With my friend and room mate Jaap van der Goes van Naters at the start on our way to Paris. We hired this old tandem in Apeldoorn and as practice run rode it from there via Amsterdam to Leiden, a 120 km distance.
I had made a bet with fellow geology student Toni Brandts that I could beat him in a 500 km race to Paris on a tandem. So we started off from "Minerva" our student club in Leiden at midnight and arrived in Paris 46 hours later (including a night's sleep after crossing the border from Belgium into France) at 10 PM the following day.
Toni was riding his tandem with Joop Plantenga while my room mate Jaap had agreed to partner me. During our race we helped each other when we hat flat tires or other breakdowns, so in the end we decided to cross the city border of Paris side by side. We had brought our tails to visit a night at the Opera, unfortunately this was closed the days we were there. After a few days in Paris Toni and Joop went back home by train taking the tandems with them. Jaap and I hitch hiked back to Holland.