Bonn or Bust

It seemed like a fun idea when my good friend Jelle Mul talked about this on a nice summer day in August. Why don’t you join us on a bike ride from Amsterdam to Bonn in early November, he said. It will be 290km and we ride to the Climate Change Conference in Bonn from Amsterdam to raise awareness for gofossilfree.org. Without thinking twice I said yes and next we had a mixed group of 12 riders, with cycling hipsters, long distance adventurers and even an ex-pro. Bonn or Bust.

We set off at 5:00 in the morning. Why such a ridiculous time, I asked myself. I did some quick math and figured we would get there by mid-afternoon. What would we do with the rest of the day?

By 14:00 hours we were only 120km into the ride and we had racked up 7 punctures already. I almost called it quits. Bust was closer than Bonn at that moment. The weather was bad and the stretches of gravel were not friendly to the summer tires that half the group were riding on. The continuous drizzle and the on-going stops for punctures made a quick run for the train back home an appealing option. The one thing that stopped me from jumping on the train back was that I had a spare bag with dry clothes, but annoyingly this was in the support car that was just slightly out of sight for the whole day.

After 17 hours, 305km and 15 punctures we finally made it to Bonn! It was 23:00 and I was so tired that I could only manage to just eat a pizza and have one beer before crashing on the hotel bed. Bonnorbust, once behind you it’s a great story but if you’ll ask me again for a crazy adventure in August, I might think twice.