Europe on a footbike
For most of us in our early 30’s, the dream of being alone for 5 minutes is or was well out of reach, we have jobs, children or other things in life that make us want to have more freedom than what we already have.
For Blandine Barthélemy, her early 30’s were the same as most of us; working jobs we no longer enjoyed and living lives that may not be giving us all that we should be getting.
Like all of us at some point, Blandine Barthélemy wanted to change her way of life. She was a 31 year old freelance graphic designer renting a flat, reading a lot of philosophy and sociology, living a solitary life, and shifting from a classic western consumerist behavior to a quest for emancipation. She had reached a point where she felt the knowledge she had gained from abstract considerations could not fulfill alone the need to live accordingly to some deeper intuitive certitude.
Blandine felt like she was a seismograph and her body was telling things in its manner, about the nonsense of western civilisation’s obsession with merchandise and money, technics and exploitation, alienation through anxiety, stress and fatigue. Her body was calling for adventure.
“My change of life was a way of getting en route to explore the real world, to throw myself into an empirical quest for a good life, by considering again the basics of a daily life through an individual experiment. It was an experiment of what to eat, how to spend time, on what to live on, and who to depend on “she says.
Equipped only with a tent, her two-wheeled vehicle (a scooter) and the strength of her legs, the French adventurer has made a one-of-a-kind trip which was both a physical challenge and a philosophical quest for the good life. Blandine is known as “La Trottineuse” (or “the kicker” in French).
After 22 000km kicked on a push scooter throughout Europe, 27 countries visited, 1 year of solo travel, fully autonomous and living the simple life, after 2 fundraisings for charities, countless human encounters and lessons from the road, Blandine Barthélemy, is going global in 2017!
….
To read the full article, to enter the competition and to read FOR FREE edition 51, click here!
