LOGO JOSE “I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name It felt good to be out of the rain” America – A Horse With No Name (1971) Whe...
Prologue This is a write-up with some pictures of our holiday tour to Crete in summer 2025. My gf, let's call her J., got her license last year, and two days later we departed for a tour of the Alps. We ended up riding about 4000km through Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France. Gorgeous, but also well-traveled and well-known territory. For this year we wanted to do something a bit more…
Map shows all of my motorbike trips, by now 12 years and around 500.000km: (Before anyone mentions it.. around two-thirds of that distance was confined to the Netherlands! Plus at least 20k in Africa and the Middle East, and around 5k in SE Asia) Scroll for local details! Year-round commute and short trips throughout the Netherlands. Yearly multi-week trips into the Alps or Pyrenees. Dozens of…
Well, there it is. 250.000 kilometers! on the Tiger 800. Time for another write-up and maintence summary + costs breakdown! The Tiger is my do-everything bike used year-round, though relatively less in summer when I ride my other bikes more. It was a replacement for my old Transalp , and I have a Speed Triple and an SMT on the side and I occasionally ride an Africa Twin and a few other bikes as…
Approximate route (red there, blue back) Part 1: Netherlands to Naples All of it was made for you and me / 'Cause it just belongs to you and me / So let's take a ride and see what's mine (Iggy Pop, 1977) I left home in August 2022, riding down through Germany and Switzerland and into the alps . I wanted to do a few hikes around the ski resorts that I normally only see in winter, and take some of…
Four short stories -1- The girl at the bar is beautiful. She's wearing a green dress, and high-heeled espadrilles. Her hair is knotted in a stylish side-tail, and her eyes are heavy with make-up. Her smooth skin shines under the bar lights. She's holding a cocktail glass, and fidgets with her hair. She looks no older than eighteen. Meanwhile the man next to her, with one hand on her thigh and…
I finally arrive at the border crossing near the Iranian town of Shalamcheh around mid-day. My heart is racing but at the same time the familiar sight of concrete canopies, travellers with suitcases, and endless lines of trucks is somewhat calming. I take a sip of water, and notice that there's only two small bottles left in my tank bag. I hang up my helmet and jacket on one of my mirrors, grab…
I ran my fingers across the aluminium wreckage. We were standing in a garden bordered by a neatly kept lawn on the outskirts of Kigali. There were artificial rock formations, covered in flowers and lined with succulents and bamboo, and a small pond with a fountain. A low brick wall surrounded the land and the villa on it. But our attention wasn’t with the flowers, nor with the birds around the…
Preceded chronologically by Memories of a zoo On the way back into town from the zoo I got a call from James. He appeared to be in a rush. “Where are you?”, he asked. “In a cab, on my way back to the hostel”. “Very good. Hey, you want to go see a jazz band tonight at the Radisson Blue?”. “I thought we were supposed to have dinner and hang out with the Belgians?”. “Nah screw those kids, this'll be…
Preceded chronologically by It's all about who you know James and I found ourselves walking around the old town trying in vain to find a store that carried second-hand English language books, preferably something we hadn’t read yet. What we found was a range of African literature in multiple local languages, a huge selection of bibles and Islamic literature in English and Arabic, and the complete…
The avenue was wide and dusty, with piles of sand stacked against the curb in elaborate wind-swept patterns. They reminded me that I needed to take my bike for a wash, because it had been red and sandy for days now, and especially the chain needed some grease. Come to think of it, it might also be a good idea to have the oil changed after two thousand miles of this fine yellow dust. Lighting poles…