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!

Today’s ride was just a little longer than yesterday’s and the weather was a little warmer. I’m generally good at making it through a sufferfest but the sun works me hard. Knowing the weather and the distance we decided to leave an hour earlier and to speed up our lunch. With this strategy we arrived at our airbnb just as the temperature was peaking. We checked into our airbnb and I immediately took a cold bath. The ride plan had worked well.

A person approached us on a motorcycle. He leaned back, put his feet in the air in front of him, and pretended to pedal. It made us laugh. 

Several times today we leapfrogged a pair of bikers who were riding with paper maps. They were constantly getting confused. There are great trail markers (we’ve been riding on Eurovelo 17) but there are places where to follow the trail you have to turn without a marker. Earlier we had been talking about how our mapping software really enables our travel, and having the opportunity to help some news friends who were lost really drove the  point home for us. I plan out route using Komoot and then upload each day’s route to our Wahoo Elemnt Bolt bike computers. (And we each have one.) Often Natalie has her view zoomed out a bit to keep track of the overall picture and I have mine zoomed in to help me with the many hundreds of turns we make in a day following a route.

One other aspect of my Wahoo setup is that I’ve chosen to not display speed, ride time, distance to go, or even time of day to my primary screen. I find having that information causes my brain to be destination-focused, which causes me to not enjoy the journey quite as much. I’m doing everything I can to live in the moment instead of the moment to come.

Our Airbnb has laundry! This means we will not have to ride in dirty bike shorts and shirts. I have tried to set up our Airbnbs for this ride so that we could do laundry every 4 days or so.

We went shopping and bought, among other things,10 liters of different drinks (dominated by chocolate oat milk, then juices). We try hard to constantly drink on our bike, but even after drinking water until our stomachs hurt, we always arrive in a state that food doesn’t appeal as much as drink.

We are tired and ready for a day of rest.