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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/solarpunk-regenerative-travel-ecofriendly-bicycles/>
"Claire and Will Stedden’s honeymoon looked a little different than most
people’s. When they got married in 2017, they planned a celebratory trip to New
Zealand, but then Claire, a science writer, made an alarming discovery: “The
CO2 emissions of one flight to New Zealand are almost 1.5 times more than the
emissions that are considered sustainable for one person for an entire year,”
she explains. “We couldn’t feel good about doing that, so we asked, what else
can we do?”
After several years of research and preparations, the Steddens went on a
year-long bicycle trip in 2021 from their then-home in Mendocino up the Oregon
coast to the Columbia River Gorge, Mount Rainier and Olympic National Park in
Washington before bicycling down to Southern California. There, they rolled
their bikes onto a train to Tucson, Arizona, biked to New Mexico and explored
the areas around Albuquerque and Santa Fe before taking another train to
Madison, Wisconsin, where they now live.
Both Steddens, now 35 years old, call the trip “absolutely life-changing.”
Will, a data scientist, reminisces, “I still remember bicycling into a redwood
forest. When you’re in a car, you see everything through a window like on TV,
but when you’re riding, you’re embedded in your environment; you become part of
nature.”
Claire Stedden mainly raves about their encounters with people. “You experience
humanity very differently, all this kindness of strangers, people wanting to
help you and being excited about what you do.” Their eye-catching setup — a
trailer covered by solar panels that power their e-bikes, which are loaded with
camping gear — naturally elicits questions from locals and other bikers. They
had built their own solar e-bikes simply by watching YouTube videos, but ended
up breaking one bike on their 5,000 mile journey.
The couple became so enthusiastic about bike trips that in 2022, they started
Solarpunk Travel, a free online community for bicycle enthusiasts who want to
travel ecologically while also giving back to the community. “People always ask
us how we do it, how we built the solar e-bikes, and what the best routes are,”
Will Stedden explains. “So we started putting information online and inviting
others to do the same.”"
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
