Welcome to this introduction of my blog, about me (and some other crazy people that I have not yet met) attempting to cycle the Tour d'Afrique 2019, starting on January 17th in Cairo - Egypt - and ending on May 12th in Cape Town - South Africa.
I have not been into long-distance cycling for that long yet. Of course, the bicycle has always had a prominent place in my life: Chasing after my friends on my bike after school. Discovering the area around my hometown. Cycling to Delft every day when I was still in university. But it was not untill 2014 that I discovered that it is quite easy to push your limits on a bicycle. It started with trips of 30k, which within some months gradually increased to a 100k, venturing further and further away until I even rode 100k rides two days in a row. And at the end of that summer I went on my first long distance trip to Paris, just to discover how horrible it is to ride such distances multiple days in a row! But at the same time also to discover how fantastic and wonderfull it is to experience the transition from one place to another...
It opened up a new world for me. If I could ride my bike to Paris, then why would I not be able to ride it all the way to Rome? Or to Spain? And after completing those trips across Europe I wondered why I would not be able to cycle even further. In quite a short time span, my perspective changed and our globe became much smaller. At the same time, my intentions to start out on a multi-month cycling trip became bigger. Directly after completing my trip to Rome I already felt confident that I would be able to complete an even longer trip. I got increasingly inspired by all the adventurous people who wrote about the landscapes they encountered, the people they met and the challenges they overcame. Nothing to fall back on but their own resourcefullness.
So now, the time has come for me to start out on such an adventure myself. Only 4,5 years after completing that first 750k six day trip to Paris, I now intend to ride my bicycle from Cairo in Egypt to Cape Town in South Africa. I will join the Tour d'Afrique 2019 and cycle my way through the African Continent, through Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenia, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. Some 11.500km in four months. The reason why? Mainly because I think I can. And because I want to experience the romantics of such a trip by myself. But most importantly, because I don't want to wake up someday to find out that I've always wanted to do this, but never actually did it...
