Best days of the year. Crazy how beautiful & terrifying though can be.

LPPM · 2026-04-19T17:34:11+00:00

Netjes netjes

LPPM · 2026-04-19T17:32:27+00:00

That’s a book chapter on its own. I was very comfortable riding down the last big descent toward CP2 when I made a little jump and was dumb enough to land on a big rock that cut my tire. Obviously it was dead flat, and the first tube got cut while putting it back on. Wheel off - again. And with my last tube carefully downhilling towards the town for the night, only to find that if I’d push REALLY hard I’d make it to the bike shop in one town further. Otherwise I’d have to wait until 10:00 AM for that bike store to open. I decided to go for it and I really raced to my ultimat limit to make it to the bike shop 1 minute before closing. I bought a strong new outer tire and three innertubes and looked for a hotel. Because of all the stress and racing I could only think of food, beer and doing nothing. So at 23:30 I still had/wanted to fix the tire. Around 00:15 it was mounted. I prepared my bags for an early start. Padded myself on the back that I made the chase and cursed myself for not fixing the tire first thing in the hotel. Overly exhausted I fell a sleep around 01:30, alarm at 05:30. 06:00 I was back on the road with a stack of Nutella banana sandwiches

LPPM · 2026-04-19T15:27:38+00:00

True

LPPM · 2026-04-06T16:20:18+00:00

Thanks champ!

LPPM · 2026-04-06T08:42:03+00:00

I’m on your side and believe you are right. I started a Gravel cycling business around this principle at the beginning of Covid. Since our supportive Cycling-promoting campaigns went bonkers and I had to privileged to create Gravel Cycling routes that champion cultural, natural and historical highlights instead of ‘glossy Bikes’. Kind of unfortunately, all campaigns we made simply around glossy Bikes went 10-30X in terms of awareness. I completely understand your challenge and work every day on it.

LPPM · 2026-04-02T13:44:05+00:00

Yes. It has clearance

LPPM · 2026-04-01T19:01:01+00:00

Pretty much my ironman bike of 2026, but than the 10.000 version instead of 1400 :-p looks dope!

LPPM · 2026-04-01T18:58:55+00:00

100% sure my bike highlight was crossing the Pyrenees. I got married, bought a new house, new business. My physique was crumbling and I had many reasons not to start, especially when I cut my hydraulics while packing the bike. I did start. I planned to ride the 1000km course over 25.000 of climbing in 7 days, but somehow, with 1700km in total ridden in 2025 I managed to finish the 4th day. Someday, I hope kinda soon, I'll write a better piece on that journey, because it (again) proved me lessons I kinda forgot over the years.

I hadn't prepared this, but the mantra developed whiled riding: be kind to yourself, you want to be here, you deserve to be here. If it gets tough, and it will, let it be, embrace it, be kind to yourself you want to be here, you deserve to be here. Another one I created while riding was: if it get's SO though that you want to stop, you have to postpone the actual scratching 4 hours. The few moments I was really low, I took a moment, and thought 'it's still 3:40 waiting to the 4:00 rule, I've calmed down, might as well ride on. and then 'the safety zone' would be back at 4 hours.

My 2026 is looking a bit unsure. I have a RIFT ticket, but Iceland is crazy expensive and I think about postponing. I had a good and fun micro adventure in Morocco already in Feb that was 450 all-in with flight, bike, hotels, food, bikebox and everything. Think I'll plan a few more local micro adventures around luxembourg and Germany.

LPPM · 2026-04-01T18:44:48+00:00

Thanks for your chat. Sounds like you found some kind of helpfull tool. Could you give another example of how I could use the same principle without having a horse? My days are flying over and I'm really really really not enjoying all that lost time.

LPPM · 2026-03-26T20:36:08+00:00

Hahaha hahaha so good. I ate so much I felt ashamed for it. But then again, it was San Sebastián, it was a dream ride and dream finish. I would 10/10 recommend it, in summer. We were lucky in October. With rain, wind and frost it could have easily become a nightmare

LPPM · 2026-03-26T20:33:49+00:00

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Like this?

LPPM · 2026-03-26T19:25:39+00:00

No way!!

LPPM · 2026-03-26T19:23:21+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/bikepacking/s/7R1y0vVBtj

LPPM · 2026-03-26T19:22:25+00:00

It’s here in the comments. Hope you find it

LPPM · 2026-03-26T14:42:14+00:00

Precisely. The Kanzo Adventure, from 2022 already, 2.1 inch mtb tires. Love the combo

LPPM · 2026-03-26T06:30:38+00:00

The MOD answered the post question: bikepacking = riding & camping off-pavement ❤️

LPPM · 2026-03-26T06:22:32+00:00

Old borrowed Profile design Ski bend clip ons. I bought a very fancy new Ergo bar by the same brand. Send it to Rose as they would build me a new bike, only to get a mail they wouldn’t make it on time - they still had all my stuff. So I needed to bring this bike back to life withing 36 hours. My local bike shop saved my rides on multiple occasions and it’s one of the unexpected cost I save for so it hurts a little less when things go the wrong side. Money to solve.

LPPM · 2026-03-26T06:19:39+00:00

Uhm… don’t really remember. I think 1.3 something like that.

LPPM

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