We drive to Plankenwarth where we left the tree bike by the side of the road on Wednesday. It’s still there, fortunately. We put the battery in and start it. But no, unfortunately it doesn’t work. As if the bike doesn’t feel like going up the mountain. Ai. We say goodbye to Nanja, Richard takes her back to her car and together with Daan I look at the options for the tree bike. The loose contact that is somewhere in the system plays up again. But how do you find it? We call Cargo Cycling and try all sorts of things and also swap some cables. Despite great support, we don’t find it. Because we don’t have a connection at this place, we have to keep going up the mountain to make the call. All in all it takes a lot of time while we want to cycle quite a bit today. Around four o’clock we find a solution via a motor system mechanic from Germany. By activating the battery itself the connection to the control system is made and yes, the bike works again. What a relief. It is a temporary solution and that does not solve the problem but we can cycle again. Luck has overtaken bad luck again. Very nice. Especially since otherwise we would have been standing still for three days, after all it is Friday afternoon before the Whitsun weekend. After a small stretch of steep uphill with a “tow” it goes downhill for a long time. We slide down very gradually. It’s even nicer to bike now in the late afternoon than in the middle of the day with about thirty degrees. Will the tree bike think so too? A beautiful route and a relatively flat stage compared to the last few days. Smiling people everywhere again raising their hands or thumbs up. Wonderful. And so we continue cycling until half past eight and still cycle almost fifty kilometers at a brisk pace, so we don’t fall behind by a large margin. We stop in Deutschlandberg before the real hill starts, or rather a mountain of 1,650 meters, Weineofen. We’ll do that again tomorrow morning when we’re fresh. In the center, we park the tree bike and trailer and ride over the mountain we have to do tomorrow by tree bike. Quite a ride, about twenty kilometers up and then twenty kilometers down, and then back up the mountain where we have been staying in our wooden cottage for two nights. I didn’t count the turns but there were many. It is after ten when we go to dinner. After dinner, Sanne shows the video she made of the broadcast on ORF-2, Austrian national television, from her computer about the tree bike in Vienna. Too crazy right? Super fun. Both Radio and Television here in Austria paid attention to our project. Sanne immediately put it on linkdin, and in the coming days I will send it on to all the contacts I made on the route. Upon reviewing the emails, I read that the LVVN Ministry has approved our grant application. It was already in the air but now we know for sure. And that means we can now say that we can cycle the whole circle, not having to stop in Nova Gorica / Gorizia. Quite a relief. We have a drink to it. I pour and take a sip. My mouth leaves, I didn’t look closely and it turns out to be vinegar, the wrong bottle. It is a good twelve o’clock when we go to sleep satisfied. Another innovative day, the tree bike keeps the excitement going every day. And even though days like this are dominated by solving logistical challenges, I always keep in mind: we do cycle with a tree through Europe, indeed, we cycle through a pretty hilly Austria. And we’re still getting it done. We should be very proud, and we are.