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Day -x: Preparations: making a mess and saying goodbye

July 24, 2008 by , 3,919 views  
Filed under Friendly people, Gear & stuff, Netherlands, Preparations, Trip reports

We are now several days on the road and have some time to write some proper reports. Frankly I am amazed I can type this, as I was sure that the constant bumping of our bikes and bags over the very rough roads would have destroyed (Our Lenovo X300 laptop), but surprisingly it still works as always, long live the solid state harddisks. If you can actually read this, then it means it has survived all 2 weeks of Dalton Highway, one of the most infamous pieces of dirt road in the world…

But let’s go back a few weeks, back to the lowlands and share our journey with you in words and images.

I am not sure if it is me (us) or is there just no way to properly prepare for a 2.5 year trip? We had been planning since a year ago and still many things had to be done in literally the last minute. At least you can get a lot more done if you use the 8 hours we normally waste on sleeping on working and preparing :)

As our house was already rented out, we moved back and forth between my mom’s house and Romke & Anouks place. R&A have two wonderful kids and they were happy to assist in sorting out all the gear we received from our wonderful , this is Kira, checking out the Ortlieb and gear that sent us.

and this is how part of their livingroom looked during their vacation:

Thanks again, Romke & Anouk & Kira & Jelte, we would not have made it without you.

We took the train up North to say goodbye to my Mother and Sister. By the way, in The Netherlands we have a great railway system, which will get you everywhere in no time. of course people like to complain about the train service, but i think it is perfect, there are even a lot of special spaces for bicycles in every carriage, very useful to do some last minute fine-tuning:

My Mum helped us with some last things and we even managed to make a mess in her place. She was very sad; even though I have been away for many months at a time in the past, this will be the longest period away so far.

My sister lives close and we also visited her to say goodbye. We had a nice dinner at a organic Indonesian restaurant in Assen, with great food and service and we could even park our bikes inside. As with my mom, she was in tears when we waved goodbye from the train, but again somehow I was not sad, maybe we will see each other soon again.

had already said goodbye to her family in March, when she came to Amsterdam. But thanks to the wonders of skype and broadband Internet, she had been talking/videoconferencing with her mum and sister (that almost have the same names as mine) every evening for hours, while packing and sorting stuff.

Going on all these adventures is selfish in a way as we are worrying our friends and family. But I think we can repay their concerns and affection with stories and images and knowledge that we are following our hearts.

ps: we also had a nice going away slash b-day party, but i will post the images in a separate post once we find the images again :)

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Vries, Drenthe: Getting our act together

April 16, 2008 by , 1,626 views  
Filed under Netherlands, Preparations, Sponsors, Trip reports

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Amsterdam & Vries, Drenthe

We have rented out our house for the next few years and are effectively homeless. A great feeling :)

Now we are talking with our gear sponsors to see what they can arrange. It is great to see the faith they have in us and our trip and the wonderful support they are giving. Soon we will talk about them some more and we will set up the special sponsor pages.

For now we are enjoying testing out our new bikes. Wonderful machines. Mine will be called , but Ivana’s green yak still needs a name, any suggestions?

Harry & Ivana testing our new Santos bikes with full Ortliebs in the forests of Drenthe!
More later, now we are packing for a short Istanbul trip, when we are coming back in a few days, we are supposed to either see a lot better or see nothing at all. Laser surgery, here we come!