C.V. of Michiel

My parents have always taken me and my brother around Europe during the holidays. This means I've been brought up with traveling, and it has stayed in my blood ever since. I've been driving motorbikes since 1988, which is off course very compatible with traveling. Unfortunately, of my first 5 trips on a motorbike abroad, 3 ended up with more or less severe accidents. So I decided to take a more different approach towards traveling, and ended up with an English company touring around Kenya for a few weeks. This made me addicted to Africa instantly, and I've been back to that continent more than 6 times since, with the certainty that I'll be going back there in the future for sure, if not forever

All the accidents in spite, I've not cured from the motorbike virus yet, so in 2000 I and a friend took our bikes to explore Iceland. In 2002 I took the same bike (and different companion with different bike) and went to Morocco (ahh, Africa again).

On the traveling pages you will find pictures (and some text which I hope to be able to finish and expand in the foreseeable future) of these trips.
Trips like those mentioned have been put on hold, having a family with kids does restrict ones possibilities. But one day, we will resume. In the mean time we try to infect our kids with the travel virus as well, going to different countries and places every year during the summer holidays. So far they've already seen parts of Italy, France, Spain, UK (Scotland remains a favorite), Latvia, Lithuania, and we are already thinking aout what to show them next.

Since getting my drivers license, I've owned all sorts of motorbikes, from the well known Honda CX500 up to Ducati 900SS, Laverda 650ie and even a BMW R1100 RS. But up to now my best miles were covered on a Cagiva Elefant. In my opinion, this is one of the most capable bikes in relation to driving capabilities, power to weight ratio (still one of the lightest multi cylinder traillies) and off road capability and durability. Unfortunately it is out of production, and it's offspring (Cagiva Gran Canyon and currently Cagiva Navigator) only have a (too) small amount of the all road genes left to be worthy of the famous Elefant heritage. If you don't sport, you gain weight, and if you gain weight, you don't sport that easily anymore (same goes for yours truly, unfortunately).

C.V. Of Chantal

Although I've not had the chance so far to travel very much, I've always been interested in exploring unknown places and meeting new people. Now I'm finally getting the chance of doing so. I'm also preparing myself for my (motor) drivers license and as soon as I've passed the exams I'll be scaring the neighborhood on my Elefant...

My greatest hobby is horseback riding. I took care of a pony for two years, in which I trained it to M level dressage, but due to some reasons I had to stop. At the moment I only ride at school (I'm studying Horse Management), but since I started studying I do get to work with horses a lot.

Since I met Michiel and learned about motorbikes in general and the Elefant in particular (I fell in love with the bike as well as with its driver, although not in a similar relationship), I've started appreciating it's capabilities very much. Together with Michiel I searched the web intensely for as much info and links as we could (and still can) find, in order to dedicate part of this website to this bike, being often wrongly regarded as the "ugly duckling" in the (former) duc pond.

Our bikes
  

Cagiva Elefant 900 ie Lucky Explorer

Actually two of them, of which one is laying around in bits and pieces with a broken crankshaft. It is awaiting an engine transplant in the near future. The other one takes Michiel to wherever he wants to go. This usually means to work (although we can't count this under "wanting" ), but also to distant places, from the supermarket around the corner up to Iceland and Morocco. The bike is currently in a state of rebuild, hopefully it will be back on the road soon.