I was in a morning train, mantras of Snatam Kaur in my ears. Then a load of children came in. It made my meditation perfect, mixed with all those lovely, lively voices, as a choir of angels.
A day before I had read on the Internet an interview with a woman who had a near dead experience, which gave her a glimpse of how the world works. She said that if people have a positive energy around them, people will react on that positively.
I’d say that is why me and many people love children.
Since I have no participants for this ride, I am canceling it. Somehow this project needs to grow. I will focus on weekends during the year.
I am in Albania right now and started writing a book on self acceptance. It is quite exciting doing this.
The book will have some philosophies on how one can look at life. In the second part there will be some suggestions and practices. You will not be surprised that silence takes a great part in those practices.
After the ecotopia biketour 20th anniversary reunion party 31th of August in Cologne, I will start cycling from Cologne at the first of September. We will cyle to the R1 European cycle route, which will take us to Berlin. Be welcome to join in at a later stage. I expect to arrive in Berlin two weeks later.
You can see some images that I took along the R1 in autumn 2007 at my Blurb book, in the second chapter.
I am in Albania, after having cycled through Croatia, Bosnia and Monte Negro. It was one of the hottest, steepest and most beautiful summer trips I ever did. This is one of the many dear moments: visiting a Serb community in a half destroyed village in Bosnia.
The Durmitor mountains in northern Monte Negro was one of the nature highlights of the trip. When I arrived at a pass road of 1908 meters, I wanted to stay there for the night. It was the highest and the most silent night of my life.
End of August we will cycle in silence from Cologne to Berlin.
At the end of Ecotopia Biketour I will start cycling to Berlin. That will be end of August. Some people from Biketour as well as some other people are interested to join. We will follow the R1 cycle route to Berlin.
Through www.warmshowers.org I have had many interesting guests. This month I organized hosting a 14 person bike touring group of musicians: The pleasant revolution. Pedal powered music!
The World naked bike ride was in Amsterdam, in which I could express my love for naked, bicycle and craziness.
It was a powerful experience, a lot more than I thought it would be. I can recommend anybody who is interested in this, to actually do it!
During the ride I realized how special it was to feel welcomed by most of the people we met, with smiles and funny remarks. I felt welcomed, even though we presented ourselves in a controversial way. This experience stretched something in me. It showed me that there is more possible than I superficially thought.
Click on the picture to see more.
The plan has changed. No more from Amsterdam to Jerusalem, now from nothing to nowhere. Silent bike ride is a concept and an experiment around cycling in silence. Jerusalem only distracts for the moment.
I adapted the text of the website, it is much shorter and more simple.
Since I don’t have participants yet, I want to be extremely flexible.
Unexpectedly Silent bike ride started last week. Not the trip to Jerusalem, but the bare fact of a group silently traveling together. Two Canadian girls wanted to try it with me and it was great. We cycled two days in the waterlands over Amsterdam.
I was impressed by the natural of it. Silence was coming and going in a spontaneous way. We did not set anything, it just all happened, which is better than I could imagine.
The shared silence was wonderful. Also we have been talking a lot, like in ‘normal’ life. I liked the talking more than normal, which was a funny discovery at the side, even though I sometimes thought: “Erik, could you please stop talking.” But silence would come again, without effort.
Here you find a gallery of this first ride.
