Categories: Guest Article

Guest Article: Rule #9 Festivus

Antwerp at night photo: S.N. Severinghaus

One of the finest things about Velominati is it attracts the crazy bastards. Cyclists are slightly unhinged anyway but there are more than a few out there who have no fear. Crazy is not constrained by nationality. Crazy knows no borders. Sure the Randonneurs would do this just to make sure they were happy with their choice of headlamp strap but @bas is not one of those. 

Rapha and Strava sponsor something called the Festive 500. Ride your 500 km between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve for bragging rights and a stinkin’ badge. If you live up North, this is a noteworthy thing to do. Most don’t try to do it all at once, that would be crazy.

VLVV, Gianni

On December 24th, me and three riding friends embarked on a trip from Paris to our hometown of Haarlem in the Netherlands. The idea was to see if we could ride all of the Festive 500 in one ride and ‘get it over with’. We picked a starting location that was approximately 500 kilometers from home and pretty much rode with it from there.

A friend and documentary maker decided that he wanted to see if he could capture us killing ourselves in front of his camera and shot the whole thing.

 

 

bas

Stuff that I think about: mostly on -but not limited to- bikes, boards, skis and coffee. Editor-in-chief of UP/DOWN mountainbike magazine, lover of all bikes, co-owner of Rotgans & Rotgans, an Amsterdam-based action sports marketing agency. Father of Puk, husband to Marja. Personally trying to organise my life around owning (a lot) less stuff.

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  • 'kin-A, great effort, hardcore cloggies. Makes our piddly wee 100km on the 21st look like a warm up.

  • I love that one guy has an insane idea and three other guys want to do it with him. And that would be true anywhere in the world. Maybe it speaks to the male reptilian brain: if riding into the unknown might be exciting and testing, then doing it to the extreme would have to be even better, no?

    And having a professional cinematographer there, brilliant. Our self-filmed heroics usually suck because when things get ugly we either need both hands for the bike or we are so fucking shagged out that filming is not going to happen.

  • Amazing ride - chapeau guys! I was shivering watching you guys in that door-way.

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