Gerard mentioned in his last blog that we were a bit under pressure launching the WI.DE. because we were doing a media launch together with DT Swiss. 

We started to plan this event about 5 months ago. Everything looked ok until DT Swiss asked us to move the date forward. You would not believe what the impact was of moving everything a week forward. I don't want to go into details but it took me at least a full working week in order to have 7 bikes ready one week earlier and I am not talking about building the bikes just getting all the small bits and pieces together. The fact that the SRAM AXS Force/Eagle combination is not yet available on the market did not really help also.

Whenever we do an event over here you can be sure its either raining or we have snow. It can be nice 2 months before and 2 months after... The weather forecast for this one was also not really spectacular. When I checked out the route I ended up with some snow storms after 80km and five and a half hour of riding. I was prepared for that back then and normally there is a train back to Basel and that was my back up plan. But guess what, on that weekend they had some reconstruction and I had to ride all the way back also...

We started our media ride in sunny and 15 degree warm Basel and that day we ended our ride in pouring rain, 0 degree and 60km headwind in Seignelegier. I know that Marc our photographer always hates me because we actually do real trips rather than just photo shootings followed by a van. That day I think he really hated me as he had to spend 20 minutes under a hot shower until he started to feel his feet again...The last 1.5 hour was just suffering but after a nice dinner the world was ok again for everybody. On the next day we had a scenic ride with some rain and hale but at least not as cold as on day one. After crossing the legendary "house mountain" of Biel the Chasseral we ended up at our destination the DT Swiss head quarters.

Here is a rather large photo gallery of the trip (Sorry we had over 350 pictures and it was so hard to make a selection). Keep in mind that it looks pretty sunny but believe me it was not the case at the end of day 1 as you can also read here in an article from Ben that he published in the granfondo magazine.

And here is a beautiful video of the same trip from the DT Swiss crew. Marc hated me even more as those guys had the van that brought them to the nice places and gave them shelter....sorry Marc.



Next week more details about the bike that we used on that trip.