Casa Robino

How one connection leads to another. Just when Caroline informed me she did her first hitch in the US, we started chatting and found out meanwhile that "a friend of Lily's who posted a comment on her blog is staying with a good friend of mine in california right now". She then pointed me out which house this is, and I was very nicely surprised by what this house is aiming for. It is basically a great skillsharing house with many opportunities for people to stay over for long-term.

I brought a new old bike to the house. It needs some air and oil, but it's otherwise fine.Germ

Due to its built-in baskets it's thé bike to bring your dumpstered veggies safely back home from the market.

We will call her 'The Germ' (or more properly 'Zééé Shjurm'), referring to the German girl who still officially owns the bike.

We've had quite some cyclist passing through the house. Cycling around the world, or just the Netherlands, or people cycling from Paris to Copenhagen for example. Most of these people found out about the house through friends or through hospitality exchange networks such as Couchsurfing (closed-source and top-down structured) or Bewelcome (which is more grassroots and based on open source/ free software). But so far none of the cyclist had contacted us through Warmshowers.org, a hospitality exchange network for touring cyclists.

Six o' clock this morning they woke up (well, that's what they said) and I just called them (Rene and Davide): they were already cycling north of Alkmaar... As a nice surprise, six of us are going up to Texel for a short adventure, two are cycling, and 4 will be hitching today. We found a nice host who is ok with us 'squatting' his place and cooking for him, and there are old friends to meet.

Warm atmosphere, people chilling, fresh movie, cold rain, freezing sea where some of the features of the cycling trip we made from Casarobino in Amsterdam to Leiden 40km away (in principle) to see the documentary about dumpsterdiving made by Lily.

So.. it's not that funny, but follies happen on the road.

My bike is not very stable with all of my luggage. That is why, when I stop, I must hold the thing constantly. The kickstand is absolutely of no use.

As you could imagine, this has created some embarrassing situations/ problems.

I had been riding all day when I came upon an Aldi. I was starving and needed supplies. After shopping, I returned outside, unlocked the bike, and began loading it up. When I was done I tried to board.The bike began to fall over.