Archive for the ‘Random Thoughts’ Category

Okay only about 9 hours to go. What are we doing? Well Victor is back to Amsterdam to get his passport. Iam still packing. Joost didn’t sleep last night so he went to bed early today and I think we can say we’re all excited about the trip.

Today I bought a new 32gb SD card for my camera. I want to capture all of it on film and publish it afterwards, this will be very cool. Also bought a hard drive so we can store stuff if the SD card is full. Yes we have great plans haha!

We studied the route, made an overview of CS people, printed the waypoints and updated the GPS.

And now? Let’s sleep, wake up and enjoy the trip. Tomorrow our parents will wave us goodbye and that’s that. Take care and send in some comments!

- The team, Steven.

We’ve done a poll and the results are in. We will be doing team-challenges! What does this mean and what do we expect? Isn’t the trip on itself not already a challenge?

Yes, going to Poland per bicycle is on itself already quite a challenge. But to keep things interesting and to create some kind of distraction we think a daily challenge might really add to the fun. Anyway here are some points about how I see things:

- The team will do a daily challenge.
- Some-one other than us will select a challenge for every day.
- Every morning we are allowed to “open” a new challenge which till that morning will be secret for us too.
- Proof of finishing the challenge must be provided.

So what to do when we do not finish a challenge? No idea yet. I think it’s important that we finish them for king and country. … lol.

So what kind of challenges should we do?

I think it’s important to have some solid guidelines. That’s why I’ve created them!

• They should not take more than ~15 minutes to do. These challenges could be seen as a break.
• They should not cost money (or at least not more than several euro’s. Also only 1-2 assignments may cost anything)
• The challenge should be how to do them, not doing them. We should talk/think/discuss them during cycling.
• They should not be exhausting. We will NOT collect 30 kg’s of rocks and create a mountain.
• It’s encouraged to give us social challenges that are fun and adds to the trip.
• They should not bring us to shame, we will NOT run nakid through a shoppingmall.

How to submit them?

Simply fill out this form and be sure to fill in all fields!

Streetracing is quite popular amongst lot’s of people with pimped cars. So why write here about it? I have to say that we can remove the car part and make that “Streetracing is quite popular amongst lot’s of people with pimped rides”. Since my ride is pretty much pimped, I decided to do some streetracing myself.

I’ve been a big fan of Formula One racing for quite a while now so the racing track really is a thing for me. I like to ride my recumbent bike and I’ve always associated these 2 interests of me. I mean, riding a recumbent is racing. You are low to the ground, just like in a F1 car. Everything is tweaked to the max, just like in an F1 car. You try to be as aerodynamically as possible… just like an F1 car. And it’s nice to cut corners, accelerate as fast as possible and break as late as possible….. just like in an F1 car.

So that’s why I today decided to point out a track of about 2 km, and ride 5 laps on it. Just to see if I like it. With my new Garmin 60Cx device I was able to record laptimes, see my average laptime, total laptime and afterwards see the captured track results. This gave me a good insight of where I went what speed and when I lost a lot of speed. This information is incredibly handy! I’ve seen that when I steer in pretty late compared to what I’m used to, I take turns a lot faster. Great fun!

Anyway tomorrow I’ve set out a different “circuit”. It’s close to the one I did today but instead of 2.1 it’s 1.5 km. Also it’s safer cars-wise and has a few slower turns. Can’t wait to try that circuit out!

Just like doing the distance on our bicycles aren’t enough, I thought it might be fun to do daily tasks. Well with 3-4 people in the team an individual task for everyone could get a lot of stuff going on. I mean who’s going to make them up? (7 days, 4 people, 28 challenges… lol!)

But we could do a teamchallenge every day.

So if we do that we have several questions…

- What do we get if we win? What do we get if we don’t win? (some kind of penalty points??)
- If there is one team member who “did it” does he get extra points?
- Who’s going to make up the challenges?
- What kind of challenges anyway?

I guess it’s nice if other people than us decide the challenges and that we get a piece of paper with all the challenges. Let’s say it will be 10 days tops so 10 challenges all hidden. Every morning we check out what the daily task will be for the team or per member.

And what kind of challenges should we get? I was thinking of stuff like:

- Get a store to give some free stuff in exchange of a picture of us with the store so he can put it on a wall.
- During a day get pictures of us with 20 fans.
- In Some town buy something, and get it sold in a different town. (with profit?)
- Get 10 people to put a comment on the blog (in a special CHALLENGE DAY x POST..)
- Make some people get their bikes and join us for several kilometers…
- Find people to have dinner with and during this dinner, get to know, have fun, exchange e-mail addresses etc and have a good memory.
- Collect 5 people that we can send a postal card to from Berlin (in exchange of something? The postalcard is a “thanks” then…)

- Etc.

Anyway I’ve created a poll about it. I’d say IF we go for the challenges that it is best to pick a friend who will manage them. All suggestions can be send to this person and he/she can choose from them and make a selection.

Comments very welcome!

Yesterday, a Tupolev with 154 people on board crashed in Russia. Amongst the passengers were a lot of important Polish people whom the president. It is very sad news that a crash happened whether there are famous people on board or random civilians. They were heading for a memorial service to remember Polish people who died in Soviet Russia.

Our thoughts go out to all family and friends of the victims.

Since our trip has Poland as our goal I felt like posting this was on it’s place.

Hm quite some bad news. I thought with some of the new parts that a major issue had been fixed. But alas, it aint fixed yet. So after some KM’s of cycling the front left crank will losen up and eventually just fall off. Well I won’t let it come that far but basically that’s the issue.

The chain transporter seems to work great. It all makes a new sound that sounds more like a P-51 Mustang than a bicycle.. but as long I go forward I won’t complain.

Also today during the test-ride my both tyres where having not a lot of air in them.. so I had to push like I was climbing a mountain.

So.. I can’t train yet, have stuff to fix and am a bit tyred. Damn. Luckily I bought some whiskey, yay!

For me this was a quite difficult decission. Go to a place and then just make sure I get back, or do twice the distance but go back by train?

In the end I’d do the same milage (I think around 1000-1400 km) but I get to see twice as much new area than otherwise.

Sure you can do a different route back, but I think the major culture-shock and challenge will be in Poland. So actually go into Poland and see how far I can get might be way better for my learning-experience.

The poll said 8 to 1 that I should go further and take a train back. I’ve now made up my mind I will do that. Time for a new poll haha!

“Luscious Liz”

is the name of Sebastian Vettel’s Formula one race car. Aparently he gave all of his Formula one cars a name. So I was wondering what name I could give to my bike… I mean the idea is nice and personal.

If anyone has a suggestion it’s welcome. So far Silly Dutchie came into mind. So if I won’t get other idea’s that will be the name of my bike.

About his car.

From a guy who lives in Poznań I’ve heard that the city is a LOT nicer. It might be a better goal than Gorzow Wielkopolski. The difference isn’t even that much. Let’s say about 120km. In the worst conditions imaginable this will add 1.5 days of cycling in Poland.

Hmmm.

In the Route section you can see a map full of drawing-pins.
I’ve had numerous worried mails that the route might not suit my tyres and I might actually get a lot of flat tyres.

Just to clarify the matter, do not worry they are there to pin down our waypoints.

But thanks for the concerns!!
-Steven.