Welcome to the first world tour of a vehicle powered only by solar energy!
On the Island of the Insurgents31.10.2008
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We left Marseille after spending a night at the Marine Fire Station, escorted by a fire brigade officer who showed us the right way out of this town of 800'000. Next stop: The fire station in Avignon, where I recharged the battery a bit. No sunray at all today, but rain and rain.
Finally late in the evening I reached the fire station of Montelimar, where I was allowed to leave the car overnight again. Again a spectacular welcome by the fire fighters, and we slept in a hotel nearby.
The next day I left after Thomas fixed the brake. The day before I had used a really huge amount of energy for making the way from Marseille to Montelimar, and I assume it was because the brake pad was sticking to the brake disk. So after Thomas loosened the brakes, it went better, and easily I was heading towards Lyon, where a young journalist wanted to meet me at Auchan. There was no press conference in Lyon, as we had no partner here to make it, everyone was on a holiday. Bad timing, but at least I could give her a ride. Finally she even stayed for almost one and a half hour and guided me out of town and on the right track towards Tournus. So I answered her questions during driving, and I had an excellent tour guide.
In Tournus it was Kathrin and Beat, two friend of mine, accomodating us. Kathrin is now a retired school teacher, but we shared a class together in Lucerne about 4 years ago, she knew a lot about my project when I started it, and now I showed up at her place with the finished car, almost done with the world tour. It was an amazing evening with amazing people.
Next stop: La Charite sur Loire. This very pitoresque little town between Lyon and Paris has a long history of traffic. We stayed on an island, and our local host Ira of the Maison de la Loire told us, that the narrow road across the island was actually a highway, so the speed limit was around 90 km/h just a few month ago, even though the street was so narrow that two trucks could hardly cross. 1500 heavy trucks are crossing the town a day, as this is the only bridge across the Loire river for 200 km. The people here were amazing and very, very hositable, so we decided to stay 2 nights and I held a well attended slide show for the villagers. The villagers are complaining about the traffic, but nobody wants to listen. They told me that a new bidge should be built, and that would cost as much as 1 km for a TGV track. But there is no money for such a solution, so everyone is just waiting for a heavy car accident. As long as no accident happens, nothing will happen.
