What a year 2021 has been! TWIKE 560 and I have had a great time. Thankful to have been in good health all along.
Besides TW560 turning 20 this year and emissionless.ch as a blog existing 10 years, the main event this year was my multi-month trip to Portugal (TDP2021). If you haven’t read about it yet, you can start here.
Traveling as a digital nomad, working from wherever, mixing vacation with my traveling life was a revelation. It turned out to be not only doable but very relaxing, productive and just plain liberating. I consider myself to be very lucky: my work allows me to be wherever close to 100% of the time and my wife supports me and my ideas.
Technology-wise we’ve come very, very far: in the mid-90’s I worked in Spain for a Swiss company and retrieved my work via modem at ~€15 for 700kb…which took forever. Then, 1998, I traveled to Asia and wrote articles and worked in IT security as a freelance consultant. My gigs, blog and communication with publishers were all arranged, planned and written via the web, by modem, connected to the phone line via acoustic couplers.
Nowadays, things look very, very different: I just simply open my laptop and I’m online. When roaming, I get 40 Gigabytes of data included every month in 46 countries – more than enough to get me through just about any kind of work and some streaming. (In Switzerland, I have no data limits, no soft limits, no speed limitation, no ‘fair-use’ or other nonsense…which I tested on the 5G cell covering my home: I transferred a terabyte of data one day at an average close to 800mBit/s and nothing happened)
Portugal was fascinating – I want to get back to exploring this beautiful country further sometime soon.
Longtime readers will have wondered if the entries for TDST2021 are still pending and not yet published. Sadly, there was no TWIKE adventure to Styria this year. We just didn’t have the time to spend this year. However, fear not, dear reader – next year’s TDST2022 will be a special one – longer trip plus more to do.
Also, I am currently planning a major project 2022 which might have a significant impact on any summer-TDxx2022 plans. Stay tuned.
So, how did 2021 look like with just numbers in mind?
Keep in mind that all the rest of the distance was done driving max-speed on the motorway without any regard for consumption.
The DFC3 controller shows the Ah total for the current 51Ah battery and km for TW560’s lifetime. (not to be confused with the raw inverter total distance which has gone past 300k quite a while ago.)
Just after taking the photo above it was time to say goodbye to 2021 – I live above a village and had a perfect view of the festivities there – many managed to put on an impressive show even with a 10-person limit this year.
The next day was super gray and foggy around where I live – a quick glance at some webcams in the neighboring black forest showed clear and sunny weather which motivated me to take TW560 on its first drive 2022…to the sun.
Before I can do so, I need to reset the yearly counter on TW560:
And with this done, I drive into the fog.
Having entered into Germany and climbing up to around 800m above sea level, suddenly I drive into a beautiful blue-skied and warm day.
The views are phenomenal and breathtaking every time I drive to the black forest. At some points one can see the full panorama from Austria all the way to the French Alps. The hundreds of km of dense fog visible is covering millions and keeping the sun (and warm temperatures) away from them.
After just another 40 Minutes I arrive at the Feldberg at around 1600m. There is not too much snow right now. At the same time, there aren’t too many people here, either.
Sitting in the sun I enjoy the temperatures and warm rays of the sun whilst enjoying my first mulled wine of the year (probably also the last one until next winter)
A little bit of shopping later, I slowly drive back down direction home. The views are spectacular and – I believe – a good omen for 2022.
I’m looking forward to 2022. #gogogo #letstwike