Today I went for a nice 40 km bikeride to Dronten. During this ride I did an average of 30 km/h !! I was amazed myself. Just FYI, the wind was from the front so this made things far more difficult. And what would I have to find there? Ligfietsshop Tempelman. The nr 1. specialist for recumbents bike IMHO. But why you may ask? Let’s call it a small “pimp my ride”.

My bike was a secondhand bike when I bought it. The condition was quite okay but the price was indicating it already. Still without any replacement parts except for the rubber, I made it to Sweden plus a lot of other fun trips. Now I think it is time to get new parts. Since I will be going on this ridiculous journey to Poland I had to decide: a new bike or keep this one and have it fixed. I saw some awesome bikes second hand but I couldn’t make the decision. They would cost me a lot of money and I would have to sell the stinger. Was than an option for me? Well, no. I love my stinger and thus I decided to keep it and have it fixed.

Anyway I ordered a lot of new parts and have most of them added to the bike. Well actually, all of them. I wanted to be sure that these parts are placed properly on the bike. Yes I can be quite a tech guy, but when I’m going to use my bicycle to reach high speeds and long distances, I want to be sure I can trust on my equipment. Especially with expensive new stuff.

So what I ordered was:

- Shimano Deore Rear Derailleur
- New casette with 11-34 gears (currently I was having 11-28 so this will help me in the mountains/hills)
- New front boom
- Front derailleur
- Avid BB7 discbrakes front and rear.
- New chain.

So to give a small bottomline:
THIS BIKE IS GOING TO ROCK!!!

Big thanks to my job by the way since they are my biggest “sponsor”. Hehe. Will post a very nice picture when the bike is ready, can’t wait!!!!

Yes I’ve been promoting recumbentbikes for quite a while now and it’s good to see that also stationary fitness bikes recognize the benefits of a recumbent bike. I’ve came across an article about fitness bikes today that underlined the advantages of a recumbent bike. Was this from recumbent bike fans? No it was not.

In this article they compare fitness bikes like stationary bikes, spinning bikes, dual action bikes and recumbent bikes. This was written by fitness fans simply comparing all the sorts of equipment that they work with.

In their article they state out a lot of benefits but I love this quote more than anything else in the article: “The Experts Recognize the Advantages of Recumbent Bikes”.

FINALLY! I mean recumbents rocks. A lot of people find them weird or scary. Today I had 6-7 kids watching my bike and saying “wow cool bike!”. One of them said “is that for disabled people?

I just replied joking with “yes it is, I have only one leg, my other leg is fake”. On what he replied? “wow… really?” And then me going “No”. So yes that was quite fun.

ANYWAY I just recommend you reading this article and have fun!

Pro Fitness Rowing Machines - Recumbent Exercise Bikes

Well well well, there it is. Joost’ new bicycle! He bought it some days ago and already start pimping it. He paid like 75 euro’s for it and it’s in a very good condition right now. It’s a Giant bicycle with really good parts. It’s quite old but certainly not more than 10 years or so.

The tires need new ones, but those aren’t that expensive. Also Joost bought a light system for it and the arm support on the steer of the bike. We’ve tested it thoroughly and so far it really drives well.

Today we went for a small ride of about 40 kilometers and I have to say: Joost is quick on this ride. We did an average of about 25-26 km/h with tops of 30 km/h which we could perform for 10-15 minutes straight. OKAY I will admit the wind was nicely in the back, but still.

The weather was lovely and the sun was shining. The wind was quite strong but it was all good for training. We sat on the beach and had a drink there. Then we continued in more nature environments.

Last but not least I’ve also bought something for his bike: a speedometer. It doesn’t have a LOT of options but it shows the speed and trip/total distance very accurately, and that’s exactly what Joost wanted. I have some more options on my speedometer but to be honnest: I’ve never ever in the history of everything used it. Except for the light function maybe…

Either way it was a nice 40 km trip we did today and Joost is very happy with his bike. I have some adjustments to make to mine but I’m confident my ride will be in mint condition soon!

-Steven.

Today I did the first 40 km of our trip. Just to check out how the roads are and if I still have it in me. Well I gotta say cycling with these new shoes is weird. I got all sorts of pain on places I wasn’t used to. On the other side, this shouldn’t be surprising.

