WEEK 6 no

WEEK 6 no. 2 (Sunday, February 19)

WHO TOOK MY BICYCLE?!

[Translation: Crispen T.P. de Lange]

It’s never a nice experience to have one’s bike stolen, whether it was brand new or old. This time it was my brand spanking new road racer that disappeared in the course of the night. There are only 6 like it in the whole of Europe today, and I had only had a couple of trips on this wonderful new machine of mine.

The theft was committed in the course of the evening or night between Monday and Tuesday at the beginning of this week. We have our theory about how it happened, but it’s not much of a comfort when the bike is well and truly gone.

The 6 cyclists representing Multivan Merida Biking Team were given a Merida road racing bike each, here at our first gathering of the year, models representing the Merida selection for 2007. In other words, pretty unique bikes.

I now have a different bike for training for the next weeks, as the team always has some extra frames and equipment of various sorts along, but I won’t be back on a new frame again before a couple of weeks have passed. I still have a small hope that the bike will be recovered, as it will be difficult to sell since it’s so special.

I’m writing about stealing bikes here, but I actually managed to “lift” a bike myself today. The somewhat comical episode happened this afternoon when we were at to the closest shop outside the hotel, on our way home from the day’s first training session. We needed to buy some more food and left our bikes outside the shop. After we had shopped, I went out and jumped on a bike and started pedalling up the road to the hotel, but pretty soon realized that there was something wrong. My bike had suddenly gotten a very different stem…and surely the water bottles on my bike were a completely different colour than that?!

Next moment I realized that I was sitting on a bike that didn’t belong to me. Sure enough, a Merida, but it was red rather than the green one I use. I experienced a few moments of panic before I realized that I had picked the wrong bike. I cycled back to the shop, where the owner of the bike was already worriedly searching for his two-wheeler. I experienced it all as terribly comical and hysterically funny, and handed the bike back and said sorry for my unplanned bike theft.

I wasn’t actually embarrassed, which I possibly should have been, but the whole thing was just so weird and funny. Kenneth had left the shop a bit before me, so he missed out on the whole episode, but almost fell off his bike when I explained the reason for my delay.

This evening we’ve been out for a delicious meal at a restaurant together, just us two – wonderful Italian cuisine with a good red Spanish in our glasses. I’m back on my bike again after three days of illness. I choose to think that my body had benefited from this small attack by microbes, so I’ll hopefully be more immune during the next months. Tomorrow a short and easy session of training off-road awaits me, together with an hour of swimming in the pool in the evening before dinner. I hope you’ve all had a nice and active weekend with lots of fun. You’ll hear from us again before too long. I wish you all a good week at work with new and exciting challenges all day long J

Cyclist’s greetings from Gunn-Rita

Multivan Merida Biking Team