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 ....