Couple of weeks ago I ve had a conversation with van der Kaaij at the Velodrome in Sloten Amsterdam. He will start at the end of this year as mentioned earlier with his new partners. He will coach them to become master frame builders and one of the guys is helping him financing the whole venture. At this moment they are preoccupied preparing their business.
He told me that he was completely blown away by the huge interest at the RIH tribute ride May 20th 2012. And that almost at the same time he was allready approached by some guys to continue RIH in another business. Still the whole rights issue about the brand RIH remains a vague issue in my opinion... But who cares, I hope they will continue to build some frikking cool bikes and start the Amsterdam Steel Renaissance!
One of the trainers arrived at the Velodrome with a bike he picked up in Groningen. I also had been among many of the people who had shown interest in this bike. But they were kind of overwhelmed by the amount of emails an request for more info due to the blurry pics on marktplaats. Finally they told the highest bidder to pick up this gem. As shown on the pics this RIH is in pristine condition. Well spent 325 or 350 euro's...In the background my former 50s RIH Super Course that I've sold to one of the trainers (2nd picture), a crazy RIH enthousiast and also a framebuilder.