The process of preparing for a long ride is both fun and frustrating. Some of our steps include:

So many people ask us how we get our bike to the place will start from. I made a one minute video which does a time lapse of that process.

We made it to the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport with our panniers and bike boxes. It was a little nerve-racking to watch the AirTags track our luggage and show one apparently left in Salt Lake, but everything showed up.

We actually slept pretty well, in the end Both of us woke up a little before midnight and were wide awake. However, after about an hour, I fell asleep, and then eventually Natalie did too. I slept in until almost 8. Natalie slept till a bit after 7. I was...

 Our Saturday night hotel was perfect in a few ways: comfortable bed, near a good grocery store (with our favorite European -brand chocolate almond milk), exceptional breakfast, and kind staff. However, the location wasn’t the ideal place to spend a Sunday. The surroundings had the feeling of an abandoned strip...

We were able to leave our nice accommodation relatively early, on the road by 8 AM. Once again, our route was a combination of nice paved paths, dirt paths, and today we added a muddy construction zone. The construction zone was the most difficult and we probably were not supposed...

The campsite worked out fine, but compared to a hotel it was 1/6 the cost and 1/6 the experience. The most inconvenient aspect was the one-minute walk to the bathroom and having to get properly dressed for the journey. It is easy to take for granted the convenience of having...

Last night’s Airbnb was super comfortable. It blackout shutters, great air conditioning, and a bed with just the right firmness. It was very quiet there too. We both slept very well. Tonight’s Airbnb is crazy modern super nice finish apartment in downtown Beaune, which happens to be hosting a music...

Today marked our midway point on this difficult segment of our ride. The progress feels satisfying.

Natalie is writing tonight. We were on the road by about 8:20. We both slept pretty well. It was lovely to listen to the rain and be dry.

Many months ago as we thought through our route, we wondered if we could make it from Paris to Strasbourg in one week. Riding on the Eurovelo routes this transit would be 600 miles. Given our desire to avoid riding on Sunday, this was a little out of our range....

This is Natalie writing. I’m more of a random list format on these, kinda stream-of-consciousness, in case you haven’t noticed.

Natalie writing again. Note about yesterday: Pete took two naps, and then he was still able to go to bed at 9pm and sleep fine. That’s what these rest days are for!

It was great to rest and recover for two days in Strasbourg, France. Our two-day liquid intake total exceeded 15 liters, mostly water, followed by chocolate soy milk, followed by apple juice. We clearly sweat a lot on our ride days and even though we are constantly drinking from our...

Our Airbnb in Ludwigshafen am Rhein was great. It was spacious and comfortable. We slept well and it was hard to get motivated to leave, but today was the day we’d meet Matt and his family near Frankfurt, so that was the motivation needed.

We loved our last Airbnb in Oberheimbach. We were so comfortable and our host was outstanding. Having the fully stocked kitchen saved us, or we would have been eating one of our two emergency backpacking meals.

Today we had a slightly less than 40 mile ride to Matt and Jessica’s house in Bitburg. Much of it was in beautiful forest trails. It was slightly uphill with about 10 climbs of significance. We got off the bike and pushed a few times. The weather again was cooler...

We let our blog slip a bit while we focused on Matt, Jessica, and their family. It was so much fun to be with them in their home in Bitburg,Germany. We arrived at their house on Friday afternoon and had a tour of their fun house, watched the boys’ creative...

We both slept so well! We went to bed around 8:30 pm and slept a solid 10 hours. Sleeping that long is very rare for us. I woke up briefly in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and could hear it raining outside. I was grateful not...

I slept great, even though our window faced railroad tracks (with frequent trains) and a moderately busy road on the other side of the tracks. The house we were in was built prior to 1900 and had super thick walls and great windows, both of which muffled the sound. We’ve...

It has been more than a week since we flew home. In hindsight, everything worked out perfectly, but in the moment it seemed like there were going to be a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong.  

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.