Long and slow morning, start again at 9h30 and bike non stop until 13h00. For some reason, my legs felt the same as yesterday before stopping, everything is slow, I move at 19kmh average, and can’t find energy. I am waiting for any kind of store on the way there, but everything is closed, a monday morning, at the beach, in september… I pray for a supermarket, and finally arrive to one and get:
– a jar of peanut butter, 2 vanilla yogurts
– whole wheat pasta + pesto
– mars bars and various other bars
I wait for a nice park, and stop for a big break, I eat, nap and try to reset the day. This is also when I installed the solar pannel on the back of the bike (Testing has been conducted, it holds).
A few km km after restarting, I meet Fabian and we are going to the same city, so we join forces for the last 60km, It is so much easier to push in a group, so we did 2×30 km at 23kmh average. And had a nice picknic as a break.
Fabian is also from Germany, biking alone, and doing a tour of Germany. He lives in Berlin, but is from another part of Germany (next to Frankfurt) and works in media pedagogy and music. He is also a great dancer.
We talked a lot about sustainbility, and we have to calculate the cost of fuel, human on bicycle vs car:
Human burn 30kcal per km on the bike. For an 100km day – approximately 3000 kcal burned.
So I usually burn 2500kcal just by existing, but in the car too, so it cancels out. But to gain the extra 3000kcal I have to double my meals. Let’s calculate the price for the car.
The average fuel consumption for a car in italy is 5.7 liters per 100km. In this article you can find very useful information about fuel consumption in Italy (Read more). And fuel prices are around 1.80 Eur in Italy. So 5.7×1.80=10.26 Eur
Let’s check for humans:
From this, it says that I burn 1759kcal a day from just living and doing my “basal metabolic rate”. But this also happens in the car so we don’t care. We only care about the 3000kcal, which I think currently costs me 15 Eur on average everyday (big standard deviation). It could definitelybe cheaper, but I love Italian food too much…
There is no real conclusion, in car you can move multiple people, heavy and large things, and on the bicycle you are quite limited. The car is a great invention, like planes or train, but we have to understand them as tools, not commodities, use the appropriate one when needed.
When going somewhere, think about the best tool to get there, is a 10 min car ride alone with an empty trunk the best way to get there? Is going to the next town for the day not better by train, or bike if they have bike lanes between the cities? We just have to be grateful of the tools we have created to make our lives better.
After checking in, we have a wonderful swim in the sea, then shower, laundry, tent set up and we go look for pizza. We end up eating together 4 big pizzas, 2 panacotta + drinking 2.33 L of beer. A good night, now time to sleep.