project week!

adventure (n.): risky or unexpected undertaking

(this was supposed to be published on Oct. 5)

Wow.

It’s hard to summarize or write about project week because all of it was experiential and all of it was important. I had no idea what it would be like going in and no idea how I would feel coming out but I am so grateful for the experiences that I had and things that I learned over the past seven intense days.

As I’ve mentioned before, myself, seven other students and a teacher went on a week-long biking and camping trip from our school along the Rhine river into France and then up the Black Forest back to our school. In total, we biked over 400 km, and were amazed, tested, and exhausted almost every day.

The first four days, we were blessed with beautiful weather and wonderful scenery.

• Day 1: Freiburg to Neuf-Breisach: We crossed the Rhine into France and I was so excited to be able to read the signs and billboards we passed. The route was flat and short and a wonderful start to our project week.

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• Day 2: Neuf-Breisach to Gerstheim: Another beautiful day biking past corn fields and green landscapes. My Swiss roommate and I cooked rice and chili for dinner this evening.

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• Day 3: Gerstheim to Strasbourg to Steinach: The longest day of our trip kilometers-wise. Strasbourg was very beautiful and I’m happy we were able to go! My roommate and I navigated this day and I learned some of the challenges of leading a big group and trying to quickly interpret signs.

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• Day 4: Steinach to Alpirsbach: This evening was the windiest of the trip, and two of our tent’s pegs broke, so in the middle of the night, it was flapping around very noisily in the wind. One of the girls was brave enough to go looking for the rest of the pegs (her efforts to wake up the boys failed despite her opening their tent door and calling their names) and re-secure them. Later in the night one of the pegs came out of the ground again so my roommate went out to put it back into the ground. When she came back, she told us very seriously that she didn’t know where her underwear was. She had washed it and put it on her pannier in the tent’s vestibule, but with the wind, we thought it was probably long gone and flapping on a tree branch somewhere. It was a hilarious moment and probably one of the highlights of our whole trip.

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The last three days were much more challenging as we faced most of the trip’s climb, worse surfaces, difficult navigation, and bad weather.

• Day 5: Alpirsbach to Villingen-Schwenningen (known as “the day”)
• This was by far the hardest and longest day of our trip. We were on the road for 10 hours and biked through strong wind and torrential downpour. I think we were all pushed quite hard both physically and mentally, and the sight of (what always seemed like) yet another hill to climb made me want to give up several times. In the afternoon, we stopped in a cafe to warm up and drink some hot chocolate, and we decided to book a hotel for that evening because 1. we wouldn’t make it in time to get a spot at the campsite we booked and 2. we were completely exhausted and soaked, and none of us would have been able to rest in the cold weather in wet sleeping bags and tents. The last 20 minutes of our ride were in complete darkness which was a bit scary and kind of surreal because all you could see in every direction was a sheet of blackness except the few meters of the path in front of us lit up by our bike lights. It was beyond incredible to sleep on a comfortable bed inside a warm building after a warm shower…

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Something very memorable happened on this day. One of our members was becoming quite sick, and we stopped in a residential area because she was having trouble breathing while biking up a hill. A German man came out of his house and asked us where we were going, and our group leader mentioned one person in our group was sick. He wished us well and we proceeded on our way. 5-10 minutes later, we noticed a car parked on the side of the road, and a man came out to us. We realized it was the same man as earlier. He had driven to an intersection with the bike route and brought a bottle of warm tea, a package of tissues, and lozenges for the sick member. We were all taken aback by the kindness of a complete stranger; he hadn’t even personally seen the sick member as she had been around the corner from his house. I think his random act of kindness was something that helped encourage me to keep going the rest of the way.

• Day 6: Villingen-Schwenningen to Titisee-Neustadt: This was another long day, but we had quite a nice downhill stretch to Titisee toward the end.

• Day 7: Titisee-Neustadt to Freiburg! We biked downhill on a wet gravel road for a significant portion of our route which was kind of scary, but we emerged largely unscathed. When we reached Freiburg and the college came into sight, I was so overjoyed… we all screamed in happiness and I didn’t expect to be flooded with so many emotions, but it was really a unique moment.

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I had high hopes that biking up the college hill would seem like nothing compared to the full days of climbing that we did… and unfortunately I was disappointed that the hill hadn’t gotten any easier than it was the first time I biked up it.

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Thinking back on the past week, the images imprinted on my mind of the corn fields, the trees lining the canal, racing each other to the next sign, and biking through the Black Forest all have a sort of dream-like quality to them… but I’m so grateful for the project week experience that I had and the things that it taught me about planning and executing an outdoor trip, the power of a group (and the power of a break, a warm croissant and some hot chocolate), and mustering up the will to go on when I really didn’t have any left. My heart is so full, and this was an experience I’ll be able to look back on for a very long time.

I wanted to mention that I don’t have a sim card and I didn’t use wifi for the entire week, and I didn’t miss it at all. I had no urge to call or text anyone or to check or write any emails (a huge thing at RBC), and I think the subtraction of social media and constant connectedness actually really added to my trip. I’m quite glad I didn’t connect to or really care about wifi even when it was available at some campsites and at the hotel. I hope I can carry this knowledge with me and know that it’s okay not to check social media or my email more than a couple times a day.

Until next project week (Feb. 2020)!