Tag: rosinante

Fighting windmills in perfect shades of green and where Rosinante’s name is coming from

After having spent a week on a beach at the end of May 2022 on Evia in Greece, a storm came up and I decided to seek shelter from it. And I think, I found the most beautiful shelter in the shadows of a small mountain surrounded by the wonderful facets of green.

When I moved on, the storm was still blowing and spinning the huge wind turbines on Evia. These turbines are really massive. Maybe they have the size of small offshore ones. And because there is nothing preventing the wind to hit them, they have pretty small towers in relation to their blades. Standing underneath these blades feels like they will cut you right through.

A friend reminded me that standing underneath these wind turbines is like Don Quixote’s famous battles against the windmills. And that’s where Rosinante’s name is coming from: I love sci-fi and was enjoying the book series “The Expanse” a lot when I bought Rosinante. In the books, there is an interesting crew living adventures on a space corvette called Rosinante. They name it after the horse Don Quixote is riding on. I like how the name sounds in German more than in the English version “Rocinante” and the name stands for more than just a spaceship and a horse. As far as I got it, nobody can say for sure what the stories about Don Quixote are standing for. I like the image of a confused guy who thinks that he is a noble knight riding on his noble steed and accomplishing adventurous missions, taking glorious battles in the name of his princess love, followed by his loyal companion Sancho Panza and therefore getting highly regarded by the people. But in truth, he’s just an old, run-down guy on his old nag confused by having read romances and doing stupid things. I think we are all Don Quixote. Some more, some less.

When I had started my journey, I had been more Don Quixote than I’m now, I would say. I’m quite sure, that a part of me wanted to go on a glorious world tour in a magnificent offroad camper to have breathtaking adventures and get highly regarded by others for it. That part had been like chasing happiness by fighting windmills and I’m happy to have given up that fight.

And there is another cool story about the name Rosinante and overlanding. But I spare that one for one of my future posts.

Back on Evia and about stuff, staffs, a beach, mules, a collision and the Zombiecalypse

After visiting the Akropolis in mid-May 2022, I organized some stuff in Athens.

Mainly I wanted to have a gas stove for cooking outside and gas bottles for it. While searching for this stuff I stumbled upon a machete. I’ve always dreamt about having a machete and chopping my way through scrub while hiking. And this one had been so badass. Like straight out of a cyberpunk samurai movie. I love cyberpunk and regarding the inevitable outbreak of the Zombiecalypse, it definitely would have been a good investment. But I didn’t buy it. After that, I checked on some additional recovery boards for Rosinante. They have been very good and in some situations, they would have become handy. But I didn’t buy them. Three years ago, I would have bought the machete and the recovery boards. But now I don’t like this accumulating of stuff anymore. Moving from a bigger car into Rosinante, I got rid of a lot. But still, I have so much stuff. And I’m fighting against adding additional stuff to it. Right now I would need at least three mules to get around with them. A whole mule family. Mhhh, that sounds quite nice to me… I might call them Rosinante one, Rosinante two, and Rosinante three… And in a Zombiecalypse, they would be the better option in the long run… Let’s see… In the end, I got the gas stove for cooking outside and even now, after two months, I use it almost every day and so that had been a good decision.

After having everything done in Athens, I moved straight on a ferry back to Evia. And there I found a wonderful new beach to live at. The road heading there has been quite offroady and fun and I had a wonderful time there.

After having arrived at the beach, I noticed a scratch on the backside of Rosinante’s cabin. It looked like it if I hit some plaster wall or something like that, but I could not remember doing so. I thought about it and concluded that there had been only one occasion on which that might happened. I wrote the owner of the camping shop where I bought the gas stove and did turn around Rosinante in a tight place and he confirmed that I hit the wall of his building. We exchanged photos and he said, that he would get in touch with me again. Until now he didn’t.

Every day at that beach, I cooked outside, washed my dishes in the ocean, read, and meditated a lot. One day I carved a little sand dragon out of some driftwood. I trained more with my bo staff and the other day, I found a bamboo bo staff at that beach and started to train Kung Fu strikes with it. On that day, I started to train almost every day. I’m still doing it and I can strongly recommend it. It’s super cheap (or even free), almost independent from weather and location, and feels super good. At least for me, it’s like that. If you want to give it a try, get yourself a broomstick or something comparable and do what she’s doing, and if you like, try what he’s doing.

I stayed at that beach for a week and apart from two friendly fishermen, who used the beach to launch their boat, I’ve been on my own all day One of the fishermen gave me some beer and one day, he took me on a small boat trip. The water has been fantastic and it has been awesome. I love the friendly locals.

The weather has been super nice but, once it started to get stormy, I moved along.