Our Eternal Trip Is Postponed while we Seek Degrees of Education across the US from each other (Joan in MA and Zac in CO)....but hopefully the next chapter of adventure is not far away! Here are the details of our recent Europe exploration:
We will only vaguely list our plans, or where we have already been here, partly to avoid giving too much info over the internet, but mostly because we just really don't know what we're doing: 9/15/05 fly out from Denver
9/16/05 arrive in London at 7am, groggy and thankful that they still speak english here...sort of
9/16-9/19 Stay with our roommate Robbie's sis in her flat in London (lucky us!!)
9/20/05 Take the train to Tring (just outside of London) and begin riding parallel to the famous Ridgeway Trail until it is cyclable (about halfway down the 80 mile path). Oh, and, get lost a lot.
9/21/05 Ride really slow all day and camp in a field in Bledlow.
9/22/05 Ride really slow all day and camp by the river Thames in North Stoke.
9/23/05 Ride really slow all day on the Ridgeway and pitch our tent at some sort of farm camp (with hot showers and toilets!)
9/24/05 Ride extra slow and camp in the front yard of some great people in the coutryside in Swindon whose granddaughter happily entertained us all evening with songs and some of that riverdance stuff.
9/25/05 Re-emerge into civilization off of the Ridgeway in Avebury and stay in the garden of some awesomely hospitable strangers who rescued us from two cold lonely nights. Thanks!
9/26/05 Leave our bikes in our Avebury hosts' garage and take the bus to see Stonehenge (about 30 miles away) to give ourselves a rest day.
9/27/05 Pack up camp and take the canal path to Bath
9/27-9/28 Stay in Bath at St. Christopher's Inn Youth Hostel and check out the town
9/29/05 Pack up from the hostel, change from mtb to skinny tires, and head for Poole where we've booked our ferry to France (we decided it was just too cold unfortunately to make it up into northern England this time)
9/30/05 We get miraculously snatched up and adopted for the weekend by a local couple who've shown us some seriously funny English traditions
10/4/05 Go beating in the morning with our Gillingham hosts and then go to Poole for our midnight ferry to Cherbourgh. Bonjour!
10/5/05 Sleep on a footpath for a few hours in the morning to recover from the ferry ride (actually we spent the whole time on the ferry sleeping too) and then ride around Cherbourg, go to the info tourist centre, buy maps, then leave town
10/6/05 Ride to Quineville, the first stop on our tour of the Normandy landing beaches, and discover that the museum there is entirely in French (nice way to display how thousands of Americans died there don't you think?)
10/7/05 Ride to past Ste. Marie du-Mont, and stop at a Utah Beach?Museum that actually did have English translations (however badly spelled-but that's ok, how much french can i speak? none) and camped in the parking lot of a B&B--weird, but they seemed ok with it
10/8/05 Ride to past Grandcamp Maisy, saw 'La Point du Hoc' where some of the seriously bloody fighting went down
10/9/05 Ride to the American cemetery and WWII memorial (with all the white crosses) and then to Arromaches to see the 360 degree war film and then head inland.
10/10/05 Ride somewhere I forget.
10/11/05 Bust ass to get to Lesuieux to buy train tickets into Paris and book a hostel in Paris before the internet place closed--to make our Nov. 19 deadline in southern Spain, we know we're going to have to cut out a few miles by train, so we did about 100 here. Very long hard day- 25K in one hour uphill gave me another great headache. Day tot was 64.83km, our longest yet---keep in mind how much shit we are carrying. We stayed with some very nice people who found me laying down on the sidewalk refusing to move and who did not seem to mind me throwing up all night because of my headache.
10/12/05 Take train into Paris, spend all day riding through central Paris!!!!! trying not to get killed and trying to understand why our hotel was really far away when it still cost a lot.
10/13/05 Tour Paris all day--more later
10/15/05 Head to Versailles to begin cycling along the Louire (chateuax) route which will probably take us about 10 days. Bon voyage!
10/25/05 we are almost through the Loire Valley route after a few minor setbacks, including migraines, cool caves that must be explored at length, and rivers that had to be jumped in...anyway. Soon I think we will take a train to catch up to the Pyrenees so that we will arrive at our Southern Spain destination on time.
10/31/05 Train to Bordeaux after living in a bush for two days (nothing too far from our old hole in the ground home), then to Hendaye...ride across the border to Irun? Where oh where are the jackolanters, lazy ghost people, awesome real costume people, and...free candy (or caramel apples from the snows')??? homesick today.
