Sonntag, 29. März 2015

Cargobike Race Berlin

Hello folks.

Friday a week ago we made it to Berlin to meet our friends Andreas and Steffi.
We spent three hours on the Autobahn with our old truck and the velocar safely tied onto the truck bed
Saturday we joined the "Velo Berlin" bicycle fair. 
The Cargobike Fans Berlin have organized a race there, in which I wanted to participate.
Despite the rather cold and rainy weather it was great fun to meet all these crazy people.
A great variety of bikes were gathered: 
Rickshaws, Long Johns, cargo trikes (one leaning trike), longtail bikes and another four wheeler.
The drivers had to start in two divisions. two wheelers and three/four wheelers.
All had to complete one lap with the empty bike, then loading their bikes with two water containers, two bundles of newspapers and three short plastic pipes.
Due to two low ramps, which were set as chicanes on the race track, all had the choice to pass them at low speed or to risk the loss of some of the cargo stuff, what happens several times.
This resulted in permantly braking and accelerating, what my velocar is not made for.
Every time I passed the ramps, the hard backrest hits my back and this left a painful bruise there.
But because of my deep cargo trunk, nothing worse happened and despite my rather low speed I was able to overtake some of the competitors, who had to pick up their lost cargo from the track
Finally I became second place (of eight, I guess) in the multi track division, behind the mentioned leaning trike, a Veleon.
I had not the slightest chance against that high tech thing.

As always, here are some photos from that weekend:

A short ride with bicycles and velocar around Lake Grunewald

Still in Berlin-Grunewald we made this 
"Eight-cylinders-vs-four-legs"-photo

 Andreas and my son in the Retroadster

 Lake Grunewald

 Daddy is not to see here, because he's behind the camera


At the race

Two wheeler start

 (photo: Andreas Kuppinger/www.nutzrad.de)

(photo: Andreas Kuppinger/www.nutzrad.de)

 Three/four-wheeler start 
(photo: Andreas Kuppinger/www.nutzrad.de)


overtaking is difficult on this narrow track
(photo: Andreas Kuppinger/www.nutzrad.de)


A short video of one of the multitrack races

The winners:

First place two-wheelers

Second place two-wheelers

First place three/four wheelers

Me at second place


Test drive after the race

Much more pics of the race can be seen at the FB-account of the Cargobike Fans Berlin



Sunday:

 We cycled to a nearby horse ranch for child entertainment.

 This is Steffis own Icelandic horse






Kai