BIKING ACROSS CANADADADADA 2010

when rom and i decided to leave vancouver we figured we couldn't just bus back and miss the beauty of bc and the mountains which had remained so distant from us this past year, despite having been geographically so close(leaving the city turned out to be a luxurious time privilege). amd if we were going to struggle up gargantuan mountains, how could miss the sweet promise of flat prairie lands to follow?
i feel so incredibly humbled by vast wilderness of the west, especially these past few days thorugh the Okanagan and Kootenay Mountains with their high forested summits, rocky rivers,and deep lakes.

here is a quick description of our itinerary so far:

day 1- Vancouver to Deroche(just past Mission).
day 2-Deroche to Hope
day 3-Chillin' at Eddy & Lois' in Ho[e
day 4-Hope to Manning Park(16km KILLER HILL up the Hope slide. hardest ride i've ever done)
I get distracted by a huge moose(!) and Rom crashes into me and injures his shoulder :(
day 5-Manning Park to Princeton. we cave in to the temptation of a warm shower and dry bed at a super seedy motel.
day 6-Princeton to Keremeos. We take the beeautiful Old Hedley Rd which bypasses all the crazy hway traffic. And this mostly flat route has petrogyph rocks hidden along the way! so cool!
Wierdest thing happened when we were camping in a fruit-pickers desert squat: we find my awesome cousin Antoine hanging around a campfire! joie!
day 7-Keremeos to Osoyoos
day 8-Osoyoos to Midway( whoo! Half way thru BC at laaast!)
day 9-Midway to Grand Forks
day 10-Grand Forks to Christina Lake

oki-computer tiem at the library's up.....


Much love to all! HUGS AND KISSES

Croatia-Bosnia-Herzegovina

8 juillet 2008, sarajevo

je le cherchais subtilement, ce petit séisme.
J'avais besoin d'un matin exactement comme celui-ci. Besoin de me faire secouer hors de ma petite bulle de confort prodigue. Besoin de cesser de penser et vivre, maintenant, d'urgence. quelles valeurs, convictions? ..ici je remets en question ma définition de freegan, afin de retourner une façon de penser, une façon de vivre plus radicale. détachée de mes désirs superflus; ne plus avoir peur du temps, de l'imprévu.
On m'offre aujourd'hui une fois de plus une nouvelle route: une communauté Rainbow, un nouveau compagnon de vélo, qui sait? Je ne veux plus me recentrer sur mes moyens monnétaires, aussi minimes qu'ils le soit déjà. retrouver les plaisirs simples...

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dans le far-est de sarajevo, nous débouchons sur des terrains poussièreux aux ruines délapidées-des pierres dans la tête. les arbres épars exposent un "coeur" national à nu.je sens que je pourrais vivre des annees ici sans meme soulever le premier voile noir sur ce pays desuet. cachant chaos, charades et cicatrices crues, les traits tirés des visages soutirent une histoire muette inoubliable. Cette ville, coincée dans une vallée sans issu, vulnérable, ressemble un corps découpé de blessures. les plus profondes, portées aux bras d'une jeune génération revêtue de vieux conflits.

Arrivés aux petites heures du matin à Sarajevo(nous prîmes le train de nuit), je ne pouvais aucunement forcer un sens à mes attentes ou impressions. cette ville s'ouvrira à toi si tu es sensible à sa volonté. c'est dans cet esprit que nous rencontrons, avant même d'avoir quitté la gare centrale, un bon-vivant qui sera notre ami, notre guide intrépide lors de nos regards périscopiques sur cette fleur de guernica.
merci Zoran.

Back again....home???

Wakkkkkk

watching the patchwork quilt of colourful valleys , lakes and hills leave on the clearest day I can remember, the plane felt like a
toothpaste tube oozing with the artificial sterile-minty smell of sobriety, as lobster-red tourist families, business suits and boho travellers alike were squeezed in towards amerika.

canada. the sense of urgency to keep moving, keep seeing new things, keep questioning and challenging is almost painful.
I must come to terms with the truth that all travelling happens from within, and that if I choose so, I can keep travelling through my hometown as far as the stars, if I only keep an open eye and open heart to new things always.
this is reassuring, as i must now stop and nest awhile, the time to complete my documentary, and digest all the new amazing experiences of these last four months of wonder.

