Project VELAIA

In these minutes I’m leaving home and heading for Frankfurt – will report more when I find the time.

I left at 7pm from home. My legs were great and so were the motivation and weather. First I cycled the Neckar valley along the heavy frequented B27 road to Mosbach and then took a former rail track (now cycling way) to Mudau in the middle of the Odenwald. Having climbed about 360m I got a downhill of the same size at a good speed and total darkness. I arrived near Miltenberg at the Main river and followed it down over Aschaffenburg to Frankfurt. Short after Aschaffenburg I slept for an hour and continued at 5pm with the sunrise!

In Frankfurt I heard a strange voice behind me saying that I should go aside. I checked my speakers but they were turned off. Then I looked back and saw a blue police car behind me! I was lucky that they were not looking for me

A few kilometers further down the cycling path I met another recumbent StreetMachine GT rider and we had a short chat. I continued to Kriftel where I arrived at 10am.

There my SMGT was inspected and they recognized some other issues with this model of the year 2000 and decided to change the whole frame for safety reasons! I had to leave it there until Thursday 6pm. The people working @ HP Velotechnik were all very cool and young. We’ve had nice conversations and from 1pm to 3pm I slept under a tree in front of the factory.

I left at 5pm and went to a Turkis kebap kiosk for a vegetarian Yufka – yum yum! Then I met 2 nice guys helping me to find the right way in Kriftel and we cycled together for some kilometers.

At 8pm I arrived in Rüsselsheim, where Jürgen Eick lives. We ate something and had an interesting conversation until we went to bed at about 10pm.

Hey everybody,

it’s not listed in my Technical->Hardware section yet, but pictures it can take, see:

Yesterday I’ve finished my new front LED light. It’s a double Seoul P4 3.5W star installation using Mobdar optics. I’ve built it following instructions from Ulli Horlacher – big thanks to you, Ulli! Last night I tested them on my first night ride – the performance is staggering!! The only con seems to be that seeing stars becomes more difficult due to the reflections of street signs and therefore the glare of your eyes

I’ll have to modify my start date at home quite a bit because the producer of my recumbent, HPVelotechnik, has agreed to check the bike before I leave. It’s not far from my home, so that I’ll be able to get there in a reasonable time. Therfore I’ve updated the route page in Germany.

Thanks to HPVelotechnik for working hard to make this possible, even though they’re in a hard situation (moving to another production facility) right now!

Last night I got an idea: why not set out on a beautiful night ride with a clear sky and do some work for the pupils writing their final exams (Abitur) at my former school. I did some preparations and here are the results (our slogan was “running for points” when we did the final year):