly fitting, we just needed a bit more preparation. In addition it was a super cool project to pursuit as it is combining sport, technology and your own adventure.
Maybe from another perspective: In a time were it seems like the majority of students have a fundamental crisis when finishing studying, this might have been my way of dealing with it.

The second most asked question was, what project do we plan to do after?
So far nothing. We are now very happy to live in houses again. But who knows maybe in a few years when we only remember the good parts we go back and do the parts we skipped.

Last but no least, if anyone also wants to build a solar powered bicycle we are very happy to consult on how (not) to build one. Feel free to reach out!