a few stats from my trip...though i never cared to be too accurate about these kinds of things:P


total km: approx. 6000(3400km till my odometer was stolen + at least 2600km)
countries visited:11
days biked:
average km/day: ..115k??
number of flats: ONE(and wut a sham-flat! an old man, thinking he should help a poor damsel in distress pump her tire, broke my tube valve, haha..)
craziest roads: tie between south-coastal Croatia and countryside of southern England(road rage, but no road shoulder!)
best bike roads: Netherlands, natürlisch( Vienna/Austria honourable mention...though
the "bike ampels" in germany win hands down(or bars up?): the green light is a smiley face, the yellow a star, the red a heart!
bäckereis overtaken: virtually every town was marked by the trace of hungry cyclists
best swim: Pilnitz lake near Dresden...Ich LIEBE NUDE BEACHES! woot.
best wild camping: on a cliff overlooking the Dalmatian coast, southern Croatia
worst attempted wild camping: behind a parking lot outside London
number of new adopted grandparents:15
best party: tiny town of weimar, germany(?!!&!?)
most random media appearance: singing the glory of sexy biking on Bosnian national television wearing a superwoman swimsuit & Dr. Seuss boxers(and bearing a huge banner which read "burn fat, not fuel" in bosnian)
new nickname: die kleine Maüslein(little mouse)
strangest accident: a car crash right before my wheels when a tiny dog ran into the street outside Sarajevo
best street art: Budapest!
busiest cycling path: The Donauradweg between Vienna, Austria and Passau, Germany. THE most popular bike-touring trail for retired couples in Europe

EUDEC EUTOPIA!!!

holy shit holy shit holy shit.
How is it that Canada is so freakin primitive??????
Spending the past week in this amazing opened-minded, united community of free schoolers has opened my eyes in ways I couldn't imagine.
This has been one intense week of learning, laughter,tears, and creative juiciness that has rendered me numb with overwhelming, and unabashedly inspired in superpychotic ways which make me tingly dancy and sing-song happy all together! which is why i am now spending my days in the EUDEC aftermath by the (many!)lakes of Leipzig, writing, reading, and simply digesting this treasurehold of knowledge that I have just acquired.
I am relishing the idea of getting back to the editing room asap and spend some sleepless nights collaging together a spiffyspectacular account of what democracy really CAN look like for everyone to see.

I have learned so much here- from important research tools, to the applications of "Clubhouse democracy" in public schools, to debates on life in post-democratic schools, have been inspired and befriended by such wonderful people from all over the world, and have truly felt like a respected and free student for the first time in such a community.

I look forward to giving a more detailed account of the full EUDEC programme later...
for now...

All hope, all heart:)

heart cooked brain budapest

So many wonderous things have happened since i last posted.
I decided that it was most important to live in the moment of my travels rather than be tied to this crazy net thing..
my voyage has taken a most unexpected twist since i crashed(literally) in Dresden after leaving the Berlin zoo.
its name is Sven.
we spent a week of pure magic together and have been biking together ever since.
It is a strange feeling to have a companion. Mostly because it is only now that I truly realize that I have never really been alone at all.
My independence was much greater than I imagined, and I have grown used to flying whimsically without borders.
Being with this darling boy is thus teaching me much about consideration and compromise in ways I had forgotten to be mindful of.
After a first initial week of stars and fireworks, being a joint entity proved to be quite challenging for me as we entered beautiful Prague and I was yearning to meet everyone who crossed my path, but felt obliged to my partner.
Perhaps this is indeed very selfish, as I have never felt so free as when I am a solitary cowgirl with nothing but her trusty wheely-steed...
Playing with space and personal limits is good, and now I am very happy to have such a lovely partner in crime to take on Eastern Europe.

Crossing into Eastern Europe is when I have finally begun to see a unique and humbling side of humanity. One that only keeps growing on you. like warm and fuzzy moss, that has taken yeeears to turn green and precious, this untamed land is full of hidden jewels..
i think my heart is still rolling up and down the backroads of czech republic, constantly bumping into old eccentric folk with talking eyes and uncanny hobbit-like characters, whose vivid gestures, kind and understanding smiles, and eagerness could tell more than fairytales of this wild and quirky country.

