By IANS
Lisbon : Portuguese motorcyclist Mario Cales says he will ride his bike from here to the Beijing Olympic Games, a four-month trip covering 11 European and eight Asian countries, Xinhua reports.
The trip will begin in Lisbon April 8, 2008 and end Aug 8, the day of the Games’ inauguration. The overall distance will be about 30,000 km, equivalent to more than three quarters of the Earth’s diameter, and much longer than the straight-line distance to Beijing because he will not be travelling as the crow flies.
Cales said the government and Portuguese exporters were sponsoring his travel, and he would write a book on the journey, as well as record it in photographs and on videos.
Cales, 40, a native of northern Portuguese city Oporto, is the author of “Relating Via Nature”. He is a mental sciences professor in Oporto’s Northern Professional University.