The thing is with these shoes, you’ll use a lot of muscles that you normally don’t use THAT much. And now all of a sudden out of the blue I started using them for a in total 90 km trip. But in the end when the muscles were all warmed up, all of a sudden all went well.

It’s weird to be attached to your pedals. I tried to stop because I “had to go”, and couldn’t detach my left foot from the pedal resulting in me falling over when my bike reached the speed of 0 km/h. GREAT. It must have looked funny, but I was in horror. Nah not really.

The speed increase is cool, especially when going uphill. I think these shoes will be very useful for that! They also ventilate really good so I don’t expect sweaty feet haha.

I also took some pictures. I really liked this one so that’s why I posted it. If you click on it you will see an enlarged version.

Anyway it was a good ride, but I definitely have to work on my condition. Still, 90 km/h with an average of 26 km/h is quite sweet.

Till next time!

As some might know I’m currently working at Univé. And when I was at Profile to get a new bidon I saw that I had received my first paycheck. Nice! So wandering through the store with the new found money I decided to do some serious shopping. And let’s be honest if you think about shopping, what item does pop in your mind first? Yes. Shoes.

I’ve seen a lot of bicycles and recumbents mounted with SPD  pedals. At first I thought they where a bit scary and maybe people were being overenthusiastic about the use of them. But yesterday I was seriously considering them. Between all the carbon-made-EUR300-shoes that looked like they were designed by Nasa I saw this Shimano FN21 shoe. They said it was made for mountain-biking, but it is a LOT lighter than the shoes I’m currently working. So step one done, weight-profit. Also the material has a very open structure so it ventilates very good. Second step down, smelly and sweaty feet! And the third step that I found rather important was, that these shoes cost about a third of the rest they had there. THEY WERE ON SAIL! Whoopdeedoo, I love sale.

But if you buy these shoes, you won’t buy them for their ventilating powers or the weight. No they are SPD pedals. SPD stands for “Shimano Pedaling Dynamics” and it’s a system where the shoe is attached to the pedal by a clicking system. You just snap it in. What does this mean? Well if you ride a bike then there are only 3 things you need to do. Keep balance, steer and pedal. If you pedal then you use several muscles to push the pedal down (or to the front in my case). If your shoes are attached to the pedal you will have the ability to pull the pedals back and thus use a lot more muscles for the same movement. This will increase the amount of power you can put into the pedals. Especially if you’re doing hills these pedals are said to be very effective. I hope it will work.

Yesterday I did a small test ride with them, and so far I can only say I really have to get used to them. First impression is very positive though. No miracle workers, but the will definitely add their value to the trip.

The pedals that I bought with these shoes are from BBB (Bicycleparts for Bikers by Bikers… LOL!). It seems to be a decent brand even though I never heard of it before. Then again, I’m not much into bicycle brands hehe. They are dually usable which means that one side has a SPD system, and the other side doesn’t. So I can use this with my special new shoes, or just with regular shoes.

Training Route Steve *Click to enlarge*

Hey guys! It was a bit silent but 2 MAJOR newsupdates are coming up! But next about this… eh, soon. When we think the time is right for this special announcement haha.

SO what else is going on? Well, I (Steve) found myself a job. It’s a VERY nice job and I love doing it, but it costs me 12 hours a day 5 days a week. Why? I spend 2 hours getting there, 8 hours at work and 2 hours to get back. Training is difficult but I try to eat there around 5-6, go home, get here around 8 and go for a bike-ride around 8:30. This is the route I’m currently doing, tested it today and it’s a fun route.

I’ve had major problems with the hills in Sweden since I’m on a recumbent bike. A lot of recumbent bikers are saying I shouldn’t complain about it and just train so that is what I’m doing. By doing this route I will go up six large and quite long bridges. They’re not the end of the world but I guess better than training on a 100% flat surface.

Also I’ve been doing this WHOLE route in my highest gear. Except for the first 5 minutes of warming up. By doing this I want to train my legs to become stronger. Besides this I also want to train on cardio so I can do this all day long, but I don’t see any problems in this.

Either way: I’ve got a busy schedule. That’s for sure.

