Traveling rules. Exploring new places or revisiting old spots you haven’t been to for years, meeting new people and catching up with old friends, all garnished by sunny weather and hopefully a bike – I believe we can all agree on the dopeness of that. There’s an external and internal voyage so to speak, especially if you’re travelling long distance by bike. Cause no matter how stunning the landscape you’re riding through might be, the monotony of cycling will finally lead you to a meditating kinda state and you’ll be thinking about the most absurd things while staring at a beautiful ocean or mountain. The longer the trip, the stranger the thoughts. No need for detail here, I think anyone who’s travelled more than about 150km per day for a couple of days knows. Now please try to remember the longest trip you’ve ever been on and all the nasty thoughts you had, I mean the ones way past ‘what the fuck am I doing here, cycling my sore ass around instead of havin a chill?’. Got it? Now let me indroduce you to these fine gentlemen:

That’s right, solar powered cycling maniacs from Belgium of all places. I met them in Croatia, they were looking for a place to eat and sleep, as they were doing for quite some time as they told me. I vaguely remember all the countries they’ve allready been to, let alone the ones they were still going to travel. Of course they drew attention and quickly they were surrounded by cyclists of all kinds who wanted to know all about their rides:

Those guys were long distance professionals, no doubt about that. Of course they built the whole solar rear rack and all that shit themselves, everything had a function and seemed well thought out. Especially the cockpit:

Now there’s something to look at next time you’re cycling and your brain starts to wander off. Kilometers: Check. Voltage: Check. Ampere hours left: Check. Current speed: Check. Total kilometers: What? 7596. Thou shall be quiet, fixed gear traveller. ‘But it aint as real as us, they got gears and solar power, anyone can do that’. Wrong. Anyone can buy a fixed gear, go cycling for a week or two and feel like the touring king of the world. Just make sure to take a GoPro. But who the fuck can build a ride like this and go cycling for at least 3 months?

Ok they probably didn’t make the solar cells themselves but everything else was custom made. And of course the dudes were super polite and sweet. No bragging about their rides or the distance they would cover. None of that. Just some real honest question: ‘Do you know where to get some good food? And tons of it too?’.

Doesn’t get more pure than that.

Cycle, eat, sleep, think nasty thoughts, repeat..

• belgium, cockpit, cockpitporn, croatia, custom, cycletheworld, longdistance, solarpower, travel
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