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Into the Rift (and it’s consequences)

Sofiane Seheli: “A shower, a hot meal, a bed. The simpelst things in life. You go ride your bike a bunch and then, it becomes the best.”

In all these years and of course without the extremes of an ultra race, I’ve more or less learned similar things on a bike. On two wheels and propelled by you’re own power one notices one or two (or three, four, …) things. You might even say recalibrate things.

A lot of us ride 1, 5 or even 20 km in or on engine powered machinery to get something, meet someone, go for a swim or a lot of other thinkable activities. Switching to your own power is more a mental than a physical thing. Just start to peddel. And keep peddeling… Do this for sometime and you can expand you’re perimeter to 30, 40, 50 or god knows how many km. In my opinion the fun will start and the door of insights will open…

Riding and especially riding all seasons, will reset you’re definition for a lot of things. Riding in around 0 C° will make your  20-21 C° heated house quite warm, so why pump up the thermostat to 23 or 25 C° in winter? Some rain during a beautiful ride is after all not so bad as it seems seen from a comfy seat. And a 4 hour ride for sure makes your after bike coffee, beer or meal (or the combination af all of them) even tastier!

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The Royal Fireworks

In the recent political climate I often miss one big element in the climate change debate. The human factor. We as a species and in particular our behavior are the center of the climate problem. And therefore also part and start of the solution!

Air sensors all over the Netherlands and Belgium illustrated on New Years Eve this opinion (or may I say fact?) with verve.

The fireworks, a national hobby for most of the Dutch and some of the Belgians, caused such an increase in air pollution that all sensors went red. Minor detail: the maximum value on the map is 125 µg/m³ particulate matter, the most outrages measurements went up to 1000 µg/m³!

Our behavior has consequences, one way or the other…

Scapeler

Copyright: Scapeler / Source: De Standaard, Nederland vierde met fijnstof, 07/01/2020.

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Oliebollentocht 2019

I’ve always been fascinated by velomobiles, but unfortunately never ridden one myself. In (hopefully soon to be) carbon neutral times, these odd three and four wheelers might be the key to fast, comfortable, relative silent and practical individual transport over a reasonable amount of kilometers. Jan Trenson‘s video report on the Oliebollentocht 2019 is a gentle reminder to get more into these forms of peddle power and aerodynamic wonders…

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The Perfect Motivation

This week is probably the week when a lot of people are full of good intentions… This is until Blue Monday! To keep motivated for the rest of the year it might be a good idea to keep the mindset and the intentions of teenager Rowan Peeters in mind. Instead of going to the gym (and paying the monthly fee) he convinced his mother to buy a Year Round Ticket for the theme park De Efteling. There was one condition: to visit the park he would cycle 36 km one way. A long the way he did the Efteling trip up to three times a week, motivated a friend to join and lost a total of 20 kg. Long live Eftelfietsen! Impressive!!!

 

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VW can’t help it

VW can’t help it but keep continuing to advertise cars in a rather doubtful way. In this T-Roc / Tiguan ad they clearly state that a bigger car makes you a better, more important person. People are strange…

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(Saint Nicolas (Sint) and his helper (Hulpsint))

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(Mother (Mama) and Stepmother (Plusmama))