Nekaj besed gostujočega ležečega kolesarja… Sjaak Bloemberg piše:
“When I heard that the Human Powered Vehicle World Championship was going to be held in Milan, Italy, I decided that it was a nice opportunity to visit a cycling friend in Milano, see more of Italy and of course enjoy the nice recumbent community and experience their high performance races.
My plywood bicycle is the most suitable recumbent I own to do both races and travelling. For this championship I removed unneccesary options like front gearing and luggage rack and I mounted high pressure racing tires.
Being dissatisfied with the stiffness of the front boom I also improved its stiffness less then one week before competing. The nice thing from the plywood frame material and the sandwich construction is that you can easily modify it. After a few computer calculations (CAE) I decided where adding extra material was most efficient. By adding about 250 grams of plywood inside the frontboom (mostly near the steerer tube) the stiffness was noticably improved.
During the 50m dragrace the stiffness was given a stress test and to my surprise and also to the surprise of the other contestants and public I managed to get a 2nd place on this discipline of the World Championship. On the 200m sprint (flying start) I improved my personal record to an average of 59,7 km/h (was 55,8). The other races I just enjoyed and performed OK for me personally.
After the races I changed my bike into a travelling bicycle again and went to visit Francesco Lombardi in Milan. Francesco has designed and is producing the Bicicapace transport bicycle. We’ve cycled on it through the city center of Milan and the handling of the bicycle is very nice. I think ‘spot on’ for the Dutch style of handling he was aiming at.
Francesco introduced me to Zullo Bike near Verona and on my way to Venice I went to visit the factory. Zullo builds racing frames by hand and was the main supplier of frames for the Dutch professional cycling team TVM during the years 1986 to 1992. At Zullo bicycles I also met the Japanese designer and frame builder Masateru Yasuda ‘Maso’ who built this nice wooden bicycle (3 pieces). I like the fact that Maso also used this bicycle for travelling with full luggage. One of those wooden bicycles got lost somewhere in Italy so if anybody knows where it is please contact him.
And now after 900 kilometers of cycling I’m at Peter Osterveršniks place near Maribor, Slovenia. Tomorrow we will race in a hill climb race near Celje. And then I’ll continue my trip through Austria, Czech Republic and Germany.”
