We drive away from our lodging at a good nine o’clock and already see the dark skies, a beautiful rainbow shows us the way to Pieve del Cairo where we parked the tree bike opposite the town hall yesterday. The door of the town hall is open, so I step inside with Daan with a birthday tree and a forest book. What an enthusiastic mayor they have here in Pieve del Cairo, Niccolo Capittini is his name. He really thinks it is a great project and tells us that they are going to plant the little tree with the children next to the school. He also tells us that the day before yesterday, July 24, was the day that we humans have already consumed “the energy” of this whole year, the so-called “Earth Overshoot day. Painful right? We take and photo in front of City Hall with the tree bike, and several people come to get a free birthday tree. Top. Daan, Yka and I get on the bikes and ride towards Mede which is nine kilometers away, not along the river for a while but through the flat agricultural area with corn and many rice fields. Here too most of the birds fly up when the tree bike passes. The rain does not stop and it is remarkably chilly at twenty degrees for the end of July. We bravely continue cycling even though we would much rather have sunshine. But it is very nice for the tree bike. It is Saturday and it is quiet on the road. Completely soaked, we have a warm cup of coffee in Candia Lomelina, where we take a picture in front of the closed town hall. According to the weather forecast it will rain for another hour or so. Jacket on and on we go. Fortunately, it gradually clears up a bit. As I cycle through the landscape I wonder how best to write down ‘observing the landscape’? I like to read the landscape as a “gesamtkunstwerk,” as an interplay of natural forces and human activities. I could of course focus the observations on this: how do the two relate and interact? Natural forces and laws on the one hand, and human activities and influence on the other. Man, of course, evolutionarily speaking, has only just arrived, about two hundred thousand years, an adolescent we are still as a species, but our influence is hugely explosive and burdensome to all our fellow earthlings, many species are dying out. But I don’t want to describe all that is going wrong, my concern is to find openings that can accelerate the rebalancing so that we humans become far-reaching rather than burdensome. But how do you do that? One important observation is that I don’t think it’s down to ordinary people. They just want to do well. At least they care about their own environment, we see that everywhere. It’s much more in the systems. A good example is agriculture: every day we see the complex system of supply and demand, farms, agribusiness, financing systems and government policy. Most of the landscape, especially here in the Po Valley, is cultivated and in use as farmland. That produces beautiful cultural landscapes but probably there is also a big culprit there in terms of man-made imbalance with nature. I am not concerned with pointing out what is going wrong and how to do better. Who am I to do that. What I do want to make visible is that a lot of people have nature’s best interests at heart and do not want the current large-scale demolition at all. Surely it is downright idiotic to treat the only habitable planet we know, which is so unique, the way we are doing now. How stupid can you be? And that’s why, against all odds, we are cycling 5000 kilometers, in a circle through Europe, with a tree on the back of our bikes, handing out birthday trees. Will you also plant a tree on your birthday? Can our circle become an example of how things could be done? So I muse as we cycle into Casale Monferrato, the final location for today. It is a good two hours and we decide to cycle on to Trino, another fifteen kilometers or so. It is a beautiful route on the embankment right along the Po River. And even though the gravel doesn’t ride very well, the scenery is beautiful and the weather has cleared up. The tree bike especially with starting up makes more grinding noises by the day, what is that? When we arrive in Trino we place the tree bike with one wheel on a curb and I discover that the universal joint, the transmission from the motor to the wheels, has damage. It looks like grease is missing and at the bar across the road someone has a grease gun. Less than ten minutes later, I’m under the tree bike applying grease to the grease nipples. And yes, thankfully, it seems to help. I am super happy. We do have a garage check it out on Monday, as we need to be able to cross the Alps safely, and then we can stop by the town hall here in Trino, which is right on the line. We place the tree bike at the town hall in advance and drive the car together to our accommodation in Salice-Terme, almost an hour’s drive from Trino. While Richard drives, Yka and Daan pick out the photos suitable for Polarsteps and when we get home we start cooking right away so we have a little evening left. Tomorrow we move to the next location beyond Trino. Sleep well.