Zombikes.

Title says it all.

One of our bikes has died and got back to life more than once now. Just a few tweaks here and there to squeeze those extra kms out of it a and couple of insults to the saints of rubber (St Rubbert?) and bicycles...

Yesterday was the king of bicycle zombiefying days! I had promised my friend David before we drove off that we wouldn't have any flat tires. Well, I am happy to say that it just happened once.

Before the flat tire... ehhhh, let 's just assume that a good rear axle seems to be mandatory for comfortable biking, that the wheel doesn't turn when the chain gets tangled in the pedal and that gears do have a morbid sense of humor, especially when going uphill. Maybe they are not overrated after all...

But we think all is fixed now (we'll see tomorrow) and, anyways, it was raining till seven pm so the break was actually in a good moment... Running between the camping and the bicycle shop a couple of times would have been funnier if the camping wasn't on top of the hill, but the views were great and the wine helped a bit.

FLAT TIRE!!

BROKEN AXLE!!

 

  

COMBINATION OF FLAT TIRE AND BROKEN AXLE, YEAH BABY!!

 

 If you are to get stuck, we advise somewhere with bars, coffee, ice cream and of course bicycle guys who can fix anything :)

Everyday we learn a couple of things and one of today's is that ice-cream with psychedelic colors does not necessarily taste good or makes you high...

 It seems that in this town at eleven in the morning all the inhabitants go for cake and coffee and most of them look fucking hungry. We won't tell the name (it starts with Bad and finishes with Pyrmont), but these people really jump into their creamy strawberry cakes like zombies dig in brains and with that same sort of apathy until they spot a piece of pie... Euh, so just that you know, if you are of the sweet kind, better not pass this place, you might get bitten :)

Sometimes one wonders what families passing by in their wonderfully hot, dry and comfortable Audis and BMWs must think- I'm sure they envy us when seeing all the fun we have repairing our vehicles in the middle of the tempest and admiring the elegant mud stains all the way up to our waists. Hmmmm, is that why they are honking all the time and flashing their lights at us, out of pure joy and happyness that we are there, doing this, in front of them on a small road where they can't pass us, for kms and kms...? :) I find supermotivating that we are making them so happy, so we adjust tempo, little slower so they can enjoy us longer.

It feels good to be good to people and we can go to sleep with a clear conscience that we have yet again done a good deed and brought some happiness to this world. 

PLUR.

    
                  

PS: no zombies or cakes got hurt during the making of this blog. Or there was that one, but he doesnt matter ...

 

The end is near!

... The end of the beginning, that is! After about 500 km, several reparations, three hundred liters of rain per square cm a second and an equal amount of non further specified types of alcohol in our systems we finally got to Externsteine (hurrah, hurrah, cheering in the background).

Today is Tuesday, by the way, and we are in a place called Bad Lippespringe with our host Frank, who took us for a movie yesterday: The Hangover 3... The cinema was in Paderborn and we were almost nostalgic when we bumped into the club where we spent a crazy night at almost a year ago, the only thing that changed was the name, maybe our passage from last year had such an impact on this town that there was no other choice than simply changing the name, if they would like to continue some kind of serious business there... but lets stay with the theme...

Crazy thing here going to the cinema- it was surprise night where people pay 4 euros for a movie without knowing what movie it will be, and in which language. We were prepared to see Titanic or some Japanese drama without subtitles, but we were lucky- it was just the dramatization of our lives but in funny way... It was cool- they had a contest in the cinema where u could win an old used couch or a pretty pink top. We were superhappy our number was not picked as the lucky winners had to stand up in the crowd and we are soooo shy... 

The day after it was finally time to go with Frank and his car to Externsteine. It's the highlight of the trip and it can just go downhill from here- God, what will we do the next few months, what was the plan again exactly, why are we doing this... Hopefully we can get our freak on, and enjoy some of that lovely insane madness that a sunny summer normally should offer us.

Externsteine looks as nice as last year and a bit less blurry, a bit strange without our dog Cosma to catch the sticks we would be throwing at this ancient and holy monument. We took a walk until Kelly started to get biblical, again, connecting the dots (the artificial lake and the great flood, the pagan stones to the crusaders, the darkness to the existence of light and his own existence as a dot of darkness in the divine light)... which is why we decided to just go and try our host's sweet Macedonian wine before dinner and play a game of dice. THANKS to Frank for all the coffee and the good care he has taken of us.

From the last post till Monday we did a lot of nice biking and singing, remenissing and looking forward.

We met Kelly's parents and their good friends who were coming back from their trip to Croatia and spent a ... evening and equally nice morning together

Wish we could tell you more about the nice people we met, or the beautiful towns and nature scenes we have passed, but the awful truth is that it's quite hard to see anything or meet anyone on streets that have suddenly turned into rivers and if the only thing you can do is look for shelter somewhere or wipe the rain away from your face... But don't worry about us, friends, we are basically laughing our way to Croatia, singing loud and bad along the canals and spoiling ourselves to tasty food and occasional hostels where we dry our wet socks and take looong warm showers.

Tomorrow morning we are back on the saddles, making our way up, destination Drebkau for partying with Ariane and GoaGill.

Hopefully there will be lots of mountains to conquer, rivers to cross and dragons to fight along the way.

We are armed with three different colors of pesto, weetabix and mozarella.

Nothing can go wrong, we ask the spirits of mental mass destruction to guide us on our path.

And now the proof that we are becoming some seriously professional bloggers here: we've even tried to make a photoslide of the last few days accompanied by music :)

Hasta la vista!

The psycycle express triple X

So, this is it right?

