After registering for the tour I received a form with the title “Getting to know you”. At the top of the form it said that providing questions to this form is optional, but that it would be appreciated if I would give my answers. So I answered the questions:
1. What are your motivations for doing this tour?
There is nothing more wonderfull than experiencing the gradual transition from one place to another and see landscapes, cultures and languages slowly change. And it is even better if you can achieve this experience on your own strenght. TDA offers the opportunity to make such a cross section accross the entire African continent.
2. What worries you the most about participating in the tour?
My experience with long distance cycling trips is that every day is a challenge on its own, so I’ll “worry” about making it to the finish line everyday. During my solotrips i’m always quite flexible in the schedule that I pursue: sometimes I cycle a bit more, sometimes a bit less. My biggest concern is that the TDA’s program seems to be quite rigid with challenging distances, so I really hope I’ll be able to keep up... No guarantees, although the aim is of course to cycle the entire stretch...
3. What excites you the most about the tour?
What excites me the most is that I’m going to find how i’m going to respond to and cope with this 4 month back to basic situation. I already know that I can cope with it for about 5 weeks, but utilities during the TDA will be even more basic and the duration of the tour will be significantly longer.
Oh and i’m also quite excited about potentially running into an elephant on the road :-)
... and about seeing the night sky from the desert!
... and about much much more!
4. What other adventurous expeditions (big and small) have you completed?
2012 Graduation from University
2013 Renovating my 140 year old house
2014 Bike trip from The Hague to Paris (750k)
2015 Bike trip from The Hague to Rome (2700k)
2016 Bike trip from Harwich to Plymouth (1100k)
2016 Bike trip from The Hague to Santiago de C (3500k)
2017 Triple on the Hague CPC run (5, 10, 21,1k)
2017 Rotterdam Marathon
2017 Roparun relayrun from Paris to Rotterdam (80k in 2 days)
2017 New York Marathon
2018 Bike trip through Northern Vietnam (950k)
2018 Working on an expatriate assignment in Ha Long, Vietnam
