Nice days oblige you to "Carpe Diem" here at the European North since weather is far from friendly and predictable. So, on this promising morning I decide to ride from Heeze to Tilburg here in Netherlands aiming to visit Oisterwijk Park first and then the mega store of Louis in Tilburg to do some motorcycle related shopping.
As I am enjoying riding on a nice day through some lovely neighbourhoods, after some km on the highway I meet a heavy jam. Not sure how policed (or punished) is filtering the traffic on a bike I use all my patience and just wait behind the cars hoping it's not gonna last that long. However, it seems to last forever and I'm often just sitting idle. No bikers around me at all to see how locals behave in such conditions and I don't want to be the ass acting out of local habits. Despite me being much more travelled than the vast majority of bikers I still act this way and no regrets so far. It's as simple as respecting a house that hosts you. Two bikers appear later and as soon as they start filtering the insane traffic I follow them and at some point I overtake them as the situation feels like it would eat up my whole day. Wondering how come and what is this craziness all about I get my answer as I witness this scene:
Yes, that's a helicopter that's landed here, unfortunately not to shoot a commercial:
Police is here too:
And ambulance for the casualties:
To be honest the whole scene of this accident is so well prepared by the authorities that for a second I though it could be a movie scene. Unfortunately it's a quite severe accident as on of the cars involved could be seen many meters away thrown in the fields. Begs the question how one can manage to have such an accident here where drivers look to me so predictable and loyal while this part of the road is a straight with all the visibility of the world possible. I suspect high speed but again, I haven't seen anyone speeding that much so far around here.
I leave the scene hoping the best for the casualties and I ride the rest of my way up to Oisterwijk Park. I park my iron horse with some company at the lot:
Actually these are the only bikes here 🙂 So how does the title "Half of the bikes at this Dutch parking lot are Greek"? Journalistic distortion right? Hmm...I should baptise my next band like this...
The place is lovely,
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And the park looks promising:
But this is a cycling heaven or a walking heaven if you have the time. I don't have a bicycle and not that much time so I decide that with a heavy heart I'll have to leave it.
Not sure what this little round cycling prohibiting sign is for though:
Because if nothing else, there's lots of people cycling here and rightly so:
It's all Dutch to me:
Time to ride to Tilburg for some moto shopping therapy as initially planned.
Who needs goggles?
Not me. I do feel like a kid in a dog in a dog park in this spacious store with a vast variety of motorcycle accessories, clothing and other stuff:
My favourite section in such places is the one with leathers:
Yep, they even have a whole bike here:
Not too much of a surprise though right?
I get my self a pair of leather pants which you can see it lying on my saddle and I picture the place goodbye:
As I ride back to my place the jam at the scene of the accident is still the same but when I arrive I realise that my bike just made a new friend on the way:
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A love bug! How come? I can't believe it landed there on the go so probably it made its way on the bike while it was parked and was hiding somewhere till it came out on my way back.
Cheap stuff is usually cheap for a reason and my new pants are no exception. At a price that questions even casual jeans they were below cheap for being pure leather but defect was found as soon as I have a closer look back home. So, I ask my host for help and she generously tells me where here sewing stuff is. Including here sewing machine! How cool:
And it's a Toyota! Though not really made in Japan:
However, all the threads available are practically useless, at least if one wants to sew leather. I can break them with my own hands without even applying that much of effort. So I decide to go the good old metal way.
Stapler bits to the rescue:
Why and how? Well, a couple of belt hangers had worn thread so I go the idea of taking a stapler bit, bend it to the required shape and put it in. Like so:
Bending the bit symmetrically at the required width was the tricky part but I managed it with the help of this:
Here you can see it all the way through:
The front side looks like this:
It's barely noticeable and this part is not exposed but if I was bothered about the looks that much I could place it under the first layer of the hanger (as you see at this point it bends and goes double). At the back all that's left is just to bend the bit as much as possible to make it sturdy and not exposed so it won't hurt you and/or your clothes:
If you fingers can't feel it then it's more than safe and this one passed the quality control. Not the fashion police check but a black marker can help make it even more discreet (if not invisible).
Time for some olive oil treatment:
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And they're ready for the next motorcycle adventures. Hope you are as well cause there's more to come.
See you on the next one!
P.S. Here's a video of the ride: