You really made me laugh. I only noticed Keith had shaved his because he forgot to put his razor away!!

You really made me laugh. I only noticed Keith had shaved his because he forgot to put his razor away!!

Climbing is just so darn rewarding in so many ways. That sense of accomplishment is unbelievable and the views are usually beautiful. Then there is the reward of the descent. And when I can’t do it anymore I will have the memories and will enjoy dawdling along rivers.

Good idea. We are with Fido and they only keep our messages for three days. Yikes. When we had a land line I could access my messages as an email. I wish we could do that with our cell phones. When I bought my Vodafone esim they had a special on, double data for the same price. A Europe wide esim was $38 Canadian for 40 GB rather than 20 GB. You could activate anytime within a year. Last time I looked they were offering a 50% bonus…30 GB instead of 20. I am going to keep checking so I can grab a good deal when I see one for next year.

We can’t wait to show off our beautiful corner of the world to you, you bikini biker! That made me laugh so hard 😂. We will have to train hard before you get here, but we still won’t be able to keep up when we go biking.

Thank you! Some nights I worry I have been incoherent because I start to nod off before I am done, but the journals are so valuable to us to help us remember. At our age we need all the help we can get! I always kept a hand written journal of our trips before, and journaling on CycleBlaze has introduced us to so many wonderful people and places it makes it really worth the effort. We love reading other people’s journals too. If you aren’t touring it is great to read about it, and it gives us so many ideas for future trips.

Our CycleBlaze meetup was a highlight of our trip too! As for those cappuccinos, I admit to a true addiction ☕️. I limited myself to one in the Zurich airport as they were 6.50 Ch which is about a million dollars Canadian.

Much appreciated, but I have a 🤫.. I have had poor hearing all of my 74 years, due to being a preemie and as my Mom said “ you didn’t finish baking” .. This is another notch I will tackle after beating breast cancer this year! Most thankful for your kindness and especially your great journals !

You and Ken are our polestars. We really admire what you do. How I wish we had discovered bike touring when we were younger. We tell all the young people we meet to start now! But we hope for continued good health and the wisdom to take advantage of it. We also hope to get back to NZ for another CycleBlaze meetup with you.

I think you are way more adventurous!! You camp. We have a tent but somehow we keep leaving it behind.

Thanks Mike. We are so glad we do it for our own memories, and so glad others do both for arm chair travel and decisions about next year!

Oh I hope your hearing returns soon. That must be so frustrating and disconcerting. It would be hard to tell where sounds are coming from I would think.

We loved Portugal and Spain, but having done that the last two years we thought France would be delightful, and it was. But maybe that great weather spoiled me!!

We dither over lack of calling ability with data-only eSIMs too--especially since our home provider only keeps voicemails for 10 days. We've both missed important messages because, not only were they deleted before we got home, we never knew we'd been called because, with the line off, calls went straight to voicemail and thence to oblivion. For our upcoming trip, I plan to get $5 credit with Skype and call my voicemail weekly.

Al grew a beard on our first big tour together, in 1992. He kept it a while after we got home and then shaved it off--and I didn't notice until he grew it back again. His colleagues thought my not noticing was hilarious! In any case, he decided that the initial itchiness passed and he preferred trimming the beard every week or two over shaving every morning.