Short holiday

I just got back from a short week's holiday. Together with my wife I spent 5 days in Bareveld, a small town in the north of the Netherlands. Since it was only a short holiday and I had to take a bike with the car, the only bike that came into view was the Z Pro. Since I knew that Wijnandt, who owns a Rans' Cruz, lives less than 6 miles from this place, I sent him an e-mail letting him know I'd be there this week so we could meet. We met on Tuesday morning and it was very awkward to know that 2 out of the 4 CF bikes here in Europe were at one place at that time ! We switched bikes so I could try Wijnandt's Cruz while he tried my Z Pro. While both bikes are built up for completely different purposes, it was nice to ride another CF bike !
Wijnandt was so kind to invite me to his home, where he showed me his other bikes : he also owns a WAW velomobile, a Grasshopper from HP Velotechnik and a rowing bike .

Lots of nice sceneries near the canals (here in Oude Pekela)

During my first ride on Monday night, another spoke from my rear wheel broke (surprise, surprise !). Luckily, Wijnandt took me to a bike shop in his home town who replaced the spoke so I could keep riding my Z Pro. Until Tuesday afternoon that was, when another spoke broke ! I was so pissed that during my short holiday I broke 2 spokes in 2 days that I called my bike shop back home and ordered a very strong hand built wheel set. Funny thing though is that I kept riding with a broken spoke for the rest of the week without any significant problem. I could not use my back brake because I had to unlock it to keep my rear wheel running, but luckily the front brake worked okay.

On Thursday I rode my Z Pro to Memorial Center Camp Westerbork , which was only 26 miles from the place we stayed. This is a place were there used to be a camp during WWII. From 1942 to 1945 no less than 107.000 Jews stayed in this place waiting to be deported to Germany. Only 5.000 of them survived. We took a guided tour around the camp. It was really impressive, to say the least ....

Just a small part of the 102.000 rememberance stones representing the one who died ....

The Bornem Bike Deathride

Yesterday I took part to the Bornem Bike Death Ride, an annual bike event organised in the provence Vlaams-Brabant. The reason for this name is that the 62,5 m ride has a hilly course (we have no mountains in my country), which makes it ideal to test your level of fitness. Although there's also a shorter more family friendly 22 m ride, most part of the riders show up for the 62,5 m ride on road bikes. In total, some 6.304 riders showed up this year.

Since it was the first time I participated and there was some kind of climbing involved, I decided to take my Z Pro to complete this ride.

I showed up at the registration line with my yellow Z Pro and wearing my SPD-sandals, which caused a lot of comments from the roadies. I think most of them considered me some kind of geek, seeing me on a bike they've never seen before and wearing sandals !

As soon as I started however, I passed everyone of them. I could easily maintain average speeds of +20 mph on the flats and especially on the climbs it was very easy to pass other riders. I only got passed once by 3 riders, but I overtook them on the first uphill. No one passed me after that !

At the first stop, several riders walked up to me to ask questions about the Z Pro like where I got it, did I make it myself (yeah, right !), does it ride easily, etc. Of course I answered all their questions patiently, referred to the Rans and CF website and even let some riders sit on my bike. I got the same questions at every stop and mostly the sarcasm they had at the start had turned into some kind of admiration (for the bike, that is ;-)

I finished the ride in 3h20" with an average speed of just above 19 mph, which is not bad at all, considering that I live in a very flat area.

The next time I'll take part of such an event with my Z Pro, I might take some small pieces of paper with the Rans and the CF website for further information !

The medal I got after finishing the ride