11/1/05 Arrive in Madrid after a very unfriendly night on the sleeper train with four other people in our TINY room and our bikes taking up most of our beds. NOT our fault. See journal.
11/3/05 Leave Madrid, headed southwest for Malaga via Portugal in three weeks. Must ride double time now!!
11/5/05 Happy 50something to Dad! Metric Century today--my first! Slept in a camper in the garage of a local hospitable couple in Navalmoral.
11/6/05 Happy 21 to me! We rode really hard all day, 80km uphill to make it to Trujillo, home of Peru conquistador Pizzaro, to celebrate my bday in style.
11/7/05 Happy 21 to Matt! Hang in Trujillo and explore the hilltop ruined castle and enjoy the lovely Plaza.
11/8/05 Happy 17 to my sistah!
11/25/05 So we have been doing a hell of a lot. yup. we will explain it all in great detail soon I swear. and pictures. loads of pictures. We went to AFRICA today. Was not quite expecting that, but we met up with the fam in southern Spain and took a day trip and tour into Morrocco. it was awesome. let me tell you about some rugs (um, later)
We are headed for Italy...somehow....there seems to be a lot of water in the way.
12/4/05 Sleep deprived in Alicante.
12/5/05 Barcelona.
12/8/05 Got into Citavecchia on a ferry from Barcelona. Camped under a highway bridge for two nights while we organized how best to tour Italy.
12/9/05 Begin riding in the freezing rain toward SICILY.
12/10/05 Stop at the Rome airport to scope out a spot to hang out while we wait for our plane in a month.
12/14/05 Get into Napoli.
12/15/05 Tour the Isle of Capri on our bikes as a day trip from our hostel in Napoli.
12/16/05-1/7/06 Ride south along western coast of Italy to Sicily, spending Christmas and New Years in great campsites enjoying our peace and solitude, and then take a ferry to Rome from Palermo, Sicily where it was raining and freezing---glad to be nearing the home stretch!
1/7/06-1/12/06 Site-see Rome intensely all day. We got in a lot of amazing sites, but Rome is still an incredibly dense and impressive city. It was both of our favorites!
1/12/06 Fly home in a miserable, migraine and puking-filled (Joan) 24 hour journey. My bed at home never felt so wonderful.
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Pledge our Pedaling to Help with Disaster Relief!
We estimate about a $500 donation to NC to be submitted soon! Thanks everyone!
We would love to put some extra meaning into our pedal strokes by getting our family and friends and site visitors to pledge a few cents per mile we ride toward THE NATURE CONSERVANCY. Check out their website at: www.natureconservancy.org
The Nature Conservancy works in locations all over the world to protect the environment from human destruction. They are now fundraising for a project called the Costal Louisiana Restoration Project, which will reconstruct the ecosystems and the wildlife habitats destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. This is important not only for the animals who also lost their homes in the storm, but because coastal vegetation is a natural barrier to the waves and wind that come crashing in on New Orleans. And in the best interests of everyone, this area was also home to many fish hatcheries and oil wells that should be restored and protected. Since President Bush has recently promised to meet the cost of the reconstruction efforts after Katrina, we figure that the people of New Orleans and other affected areas will be taken care of, but that the environment may take the real hit on this one, not only because he will ignore it, but also because charity funds that might normally be donated to the Nature Conservancy are being directed to the Red Cross and other similar orgs.
If you're interested, please send us an email at bumtravel@hotmail.com promissing to donate your chosen amount per mile we ride. We will calculate our total miles using our bicycle computers, determine the amount you owe, and come to collect upon our return. We will have you write a check directly to The Nature Conservancy to avoid liability and complications and then send in all our earnings together. You may set an upward limit on your pledge, but to give you an idea of what you may be getting into, we plan (haha) to cover between 2000-4000 miles over our three month stay using only our own legs of steeeeeeeeeeel!!!
Therefore, a pledge of X amount may obligate you to write us a check for Y amount when we return based on how diligently we ride (which, honestly, is not going that well so far...really):
3 cents/mile= from to
5 cents/mile= from to
10 cents/mile= from to
Go ahead, be generous and help us make more out of our blood, sweat, and tears than just scars and hospital bills.
Thank You!
Thank You to our Sponsors So Far for whom we Ride a Bit more Energetically:
Anna Meiners
Marie Brewer
Gwenn & Dave Davies
Kathleen Brewer and John Meiners
Jim and Jean Blair
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