Richard Defay

No Sun Trip experience to share, this being a first time participant. Instead, there’s a story of a little bike, a story of cranial mechanics, a story of appointments, some missed, some not. One… two… three… go!
A meeting of the third kind on a Saturday morning at the market in Le Puy, the start of the Sun Trip Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes 2019.
Then it was time for an odyssey-style shock as we discovered the official film of the Sun Trip Lyon-Canton 2018. Then cyclo-(chantier)-ciel in Villeurbanne in October 2019. A shipowner in June 2020, here I am on the roads of the County in July.
Heart transplant in the front wheel and adjustment of the first pacemaker at biketothefuture in October.
Then one more madness shatters the dream of reaching Samarkand by bike. Farewell to the Silk Roads… Sadness. Forget 2021.
Then give up on the first California ST 2022.
Enter the legend of the Sun Trip? Sahara? 2024? Question or necessity? It depends.

Feel the legacy of giants such as H. Becquerel, H. Hertz and N. Tesla. Thank you to Bell Laboratories, whose first cells returned 6 per cent.
Thank you Florian for paving the way in 2010.
Thank you to the previous Sun Tripers for digging this furrow.
Joining the pioneers means giving up the idea of being one, but the assurance of feeling alive several times over. So that’s it. Let’s get on with it.

Cycling helps children grow up. It helps me stay a child. It’s democratic, it connects people. Electro-solar, it offers the beauty of the silence of enlarged horizons. At the level of the Sapiens-Man. Immense and tiny at the same time.