Our first night just outside Litomerice, CZ portrayed this perfectly. After a hundred km of biking, we found a nice orchard on the top of a hill where we decided to pitch our tent, assuming it was not private property. at the top, we stumbled upon a cute country house surrounded by a beautiful garden filled a huge family of animals- ducks, geese, cats, dogs, chickens, and in the nidst of them all, a tiny little woman tending zealously to her flowerbeds. Marie chattered and pointed and laughed as she tried to explain to us in her language that we were most welcome to camp where we liked, and that she had many special wonders to share with us in her home. After proudly introducing us to her host of newborn kittens, sprawled all over her kitchen, we sat in awed silence as she served us some tea and ferevntly insisted that we eat an entire cake she had baked. Then, she made a funny clucking sound and pulled me over to a dark room at the back of her cottage. She opened the door a crack and motioned to me with huge eyes to stay very quiet. we peeped inside and suddenly a graceful swallow swooped into a nest on the wall, the size of a big hornet's nest.
The stale yet spicy smell of this old higgelty-pigglety cottage, and Marie's seventy-four year-old animated agile hands I'll never forget.

Since CZ, following a few days of biking up mad demon hills, we had some sweeeeeeeet cruising descents all the way to Austria, where we then caught up with the infamous Donau(Danube) River bikeway, a popular route among european cyclo-tourists. This flat route led us straight to Bratislava, Slovakia. What I found most crazy at this time was the realization that we had biked through nearly THREE countries in ONE day(we intentionally stopped in Austria for the experience), whereas in big ol Canada, I couldn't even cycle Ottawa-Montreal in a day!
Despite a lovely ride into the city, the feeling in Bratislava was simply...wierd.
Both Sven and I had much difficulty trying to describe the feeling of detachment from this newly-industrialized city. One that seems so very lost within this dense open river valley, yet was intent on joining the EU movement. after a night of live graffiti art and fireworks, we were ready to move onwards to Hungary.
We have now been in Budapest for four days and wish we could stay here all summer.
Budapest is a secret box full of surprises, and probably one of my favourite cities so far.
what is especially interesting and intriguing about this historically powerful place(the might of the Austro-Hungarian empire is so easily forgotten, due to the repercussions of communism on the country) is this omnipresent sentiment of nationalist pride for hungarian cultural roots.
You can see it in their faces, hear it in their mother tongue which, unlike other big cosmopolitan EU cities, is still the most prominent language and vividly distinct from other touristcentric capitals like Prague(where it is nearly imposssible to actually meet anyone czech in the main city).


For now I am finding myself in rising spirits, as i have started writing poetry once more after a long drought, and am feeling more inspired each new day by all the wonderful people I meet to keep creating art & community wherever I go...

madz looooove


there are so many impressions to share about all these places, and i look forward to bringing them back at the end of August.
Aha! this is also my most exciting bit of recent news: since meeting this delightful swiss woman in Amsterdam, I have been offered the opprotunity to possibly realize one of my grandest dreams...to work at a beautiful Free School on a mountain village outsude of Zurich!!! pinch me.
I am trying not to get my hopes up, and am very excited about visiting the school in any case (following two weeks in Berlin avec mon merveilleux papa:)!!!)

Regenbogen in Weimar!

huzzzzzzzah! After a strangely peaceful past week of recovery & reflection, I took the train yesterday from Göttingen to Weimar, in the hopes of finding my crazy artsy friend Daniel.
ouf! so its been a while since i've written a word about my whereabouts, so i now have found a way to share a pictomentary of the past few weeks, from the BIKE HEAVEN that is the Nederlands, to Deutschland, where my REAL biking began. Hahaha..'twas so hardcore that I pushed myself up monster hills(3-4km long, 10% grade, baby!)in 32 degree weather on the way to Göttingen and ended up in Die Krankenhaus with a sunstroke!Aiiiaaiaiaiii!
Aber, I am truly grateful to have my own physical limitations force me to stop and let my mind & soul rest, recover, and digest for a while, since I get so easily swept away in the current of challenge and curiosity..
Plus, the Deutsch health system is incredible. They were apologetic with me if a friendly doctor made me wait a whole 2 minutes. woooooooow.
En tout cas, here is a lil taste of my travels since the ferry from the Port of Harwich, east coast England, to the Hoek von Holland, Rotterdam, camping in Zandfoort, Amsterdam( I have already found my dream home there with gold-paved fietsroutes EVERYWHERE), Werkendam/Hank(southern Nederlands), Nijmegen(home of Velorama...the Bike Mecca-museum!!), and then back to Amsterdam...before crossing straight through the lusciously green country of central Germany. It took me 4 days to travel from the east Netherlands to Göttingen, where I truly surprised myself with some steady endurance, biking on average 105km/day. Woot!
Since the sunstroke in Göttingen, however, I dwas still feeling quite weak, so I decided to play it safe and take the train to Weimar-which i think is among my favourite stops in Germany so far-and then to the chaotic wonder that is Berlin...

voila.... (NB: the pics are posted starting from the most recent-yay technical imcompetence!)

