Yellowcube.nl

On January 2nd, 1960 the legendary Italian cyclist Fausto Coppi died, age 40. From 1940 to 1954 he earned the title of “Il Campionissimo” or Champion of Champions. His victories included the Giro d’Italia, the Tour the France and the notorious Paris-Roubaix race.

To commemorate Coppi’s 50th year of death a special theme bike is build, which will participate in this years’ amateur edition of the Paris-Roubaix race.

the bike’s creator can be found here

The island of Tiengemeten lies in the Haringvliet river, which is part of the extensive delta area located in the southwest of Holland, 30 km south of Rotterdam. It is reachable only by ferry and no cars are allowed on the island.

Getting to the origines of the name “Tiengemeten” is a question of doing some very basic calculus combined with some very old fashioned grammar. In the 17th century the island started out as a small sandy island of roughly 12 acres (5 hectare). In the old days, one “gemet” was refered to an area of about 1.2 acres/0.5 hectare. So, you need ten “gemeten” to get to 12 acres/5 hectare, hence the name Tiengemeten. Since the 17th century it has expaned from 12 acres to about 2200 acres (900 hectares).

Tiengemeten is a so called delta island, which makes it quite unique in both geography and wildlife. The different areas on the island continuously shift from land to water and vice versa, making the island change shape constantly and attracting a wide variety of aquatic birds and animals. Because of these unique features the Dutch government decided to turn it into natural reserve in the late 1980′s. The few farmers and inhabitant that lived on the island voluntarily moved to the mainland leaving their empty farms and houses behind. Tiengemeten is now a place where nature take its course and it provides a quiet place for walking, cycling and bird watching. I mainly went there to experience the total silence and wide empty views, which are quite an interesting thing to find within one of the worlds’ most densely populated areas.

A small registration of the very last race at Col Du Darc. Very soon it will be permanently closed to make room for luxurious apartments starting at $1,000,000.

Oh look…an airplane!

because cats like fish.

or, as they say in Holland: katjes.

Italian for: “Casanova’s Hill”

to loose ones marbles: to go grazy.

it must have been a child who came up with this expression after loosing his marbles in a game of marbles (or better, it was his opponent who came up with it). I played marbles a lot and lost lots of them. There’s basically three type of kids:

1. The one that came to school with a certain amount of marbles. He/she would play marbles all day and return home with the exact same amount of marbles.
2. The one that came to school with no marbles at all, borrowed one marble and returned home with almost all the marbles present at the schools playground that day.
3. The one that came to school with lots of marbles and returned with none.

I had a tendency to be a type 3 marble player. Please don’t feel sorry for me, I still have lots of marbles.

actually, it’s Rockanje. But since it is one of the beaches where inhabitants of the city of Rotterdam go, people tend to give it this fancy name in order to give it more …more… je ne sais quoi…more panache. More finesse.

although one of the biggest seaports in the world is less then 15 miles away, I don’t think Rockanje really needs any addition to its name.

translation: Czech clouds