40.000 km.

A young German  guy visited us. He took his bicycle with him. Not the way as Germans usually do,  with their bicycles on the top of a large car,………. No, he did it by actually pedalling !   And not as usual, by crossing the German-Dutch boarder,……….. no he first cycled to China, through Australia and New Zealand, through North- and partly South America to get to our home, in The Netherlands !

Yeah, that kind of guy is Daniel Lang ………..

You can call him crazy,…………but he calls himself a velosopher !   A fan of Thoreau, for instance …..

I was surprised to meet a 22 year young fellow who already had been reading Thoreau ! Anybody can read about Thoreau in Wikipedia , but reading and understanding “Walden” is something different. When I was young I had to borrow it in a library, these days you can print it out directly from the Internet !

After a resting day and some good conversations Daniel went further north. I accompanied him the first 20 km. On our way we gave M5 ligfietsen in Middelburg a visit. Daniel was interested in the used technique, but given the fact that he cycled with a average speed of 20 km/h, I think he wouldn’t make advantage of it. I’m glad that Bram didn’t hear Daniel saying “to mount a Rohloff” on the high racer” ….   😉

We passed the Oosterschelde Barrier but were not able to see far, because of the fog. During the ride we had some good conversations about the Dutch cycling infrastructure. He didn’t know David Hembrow but will agree to his “views from the cyclepath”

By the way, Daniel got the inspiration by reading the blog of that other globetrotter, Rob Thomson, who visited us in summer 2007.

Daniel is cycling to Bram van Uden, a well known velomobilist who will host him another night. Via the cycling-city Amsterdam, he will then be cycling to his home in Germany  en thus accomplish the 40.000 kilometers……………………