This is going to be another busy weekend. It's the weekend of the annual Batavierenrace, which is a relay race for runners, over 185 km from Nijmegen to Enschede, divided into 25 stages. More than 300 teams (which means more than 7,500 students) participate in this race.


To make it harder for the runners to hurl themselves in the path of oncoming cars, there are about 120 volunteers with motorcycles, who regulate traffic. Since they do this from midnight until the race is over, about six o'clock the next day, they need to be fed and watered at regular intervals. And this is where I come in.

I'm in charge of one of four teams of volunteers (one of them being gummihuhn) who take care of the other motorcycle riders. We start off at about two o'clock half past twelve at night and head for a town near the German border, where we set up camp in a suitable spot in an industrial zone and start baking pancakes and making coffee and tea.
After a while stoneshop arrives with his merry band of traffic regulators, and they each get a pancake and coffee (or tea). They leave, and we keep on baking.
Stoneshop takes them to the crossings and dangerous points in the route they've been assigned to, and eventually we arrive with our stack of pancakes and our thermos flasks, and each of them gets a bite and a drink again.
It more or less goes on like this until the whole thing is over, and then we get a meal and a bed.

It may not sound like it, but it's actually great fun!
So see you after the Bata!