Road Trip Switzerland. By Bart de Jong

Apr 13, 2026

Written by Bart de Jong

Read 232 times

Heading to Switzerland, and not to the UCI offices, that's a thing of the past now. For the third year in a row Philip and I have driven to Frauenfeld for the MXGP. It's one of the first ones of the season (in March) and the past two years it was held on Easter weekend where we took our bikes to hit up the local pump tracks, Winterthur BMX track, Skills Park and more. This time however we had no "day-off" to enjoy ourselves.

Hit me up for any trip really. Doing this together with my son Philip has been enjoyable. This year it almost felt like he was taking me on a trip. He had taken home the Twin Air Sprinter van the day before departure which we loaded up for the 4-day trip to Frauenfeld. Philip's 22 now and works for Twin Air as a Jr. Product Manager where he develops air filters and such for factory teams like Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, KTM, and Triumph. With Philip driving the van, I had the chance to continue doing my computer work from the road. Hotspots + laptop = work from wherever. It made the 8-hour trip a breeze really.

For the weekend we experienced "van-life" as we had parked in the paddock of the Grand Prix and weren't going to leave. The only time we used our BMX bikes was to eat a pizza with Eric Mulders, who runs the Twin Air Grand Prix Services and had also parked his van between the factory rigs.

We had brought the Bluetti power station and Dometic fridge so we weren't going to get thirsty or hungry any time soon. Only from day 2 we were plugged in through local electricity so the Bluetti battery made sure our phones/laptop/fridge/watch were charged at all times, even when the power got cut at some point during night two. We woke up with the windows frozen. Luckily in the front cabin, we had the luxury of a working heater but Philip stayed in the back of the van without any heating but had the Chinook sleeping bag and extra blankets to stay warm. With a van like this with unlimited space, we made sure we came prepared.

For those who don't know yet, we have started a motocross platform under FATMX. It's @f.a.t.mx on instagram and you can find it here on FACEBOOK. Go give that a follow if you like motocross too. This way we had access to the MXGP media centre where coffee and lunch was supplied. Twice we had dinner in the paddock restaurant which was quite nice as well to be honest. We'll leave the motocross stuff to our other FATMX platforms but the racing was good as you'd expect from the fastest motocross racers in the world.

With the event finished at 6pm we decided to drive back to the Netherlands straight away to make it home at a decent time. We shifted to the drivers' seat a few times and made it home before 2am. Another trip in the books. Not really a city trip per sé, but traveling is traveling. More to come as we've booked for Sweden, France and Greece already.

BdJ

RAD
Sprinter Van
Vanlife
Parking heater
Bluetti Power Station
Dometic cooler
Oakley Meta
InFront catering

LAME
Freezing nights
Rain
Cold
Mud
Sprinter parking (length)
Unplugged power
€1 piss charge at gas station

Photos by Bart de Jong / FATBMX / FATMX