Almost forgot … I was going to post some scans from the past every now and then.

1996, Luxembourg – Echternach

This is my cousin Jef and he used to be my partner in crime in many of my teenage adventures. Our friendship really took off on family parties when we were kids. While the adults and the little kids were eating pancakes indoors we went for a walk in the streets around my grandparents’ house to discover that if you kicked the poles of the street lights hard enough, they went out for a couple of minutes. The challenge was to get the whole street into darkness before the first lamp went back on.

During school holidays I always stayed over at his place for a couple of days and he with me. We spent most of our time playing games on the Commodore C64 (remember Kung Fu Master, Hero and Frogger), watching ninja movies and making shurikens out of Mercedes badges. We learned to play campfire guitar together. There must be some tapes of our famous concerts, but I won’t torture you with it. We even started doing some photography at the same time.

For a couple of years our families went camping together for a couple of days each August. Jef and I explored the forests around Dinant on our own and after a few years we got permission to go out on a two day trip. That was only the start of many outdoor trips. We both discovered mountain biking and combined our love for camping in the wild (illegal in Belgium) with the adrenalin rush of the bike during countless trips to the south of Belgium.

This picture must have been taken during one of the last trips we did together, maybe even the last. After that we still went biking pretty often but only for one day. Now we both have our own busy lives. When we see each other on a family reunion, we don’t go kicking streetlights anymore but we always plan to go biking again … one day.