Ecotrip 2006

Just got back from a 5-day cycling trip, the Ecotrip 2006 (you can find more information about the Ecotrip here). I was planning to do the Ecotrip with my velomobile, but since the weather forecast looked good, I decided to take my wife's Kettwiesel + trailer instead. Turned out to be a good decission, wheather turned out to be excellent, we only had one hour of rain during our whole trip.
The group consisted of 30 people, riding all kinds of different bicycles : mostly 2 wheel recumbents, but also 3 trikes, 2 regular bikes, 1 freight bicycle, 1 velomobile and 1 rowing bike. We left on monday morning and I got back on friday night, with 310 miles on my cycling computer. For those who'd like to see more, you can find my pictures of the trip here.

Since the panniers I used to have on my XP are now on my wifes trike and are staying there, I went shopping for a new set yesterday. I did find an interesting one from FASTRIDER, which I mounted on my XP last night. It has reflecting stitching on all sides and has several smaller pockets, which is easy to put smaller stuff in. Now my cell phone and keys can be put in the smaller outside pockets, making it easier to access. It also has a plastic cover in case it starts raining.

my new panniers

New cranks

Have been riding with the new 153mm crankset for about a week now. Installing them was a piece of cake and didn't take long. Since the crankarms are shorter, I needed to move the seat backwards an inch (more or less). No problem either, since my frame size is an XL. Still haven't found my sweet spot, I still need to adjust the seat a little bit more. What is a problem though, is that the handle bars cannot be extended anymore. The grip tubes were already at maximum reach and cannot be adjusted in length anymore. Rans has recently announced that the XP will be available in 4 different framesizes (from S to XXL), but they all use the same chopper bars, which makes me wonder .... If they would make grip tubes with different lengths, now that would be something different, but .... Think I'm gonna send Rans a mail about this and see what they think of it.

the new 153mm crankset

Today was a beautiful day for riding a bike : blue skies all over and a little wind. Took a ride besides the canal and saw a strange very narrow boat that was docked near the side. Haven't seen anything like it before but it looked very cute. A little over 1300 miles so far ....

a very narrow little boat !