Expat Roadies Club

pottssteve

Hello All,

It would appear that there are quite a lot of expats who use the Bikeradar site and so I thought it might be useful and interesting to start a thread for us. The intended aim would be like Cake Stop - just to talk about riding, ask questions, swap information etc. for those of us who are living abroad. Feel free to post photos of your landmine-strewn commute or stories of near misses with exotic wildlife and local drivers.

If it takes off, that's good. If it sinks like a stone, so be it.

My name is Steve, and I'm an expat.

ilm_zero7

sign me up

dbmnk

I'm in japan and have succesfully been runnng down snakes, boars and old ladies. I've also managed to land flat up at the rear of a truck. Takes a while to get used to the unpredictable driving style here.
The mountains are as tough as any zoncolan, but city riding is a pain due to immense numbers of junctions and traffic lights stripped of any logistic sense. Add the general surprise of natives seeing bikers on the road, and even a foreigner!
Drivers easily loose focus around here, so in spite of general slow and obedient driving, you're never safe.

dbmnk

Have to add that old people here have a special authoraty, so they can cross any road at any time without making sure the road is clear, all traffic just miraculously automatically stops permitting the authoraty on it's way. Hence my run down of old ladies stepping out just in front of me.

pottssteve

Felt so Good wrote:

sign me up

Cool!

Subscription is free!

tebbit

Sign me up to, Chernobyl Road Club section

schweiz

This is the Alpine Section signing in!

GraemeT

Good here innit!

claash

Ok I am not quite Alpine material (still just pottering in Switzerland)..... But you can sign me up too!

ilm_zero7

pottssteve wrote:

Felt so Good wrote:

sign me up

Cool!

Subscription is free!

then I'll take 2!

ilm_zero7

desperate for a cycling buddy here in Abu Dhabi, but I have no motor transport to get out of the city - cycling on Yas island looks great and I am told you can go on the race track sometimes

schweiz

Well it looks like the Swiss Branch of this club is going from strength to strength!

claash wrote:

Ok I am not quite Alpine material

Just go out and try an alp. The first time I went over the Brünigpass I thought I'd just conquered Everest when I reached the top. Now it's just an inconvenient hill on the way to bigger and better things! Go over to Toggenburg or jump on the A2 to Zentralschweiz! Try www.climbbybike.com/ or if your German is one step more than Grüezi then www.quaeldich.de

Stewie Griffin

ooh ohh look at me, Im abroad, its so great, Im so cool for being here in Gumdrop City in Rainbow land, arent we so smug?


Feck off winkers.













Bitter? Moi?

Alain Quay

Practicing your welcome for the 2012 Olympics, eh Stevie. Ugly town, ugly person.

ilm_zero7

Stewie Griffin wrote:

ooh ohh look at me, Im abroad, its so great, Im so cool for being here in Gumdrop City in Rainbow land, arent we so smug?


Feck off winkers.



Bitter? Moi?

I am surprised,,,,, thought it would be much more abusive from a Spurs fan - its amazing how you can qualify for Europe with a head on sick up front

I will of course be thinking he is great during the world cup!!!!

Emigrate, come and join us !!

Mad Roadie

Alain Quay wrote:

Practicing your welcome for the 2012 Olympics, eh Stevie. Ugly town, ugly person.

I just wit for those ex-pat boys to start whinging about of the state of the roads in the UK with all the road fund licence they dont pay!! :evil:

schweiz

Mad Roadie wrote:

I just wit for those ex-pat boys to start whinging about of the state of the roads in the UK with all the road fund licence they dont pay!! :evil:

lol, don't let the commuters see this thread, they'll string you up for suggesting that a) there is still such a thing as road fund licence and b) that Vehicle Excise Duty pays exclusively for road building/maintenance!!

and the roads here are much better :P

ilm_zero7

i think the ex-pat threads may need some form of non-UK IP address filtering system!

pottssteve

Stewie,

I believe that London has several big airports and it's possible to buy one way tickets from major airlines! Why not emigrate to balance up the influx of Eastern Europeans into the nation's capital?

Welcome new members - a positive and supportive thread so far (Spurs fans excepted).

Climbbybike is an excellent site, especially for Euro riders. Also, even though some of the stats are dodgy there's loads of routes on Mapmyride.

More later when I get time - off to spend some of my colossal, lightly taxed salary...

pottssteve

Expats living in Asia may have noticed a phenonenon peculiar to this part of the globe, namely, the curse of Expat Hair Syndrome, or EHS.

People of European descent who move over here often fall victim to EHS, which is different in males and females. Expat men only have 2 types of haircuts:

1. The severe crew cut/crop - favoured by outdoor enthusiasts for it's cooling properties.
2. The "Deep Purple" - a wavy mullet drooping in the heat and producing excessive sweating which leads to a straggly wet look a la early Bon Jovi.

Female expats also have 2 hair styles to choose from:

1. Pony tail with baseball cap.
2. Slightly below shoulder length, wavy permed curls, done by a hairdresser who's never seen a natural blond before. The aim is to look like Farah Fawcett; the result is like an Eastern European porn star. Entire chemist's shelves are stripped of gel and spray in an attempt to maintain its fragile beauty, but all to no avail. Ten minutes spent outside the airconditioned apartment leaves the wearer looking like a golden retriever after an energetic seaside walk.

Are there any more kinds of expat hair styles?

Limburger

Just checking in for the flat-as-a-pancake taxed-HARD section.

No euro hair though, more Marco Pantani (with ears to match...and a Bianchi.....and Italian looking, goatee, w/nose) so I get to wear a bandanna, all my kit is white and Italian and I have yet to hit a pothole* or come anywhere near to be taken out by a boy racer/mother/chav/pikey/police car.



*Have found whole roads have been removed for maintenance without warning - Ducth idiosyncrasy .

DubaiNeil

Felt, check out Cycle Safe Dubai on Facebook (when not at work obviously...). If you join that group you will be bombarded with emails about cycling events - but mostly in Dubai (natch...)

The Yas Marina events are publicised there as well. They are normally every Tuesday evening IIRC. No floodlighting though, so finishes when too dark to continue. Allegedly the lights cost USD 20K per hour to run, and its all or nothing !

There is a 92km race/challenge/sportive planned in Dubai in December, with Sports Council & RTA support, so closed roads etc and a finish at the Dubai Autodrome...

Neil

pottssteve

Hi Limburger,

Good to hear about the Dutch roads; I'm moving to Maastricht in August!

Limburger

pottssteve wrote:

Hi Limburger,

Good to hear about the Dutch roads; I'm moving to Maastricht in August!

Very nice. I used to live there. There is even the fabled Dutch mountain there and a few hills out near Valkenburg (which is a great place).

Lots of good bars and clubs there too. Much better than the rest of Holland.

pottssteve

Limburger,
Glad to hear that Maastricht is nice. I just hope I've got money left for a coffee* after the rent, the tax, etc...



* and bike upgrades, of course.

GraemeT

Is anybody interested in logging their miles?

Over in the commuting section there's the Silly Commuter Stats thread:

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... start=4480

And the table to log your rides is here:

http://www.startfarm.co.uk/aspStats/Default.aspx

I started up a mini leage for an International branch, but so far nobody wants to play

On the plus side it does make me top

Please join if you wish, unless you are way ahead of me :!:

pottssteve

Well,

Flights are booked and things are moving along. Here are a couple of photos of my commute - I don't think the Netherlands looks like this!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31218589@N07/

The first 5 shots were taken on the way to work. This is the bit of HK I'll miss.....

Steve