So what was I doing? Planning my way through Germany. That’s all. I went to Google Earth, I selected a waypoint, checked the roads… then I said to Joost: “Hey look at this, the roads are really bad here. Hm here the buildings look quite old as well… wait a minute…!”. It was this moment I zoomed out, saw it all and realized what it was.

Krampnitz is a small village near Berlin. It’s about 80 km east of Germany’s capital. Near Krampnitz is the old Russian base that has been left years ago when the wall fell. The barracks, buildings, main residents and many more buildings are still standing today, rotting away removing it’s own history. There are lot’s of beautiful history-rich buildings which are a perfect set for some great photo’s.

So our plans? Yeah we’ll stay a day, take photo’s. This is the reason I might take a lens or two extra with me. The 23mm, 15mm fisheye and the all-round lens that I bought (will post about this later) are certainly going to get along with my Canon 5D MKII. What to expect? A lot of pictures. That’s for sure.

So where to sleep you might think?

Yeah good question. I think there’s a good chance we can sleep near the whole base. I’ve heard many reports of patrolling cars. However, I’ve also read a lot of people just go there for a day to take pictures. If this is true I guess we can freely take some great photographs of the whole base. I hope to find a lot of Russian paintings, texts and more stuff.

Anyway I google’d the place so here’s some more pics for you to enjoy!

FERRIES! No we haven’t had enough! 2-3 ferries? MORE MORE! Yes we LOVE THEM! This time the Rogätz Ferry will be on the menu. Important to check when it actually goes. If you look it up you find where the Rogätz Ferry is going. NO SHIT that it’s traversing the Elbe. The fact I know the name Rogätz Ferry might probably also show I want to pass the Elbe…

Anyway after a LONG search I’ve found out that the trip will cost us 1.50 and they will rest for 3 days in the whole year. BUT. Be aware that “sometimes the weather is also crazy” they might not sail. This is from their website.. WHAT THE HECK DO GERMANS HAVE WITH THE WORD CRAZY!?

Anyway it seems like a done deal. The city itself is pretty cool as well. It’s small, it has a ferry and some very old medieval structures. Awesome! We’ll be enjoying the ride!

SUMMER SCHEDULE
1st April – 31 October
Monday – Friday
5:45 am – 20:00 h
Sat / Sun / Holidays
8:00 am – 20:00 h

Lunch break each 12.00 – 12.30 h
11.45 h last crossing

Source.

Hillersleben. If you are looking on Google Earth you will see this small town that I’d rate xx. (2 out of 4.. It’s not a town but more a large town with probably a supermarket and some resources). But I decided to look it up anyway, I mean you’ll never know what for a weird, cool or shocking history 5 houses and 2 streets might have.

By doing this I quickly found out more stuff was going on here. Apparently these 20 houses and some roads (okay it might be even a bit more) used to be the hometown of quite some engineers in the second world war. The Nazis built a secret base near the town where they built a lot of experimental things.

A WEIRD MINESWEEPER

If you think this minesweeper is from a movie, you’re wrong. This is a minesweeper that was built in Hillersleben’ secret Nazi base. There was one finished, and captured in Hillersleben in 1945 by the American troops. Quite a weird vehicle hm? I mean place it in a game like Red Faction (which takes place on Mars) and it would just be “another Marsian vehicle”.

More info on this … thing… can be found HERE.

Okay but apart from making semi futuristic vehicles built to clean minefields (mostly created by themselves I guess lol!).. what else does Hillersleben hide from us?

In 1943 the Nazis tested a gun near Hillersleben that would be used for long distance targets. They tested the weapon for about half a year and with partial charges. In other words they shot at very close range to just test the basics of this weapon. So what was this for a weapon?

Okay if you hold an average rifle the barrel is about 40-50 cm long.
A tank as a barrel with a variety of 0.8 up to 3-4 meters long. Some long distance tanks have longer barrels ( 5-6  meters…)

This device had a barrel of 30 meters…. ’nuff said I’d say.

Anything else?

Yeah I guess the town has some nice houses and a very cool old church. Also there’s supposed to be an old hospital that is not being used anymore. I guess we could couchsurf there and be on our way again the day after. If we do an average of 120 km/ day then Hillersleben would be on our planning to make camp anyway.

But we’ll see!

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!