It’s been well over a year since my beautiful, cold, challenging, heavy, sunny, rough, wonderful bikepacking tour in Spain and Portugal. I got back half…
My previous blog ended with my encounter with the intriguing José. The retired director who chose to live simply and study Peruvian natural medicine. Before…
That bikepacking is quite different from biketouring is a fact I’d gotten a taste of during the summer. My motivation for this switch was mainly…
Seated in a comfortable lawn chair, I catch the last yellow rays of sunlight at the end of a hot day. It’s been 35 celsius…
‘Mwaaahooohaaaaaaaaa…’ Yawns… Stretches out… Is it here? Has spring arrived? Green surrounds me, sunshine warms my face and a few drops of rain land on…
I’m writing you from a warm apartment in Tilburg (Holland). I’m ‘lucky’ cause I found a comfortable place to stay for almost 6 months. But…
PLUM VILLAGE A buddhist retreat had been on my wish- and to do list for quite a while. And here I was, at a two…
Three weeks ago I got on my bicycle in the morning heading north. I was gonna ride across the French Pyrenees to the Atlantic and…
Saturday night, two weeks ago, I got up at 2 a.m. in Utrecht and at 2:30 sharp I got the text ‘I’m here’. My friend…
Between (re)organising all the travel and cycling gear I’ve collected over the years in my mothers attic, packing my panniers and picking up the last…
THE STATE OF ME It’s been three months since I told you ‘how I burned out riding a bicycle‘. And it’s been over five months…
The world premiere of PEDAL was in Canada , October 2017, the Dutch premiere was last night in Heerlen. So now it’s time to put…
As I’ve told you in my previous blog, my arrival back in the Netherlands (due to a broken collarbone) didn’t go very smoothly. Two days…
(this post was writen on december 18, 2017) When I received an email four weeks ago with the subject ‘Dubai Travelers Festival‘ and starting with…
After three ‘turbulent’ flights I arrived in Calgary in (two) pieces. Stan, who follows my blog, picked me up from the airport. This Polish man…
It feels like I’m cycling in Central Asia. The landscape is wide and wavy with brown and green tones and a lake here and there….
I arrive in Ireland by ferry in the late afternoon. My only plan for the day is to get away from Rosslare city and harbor…
It has only been two weeks since I got on my new bicycle in Tilburg to head south. First into Belgium, then France, England and…
2 months in the Netherlands after 13 months living as a nomad. What’s that like? First of all, it’s great to talk my native language…
It’s been four weeks now since I landed in the Netherlands. Yesterday I did my first presentation about the ride from Alaska to Costa Rica….
On the sofa, in the living room of my mum’s house in Tilburg, with the Tour the France on TV in the background, it’s hard…
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. Countries that would let many father- and mother heart shake with anxiety at the thought of their child traveling through ’em….
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP.. My phone wakes me up. Since I arrived in the south I get up before sunrise every morning. I pack my stuff, have breakfast…
In my last blog I wrote about my ‘speed-course: tourist’. In the recent weeks I’ve been able to enjoy the normal daily life in Mexico…
If you turn your holiday into your daily life, it’s no longer a holiday. Twelve years ago I got on my bicycle for my first…
It’s hot! It’s hot! It feels as if a belt is strapped around my head. Another few gulps of water. My stomach feels like a…
‘Before I tell you my story, I want to take you with me on one particular part of my travels. What’s the hottest temperature you’ve…
I bounce around on my bike on a dirt road with washboard relief, up and down, left and right. My panniers clatter an unclear rhythm….
Not a sign in sight to point me the way to the border. I decide to ask a pedestrian; ‘How do I get to Mexico?’….
*PANG KLANG YEEHAAAAA* in other words: I’M BACK! Recharged, rested, motivated, happy! Wild awake! Two weeks of non-stop camping, vast empty landscapes of steppe and…
With sunglasses on my nose, a tanktop on and a clear blue sky above me I’m looking out over the white mountains of the Sierra…
2016 In 2016 I took a turn. An unsigned turn without a street name, an unpaved road not to be found on any map or…
I have to admit that over the last few months ‘crossing the United States‘ started to seem more like a necessity then a pleasure to…
‘You haven’t been gone that long yet..‘ my brother said to me on the phone this morning, as we casually discussed when I might be…
It’s 4 p.m. when I arrive at the (closed) campground in Yahk. Yahk, as I was told, is a village of about 40 people scattered…
9 days, that’s how long it took before I felt good enough to get back on the bike. 9 days in which I felt a…
My latest blog I wrote on October 9th. The next day I was going to start at the Icefiedls Parkway. Nonetheless I didn’t get to…
A trip is like a dish, a combination of ingredients. Sometimes it’s like a three course menu; a memorable starter (where and how I wake…
This whole trip started with wanting to see and experience Alaska. Strongly inspired by ‘Into the Wild’, where Chris McCandless refers to the wilderness, the…
Right at the moment when I open my laptop to get started on my new blogpost the emergency alarm rings. My heartbeat trips for a…
..or ‘SAYING GOODBYE TO ALASKA’ About 50 meters before the border was a nice viewing point. I just noticed a sign saying the border closes…
It’s me! As I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror I saw it, like I do every time after a hard,…
Getting ready to write my blog, sitting at my laptop at the Denali National Park entrance, all I can think is; ‘there is so much…
A-LAS-KA! ALASKAAAAAAAA!!! Finally I’m here! Finally. I’m in that one place that was on the top of my wish list for so long. After fighting…
Last april 6th, exactly 1 year after I rode my bicycle intro Germany at the start of my Europe-Asia trip, I received an email from…
Hafnarfjörður! ‘Aah! Hafnarfjörður!!’ Exactly, that place where I got on my bicycle 4 weeks ago, butterflies tickling my stumac. That’s where I arrived two days…
It’s been 16 days now since I started my ‘big trip’. At this moment there’s 988km on the speedometer of my bicycle. That’s not a…
Hafnarfjörður! What? Hafnarfjörður … that’s Icelandic for “harbor fjord” and Iceland’s third largest city with 27,000 inhabitants! From behind my laptop I have a view…
