As Earth Day approaches, I wanted to write about how crazy wonderful it was cycling around Slovenia during the making of Saving Walden’s World, with a bunch of camera gear lashed onto a borrowed bike. And I wanted to share how Slovenia came to be the world’s first certified green destination… but, I didn’t want to piss off my Slovenian friends by encouraging an invasion of paradise.
So, I left that story and instead began writing my origin story.
With the snow mostly gone here in Maine, I’ve been getting out cycling more and more. This addiction to the bicycle started at a young age. Way before getting a car, the bike put the keys to my adolescent social schedule in my hands. Being awkward and skinny in a tough school, I hated organized sports, the pressure to do drugs in the forests and all that.
The bike became a great escape. I’d do fifty plus mile rides around eastern Long Island. I teased my stoned friends, come along for a natural high. Few joined. But Brad was two years younger and always ready to ride. One day, we were riding the backroads on eastern Long Island and came across pavement markings and started to follow them. One symbol led us to a scenic overlook and then back to the main route. Each symbol was hand painted, and always on quiet and beautiful roads. To 14-year-old brains these cryptic symbols we readily understood.
As if contacted by aliens, we instinctively knew someone in beer-drinking, glass bottle smashing LI was on our side, helping us instead of giving us flats, guiding us away from traffic, immersing us in beauty. We made up all kinds of stories about these alien bike lovers.
About a year later Brad and I were out cycling one of these routes when a group 20 strong grey-haired riders came up from behind. They passed us like we were standing still. We struggled to catch their draft. Nothing a 15-year-old likes less than to be outdone by grandparents. As we struggled to keep up, a moped passed this group. These geezers stirred up like irritated bees and took off, passing the moped, and when it was a dot in the horizon, sat up spinning their pedals, laughing and clowning around with energy to spare.
Brad and I had found the parents we never had, and started riding with these retired jet pilots, engineers and doctors. We then heard the stories of the infamous Dan Henry, who filled his water bottle with paint and rode the long route ahead of the organized New York Cycle Club ride, riding 200 miles in two days.
I made a promise that day to ride till my final day, treasuring the idea of being a fast and furious old fart. I raced, commuted to work, crossed Canada twice and cycled in Cuba, India and Slovenia during the production of Saving Walden’s World. Read on to get a flavor of cycling in Slovenia and what it is like in a society where car is not king.
On the train the beat of steel wheels upon rails carried me west of Budapest and into Slovenia’s countryside. At the border, sagging rooflines gave way to neat homesteads, vegetable gardens and orchards lining the tracks and beyond. The train snaked along sparkling rivers, into canyons, with lush forests clinging to mountainsides and through coherent villages. Out the window a life similar to mine in Belfast was evident — the splitting of firewood, scything the orchard and the drying of corn and hay.
Once in the capital, Ljubljana, I bussed to Robin Turk’s home to borrow a bike for three weeks. Robin has cycled in 50 countries. Through the organization “Warm Showers,” he opens his home to cyclists. In the morning my 25-pound backpack’s contents of camera and personal gear were divided into pannier bags, and what didn’t fit I roped onto the rack and was off.
Ljubljana has earned the title of “European Green Capital” for its sustainable practices. The inner city is car-free. A zero waste program is in place and forested green spaces surround the city. Community gardens, co-ops and renewable energy are growing — drawing tourists to the vibrant cafes and quiet streets.
Gaja Brecelj, who works with Umanotera, a sustainability focused NGO explains “it is not just living within the planetary boundaries, but it’s also, as a society, how we can be in solidarity, respect each other; how we can be open to people who need to move or are forced to move” referring to the refugee crisis.
She explained how “Ten years ago everyone knew we could go anywhere by car.” There was resistance in the beginning, she goes on, “that’s why this strategy of doing it bit by bit, was very good. You take one small road, you close it… ahh, people would complain, but its not so bad.” I learned that every year they broadened it and now, Gaja says, “nobody wants to go back.”
Slovenia’s 11-acre ecofootprints are well below those in the US (17 acres). However, Slovenia is able to have lower infant mortality, lower gender pay-gap and less poverty while having higher literacy and more women in politics.
Živa Kavak Gobbo is the president of a sustainability group call FOCUS. She loads her four-year-old boy into a child carrier on her bike, drops him off at a government-funded childcare center and cycles in to work on bike lanes. When asked to describe the safety net for young women, Živa responded:
“We have good access to Education. We have good access to health care. The healthcare is free, for us and for the children. If we decide we want to be mothers, we have access to all the doctors we need. We have a one-year maternity leave, so you can have your child, you can breast feed and then go back to work.”
It is common for grandparents to care for the children during year two. However, childcare is free and available to anyone who needs it.
I met with cycle activist Andrej Klemenc, who took me for a ride, showing off Ljubljana’s bike bridges, lanes, and free bikes system, among cafes and shops, which he had a hand in. We talked bikes! For the upcoming weekend, he invited me to cycle to the Adriatic Sea with his wife Slavicia Peshevska.
We put bikes on a separate boxcar and let a train power us across the landscape then disembarked before the long decent to the sea. My GoPro footage shows the bike’s speedometer exceeding 60 kilometers per hour. Our journey toward the sea included separated paths, through orchards, farms and villages. At one point the bike trail went straight into a mountain, long and cool, a Rails to Trails project. At the Adriatic we cycle the shoreline paths between beaches on sparkling waters. Growing up on in proximity to NYC, I assumed the shore frontage in Slovenia would be a mess. I was wrong. Beautiful cobbled pathways through ancient villages, harbors and everywhere people cycling and sunbathing.
Andrej and Slavicia had to get back for work, so we loaded the bikes onto the train and let the engine gain the elevation. I then split off and headed for the Alps. Again, a bikers paradise, with separated bike lanes with constant view of the mountains on both sides. I checked into a hostel and explored the region for days before boarding a train to return for more interviews in Ljubljana.
This seamless integration of the bicycle with trains, buses and workplaces and tourist destinations open cycling to more people. In Slovenia you needn’t be a muscled cyclist to get around. The bike actually saves the entire society millions, possibly billions of dollars of car-related infrastructure. A cyclist save society road paving & maintenance, parking, dead animals on the road, people dead on the road, CO2, oil and gas extraction while stimulating your appetite.
If you manage to get past the part of cycling that suck, where your butt hurts, your neck is sore, your legs ache, eventually the serotonin and dopamine overtake the lactic acid and the pleasure principal takes over. Cycle therapy. Every problem you think you have, might improve. You’ll have more energy, reduce stress, feel better… over time. And in Slovenia’s case, cycling attracts tourist dollars, including the Lonely Planet’s attention.
In Slovenia the dividends of decades of programs that ensure all citizens have a right to a decent quality of life are clearly visible as is the struggle against individualistic and consumeristic values. As I cycle the network from cities to countryside, and met with movers and shakers, another world seemed more possible. I learned about worker owned cooperatives, a culture of growing vegetable gardens in common spaces in suburbs and cities and more.
On a stunning hillside farm, Mihelca Obrovnik who runs a permaculture farm/restaurant with her husband and two children explains, “Going to the garden is like a therapy. Your mind can get empty there.” Her sentiment resonated with splitting firewood, making maple syrup, punning the fruit trees and cycling.
This Earth Day, see what you think about pumping up those tires on your 2 wheeled pleasure machine, and get out on some backroads. And if an E bike passes you, chase it down just for fun. Please visit Saving Walden’s World, SIGN UP and discover how you can spread a positive message in your community.
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