We woke up to drizzling rain. We expected it. We set our alarm so we could say goodbye to Clara, an adult child of our hosts who was on her way to school. She was so sweet in wanting to say goodbye and hug us. It was fun to get...

Last evening, we spent time with our hosts visiting on their back porch. They were so kind and welcoming. They shared with us a dessert she had made to celebrate her husband‘s retirement. We appreciate their kindness and hospitality. It was the second evening in a row where we disappointed...

This morning we woke up and left our Airbnb by 9:15. We rode until about 3:15. It was amazing to think that last year we rode yesterday‘s ride and today’s ride all in one day. We were plenty tired arriving today and grateful we didn’t have another 50 miles to...

I’ll get to how we slept in a moment… I first have to tell you where we are right now. We’re relaxing on the porch of a delightful Airbnb in a town about 50 miles away from where we slept last night, and it couldn’t be more different than last...

We both slept well in the barrel. Our bed was firm and the rain had cooled things off. We set our alarm for 7, as that timing worked well for our hosts who were bringing us breakfast. We wanted to be able to say goodbye and thank them in person....

Our Airbnb last night worked out great. We slept in a bed in the loft. The stairs to the loft were so steep! We both were worried that one of us was going to fall down them in the middle of the night walking to the bathroom. Gratefully, we made...

It was nice to wake up this morning and not feel like we had to hurry to leave our Airbnb. We had a relatively short ride, just over 40 miles, ahead of us, and we couldn’t arrive early. So we lingered in our Airbnb, ate our simple breakfast, organized, packed,...

I slept great last night, Natalie slept medium. We awoke, ate, finished all but the last of our oat milk, transferring the remaining amount to our leftover San Pellegrino bottle. It had a better lid. It was going with us, and we were happy to have it about an hour...

We slept well, although we are missing air conditioning. Ironically this is so far our hottest European bike trip. (Maybe we aren’t quite close enough to fall yet.) We woke up early so we made a quick trip to the bakery nearby to get fresh bread. (The bread we bought...

We both slept great last night. Our room was a little warm, as air conditioning doesn’t seem to be a thing in Europe. We slept without covers and kept a fan blowing on us. It felt so good to sleep well!

We slept moderately well last night. You’d think, as exhausted as we were, we would have slept soundly, but we’re off by about eight hours on our circadian rhythm and even melatonin couldn’t make up the difference. But we were both grateful for the sleep we got. So much better...

We are writing in Friday morning, the day after arriving in Geneva. Our flights worked out well. We left our home at about 11 and drove to Bryan’s office (newly remodeled and expanded – bet nice!) and he drove with us to the airport and then drove our truck home...

We’ve worked hard over the last couple months to get physically ready for this trip. We generally got 1-2 hours of riding in before I left for work and rode 4-6 hours on Saturdays. This last Saturday we had our final long ride and it was windy: 25 mph steady...

This year we are planning our trip similarly to the first one. We have set up Airbnb accommodations in advance for every night. The advantage of this is that we eliminate the uncertainty of finding places to stay. However, it is a bit of work to find Airbnbs along our...

Today I found an easy way to have my computer combine a bunch of photos and videos into a single video. As I watch this I find myself forgetting the hard parts and wanting to return and do the whole thing again.