The wonders of psycycling. It's been 4 day now or 5... who's keeping track, right?
Not us. Man, I think even if we have somebody in front of us showing us the way, we would still be very able to get lost.
But then again, wasn't that the whole point ?

But ok, here we go!

Highlights of the past four days, starting with how much my ass hurt, it hurts like something that hurts very much.
So I've got myself some serious psycycling pant in the Lidl :)
Maria claims I look like Borat/ Blues Brother on a bicycle but hey ...

And then rain, rain and some more rain a bit of sun , just enough to get a good sunburn.
Some nice views here and there , a lake , a field , cows and birds and so on , things u could imagine yourself, so we wont bore you with it .
I mean nature is nature trees and stuff, green brown and blue being the main colors for the scenery. And still we begin to really share that need of pouring a sip of our picnic wine into the ground, like many of our ancestors did... somehow needing to tell the Earth that we do love her for sharing the nice landscapes with us... how to say this without cheesiness? Words are made to express things and we try, even if most times we cannot describe things cause we fear sounding too sugary or whatever :-P We are  totally loving the green fields, the gray water, the gray skies, the gray birds and all those cuchi-cuchi cute rabbits that cross the paths in front of us...

Not understanding most of the signs now, so we cross bridges without getting off the bike and the Rhin is a very wide river and the train that crosses it next to us is really fast and produces a lot of wind... Nice oxidized graffiti waltz...

Just about a good 190 kms to go till Externsteine and it seems the weather will stay about the same for another week or so...

And now
pictures :)

  

Tuesday.

A little lost ant crosses the screen right now, up and down trying to find her way. Like us, cycling in the rain and appearing in Germany after crossing a forest that started in Holland...

Biking a lot here. Kelly's pedalling becomes incredibly faster when I sing, lol.

FinkBrau, quite tasty and cheap enough.

Charming channels and beautiful forests. Cheers to the incredible bike paths in Belgium and Holland!

 










More or less half way to Externsteine! Enjoying the landscapes and the quiet evenings before going to sleep, but ready to party with GoaGill in 3 weeks!!!

Day 1...disaster strikes again...

Hahahaha, just kidding!
 
So, this bicycle travelling is really getting to me, man: all this nice views, lovely roads by the water, the calm soothing sound of the Dender floating by...
Its just too much ...
Really happy we went for the speakers to steer it all up a little, i mean if we want silence we'll just make like a kind of bike trip right, in nature and stuff:)
Having our little goaparty on the road, really good for keeping a good tempo i must say!

And the atrocities of bicycle traveling you couldn't imagine, rain, beer, music, laughing, making fun with Jesus (or of) at a chapel, going left or right or just straight, rain again, smoking, bike broken, bike fixed, wondering where to sleep, sleeping place found...

To top it all off, luck arranged a sleeping spot that you could compare with a Hilton of hobos kind of accommodation...
One thing breaking (chain of the bicycle got a bit stuck), leads up to another thing forming.
In this case a warm inside place :) And we were just discussing all day on how nice it would be to put up our tent in this Mediterranean rainy season, I guess it just never goes the way you imagine it to be!

Well, at least we've been a little wet from the rain, Maria has got a cold and i've got some dirt on my hands repairing the chain. Otherwise it would be just to much fun!

Just 410 to Externsteine!

                                       

Thank you so much to Minna and her dad, who offered us a
supercomfy airmattres in their garage somewhere between Buggenhout and Mechelen :)

Leaving...

... and it does not stop drizzling, natuurlijk!

When we first started to think about this trip we pictured sun, spring, a warm breeze... but the weather today happens to be as shitty as two months ago (luckily without snow) and we had to load the bikes under the rain...

Al mal tiempo, buena cara, we say in Spain. So we'll leave in 30 mins or so: a cold day but a warm happy feeling inside :)

Preparing :)

So we madmaxed the living daylight out of our bicycles- I have the feeling that people will feel a pending apocalypse coming as we're packed like the most serious prepper out there, just couldnt fit the machineguns on the steeringwheel...

Thanks to Elke& Robin for the bags, the water container and the shower/ female-emergency-peeing-device ;-)

Just two more nights!

Almost ready to rumble ;-)

Whoever said you need to be in good shape for a bike ride is hopefully wrong!
Anyway well have a go @ it!

Leaving from Belgium, first destination Externsteine in Germany, to suck up some good energy from our ancestors, whoever they were.

From there we head for Drebkau (Germany) to go and enjoy Goa Gill (15-16 june) http://www.goabase.net/71231
When we've lost our beer goggles and are able to get lost in a straight line again, we'll head for Vibe festival, Chotevice, Czech Republic (27-30 june) http://vibefestival.eu/ivgenerate/
Some 500 kms later we'll be getting lobster red under the magnificent SUN festival (24-28 july) http://sunfestival.info/2013/in Csobankapusta, Hungary. Gosh, names get harder and harder :)

... And finally some 650 kms, 20 kilos lighter and an empty bank account later well be ready to rumble LOST THEORY http://www.losttheoryfestival.com/ and prove the world we made it :) ... and hopefully find a lift back to Belgium because we probably won't feel like bicycling for another decade or two :)

If there are any other bikefreaks willing to join us, you're more than welcome.
All on your own responsability, that goes without saying- we won't provide shelter, food or booze... But anyway... Come and join us!! ;)

Here on this page we'll be posting our route, supposed progress, some photos from time to time...

If we don't post something for a week it must mean were kidnapped by hungry hippies...

Please take a look at the route we've made with bikemap http://bikemap.net/en/user/fb100003597693480/, and if you find yourself somewhere nearby, we'll be more then happy to go and sleep in your house, or put our tent in the garden, drink your beer, use your shower and eat your delicious food... We know you want to :)
 
Eternally thankful, sure!