Who said that riding from Cologne to Barcelona and back on a february weekend is a crazy idea?

Hhmmm, seems like I havn't put up a new trip report for quite a while...   but that doesn't mean I didn't get to ride!!   :-) There have been trips, smaller and larger ones, and mostly to meet somewhere with my fellow AEDST buddies, so that site is a good place to look for trips and pictures too... Anyway, in July 2005 we all met in the Italian Alps and Ernst, Mullie and I just couldn't let pass the opportunity to cruise this area for a few days more. So we took off five days before the meeting, headed towards Switzerland and tried to cover as many Passes on our way to Italy as possible. Here are some impressions from our most excellent

Ernst had visited the mediteranean island of Corsica a few times already but never with the bike, our buddy Ralph always wanted to go there and I've never been there either, so Corsica was choosen as our Y2K destination. Since our vacation schedules differed a bit, we decided to meet in Savona, Italy on Saturday, Sept. 9th, 6am, right there at the ferry to Corsica. I left a week earlier, met with fellow AEDST'ers AdriAn and Reto in Basel, to cruise the alps with them for a few days. Ralph left the following wednesday and Ernst took off on friday, only 16hrs before we'd scheduled to embark the ferry, roughly a 1000km ride with the Alps to cross inbetween. I guess we went so fast, our guardian angels had problems to follow...

In May'99 it turned out that I'd start a new job on July 1st. With little time for preperations left, Ernst and I decided we'd just go for a ride around the Iberian Penninsula. We figured it'd be warm in Spain and Portugal, the roads are usually pretty good, and of course we could visit our buddy Jujo in Barcelona :-) So, on June 7th we took off without ever really checking the maps or even calculating the total distance we had to cover on that trip :

In late '97 my brother Ernst, our cousin Martin and I made plans for our '98 summer vacation and we decided to cruise the scottish Highlands with our scoots. When early '98 it turned out that the meeting of the european HeD'ers, the AEDST, is gonna take place in Spain this year, Ernst and I figured we might as well combine both, since going to Scotland via Spain would only be a minor detour ;-)

With so many great memories tied to it, here's one thing which was really important for me to write down. And even though it's already quite some time ago that this all happened, I sure hope y'all still enjoy it. So here it is: