Category Archives: Rides and Races

Registration opened

29 Friday Jul 2016

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Arrived right on time after s quick Beligan breakfast. We are now processing through the registration. Plenty of carzy guys around here.

All talking about the weather. I gonna decide to keep all my stuff in the new big saddle bag, as I will not join weather forecast prognosises. Better one more dry layer in stock than not. 


Geraadsbergen got us

29 Friday Jul 2016

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Arrived at a hostel around 1700. All fully booked, of course. So the owner offered me to stay at his place.

After meeting the other three guys downtown, there was another bed in their place available, so I picked my bag and brought it over.

Had a look at the checkin place, talked to Mike Hall shortly, went for classic Belgium fried dinner.

We spent the evening on the marketplace in the rain, lovely. Some racers blabla, due to the weather not really getting to know other people. Gonna happen tomorrow then!

Rumble in the jungle

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in General, Transcontinental Race 2016

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Ready on time. Things are packed, added a polar jacket for the alpine days. You never know. Some pieces shall remain in Belgium so the saddle bag size gonna shrink, at least a little.

Waiting for the train on a sunny morning. Kids and Nico waved goodbye, for me now is the start of an amazing experience lasting for hopefully two weeks!

Around lunch I gonna meet Jeff, Josh and Nelson in Brussels. Idea is to cycle to Geraadsbergen all together. So to say “we are factory five” bicycles and cycling in Shanghai.

Most important new feature for spare parts: two pairs of cleats, as I love to walk them off during cycling…

Countdown

27 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in General, Preparation, Transcontinental Race 2016

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As I originally planned to leave for Geraadsbergen today, everything is prepared. But not compressed into the bags until now.

Two days ago I rechecked my first and second rough routing from months ago. Luckily TCR provided a document with blocked roads and/ or tunnels. It took some time to check everything again, now I am happy I did it once more. As to my prior experiences from Hardcro border crossing got another focus. Figuring out the smallest deviation from my route for crossing the border between Bosnia and Montenegro, I asked Ivan to give me a -local experts- hand. He contacted the local governor asking whether a certain road can be used to international border crossing. This guy answered: There is no border control on this road, but you can cross the border by using this road. In addition he mentioned that this road is pretty bad and not recommended to bike riders. For me a very interesting answer, as you can cross anywhere. There seem to be similar options for border crossing between Montenegro and Albania.

Today I do the very last preparation for manual navigation, marking the perfect route on the paper map as well as a list of cities and villages that shall be crossed during the trip, so in a case of no electricity, I can still reach Canakkale.

  • Komoot
  • RideWithGPS
  • Google Maps
  • Google Earth
  • Garmin BaseCamp
  • Ivan Puja (local joker and communicator)

Recharging all possible batteries now. As the times before, continuous electricity is going to be a challenge again.

By tomorrow I plan to depart towards Brussels and Geraadsbergen then.

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