Sebastian und Fabian, mes potes trop chics de Weimar




Le Giegling party-squat a la lisiere du Goethe Park, Weimar...












Street in weimar..













Giegling squat














Un trou dans l'coeur ou dans la tete?












Benedetta & Giulia, sweet italian girls who showed me a hidden side of the city








Bad Karshafen













Bad Karlshafen






















Herbert & Marvin Kellerman, the absolute sweethearts who welcomed me in their home of Marienfeld(Harsewinkel) and introduced me to Deutsch Korb-Feuers(basket fires!)








Münster Cathedral




























crossing central Germany...

















































Back in Amsterdam









early birthday morning leaving Nijmegen












a most delightful afternoon with the wise & magical Vincent Loosjes









Can YOU spot the quirk in this pic?!? tiddely pom.














It's a bird! It's a rainbow! Nein, ist est ein Malte!!!
my German ferry-buddy with whom I got to share a feast of dumpstered donuts, and play like monkeys on the overnight ferry to The Hoek von Holland:)

Viva la docu!!! a little update...

OkAY. so i think it would be a nice time to post a summary of my Free schooling quest so far, cuz..I'm really stoked about it, and i hope that maybe somewhere out there someone else will be too.
In life we are always learning, and no teacher, grade, class, or exam should ever discourage you into feeling otherwise.
Love*Live*Learn
To briefly explain my journey through the wonders of alternative education, here is part of my initial statement for the documentary which outlines my intentions for the project...

check it out:
http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=b4c8d8ec3e&realattid=f_ffgwn2zp1&attid=0.2&disp=vah&view=att&th=119862816a0ee708

I planned a few visits to some of these inspiring free-learning spaces before leaving, and find myself continuously stumbling upon new and exciting ones as I roll along. Here are a few of the ones I have discovered so far...

PARIS: After a few days of feeling lost in seas of tourists, museums, and pretty cafes I finally came across an area of Paris chockful of community resources, leading me to le centre Cerise, a beautiful community cultural space offering activities such as after-school arts classes, language courses for recently immigrated families, day-care and homework tutoring for young kids, and much more. One of the head coordinators of the centre was this inspiring man with the widest, most welcoming smile you've ever seen, named Abdellatif who really believed in finding the most creative ways for kids to spend their free time...

PARIS:Le lycee Auto-gere..sadly I did not get to visit this one since it was a holiday week in France:(

LONDON:56a Infoshop/Freedom Books in Angel Alley, two great grassroots activist centers with a bike workshop, excellent library, and a truly impressive squatters resource network. By scanning through their message boards & zines I was surprised to find how popular the squatting lifestyle was in London( they also had A.S.S.-Advisory Service for Squatters)

LEISTON, SUFFOLK, UK: SUMMERHILL FREE SCHOOL! i didn't want to leave.
I think it deserves a thorough portrait, so i'll save this one for later...

WERKENDAM, NL:Vincent Loosjes. WOW-this man is an infinite fountain of wisdom , courage, and integrity. I randomly contacted Vincent from chatting with a girl in Rotterdam, who excitedly told me that this man was the perfect person to learn from about education in the Netherlands.

HANK, NL:Merel Bolding and the Vrije Hogeschool.
It's hard for me to be unbiased about my experience with Merel and her schooling since I am convinced we are sisters separated at birth and are meant to create a magical freedom-school together somewhere in rainbows...
The Vrije Hogeschool is a free school(though privately funded), set in a pittoresque garden campus, that provides a year of spiritual-creative orientation to students between roughly 18-21 who are exploring themselves before choosing an educational direction. It consists of about sixty students at a time and provides them with open opportunity to create independent "projects" that seek to develop their creativity and autonomy. Coupled with seven-week art courses of all kinds-such as theater, drumming percussions, musical performance, etc.

NIJMEGEN, NL:Vrije School Meander( a Waldorf Public School)Just visited this beautiful artsy school this morning, and am once again radiating with joy at the passion and creativity these kids demonstrate. The great part about Meander primary school is that it is actually accessible to anyone who wishes to attend, since it is a public, partially government-funded school.
Today was a special day as they were presenting their Bike-city Safety Project to a city jury in light of a inter-school competition to encourage good road safety amongst children. The quality of the kids projects, such as bike sculptures, road panel pictures, songs, etc. was genuinely impressive, especially coming from their own initiative.