We will leave it, and some "travelling clothes", with our friend in Austria and use it to carry the bulk of our stuff on the way back. We also have a very compact duffel that weighs little and which we could carry on the bike, but it has no wheels.

I forgot to ask you about that bag. Do you bring it along on your bikes or are you leaving it with a friend?

I know where I'm stopping the next time I pass through Ladysmith. I'd better be on my bike to justify one of those--maybe it will be an excuse for a short trip?

And we are most definitely looking forward to your torte tracking trip tales!!!

So complex! I think when you come back I will bring my Garmin down and you can give me lessons in plotting all this stuff out! In the mean time, have fun out there!

That’s interesting too. I’ve never thought much about how others use their GPS. You must use it much differently than we do. I draw out the day’s route on RideWithGPS (the same route I post to the journal), and draw it to end at the hotel. We never add waypoints to build a route from or navigate to, and we don’t actually use the navigation system itself. We just follow the yellow brick road.

Yes, your bikes will be getting pretty lonely by now. While we are away from home we are stashing our four North American bikes in our bedroom, where we hope they will be the most comfortable. Together with our photo albums, books, and musical instruments, they are our most treasured possessions.

It's true that the Booking site makes it easy to cancel, and clearly shows which are free to cancel (until a specified date), which will charge a fee, and which are tough luck. That's almost the easy part, because we have also marked the locations and details on our maps, complete with distances from one to another, and we have put markers in the GPS, based on the stated latitudes and longitudes. Even those markers are not fast, because the lats and longs are given in Booking in a system (Degrees and decimal minutes?) not recognized by Osmand - requiring conversion on the side. Yikes, my head is swimming already!

And if you doas Scott suggested and call in on Munich you could go to My Place Self Storage and day Hi to our bikes!
Tricia

We’ve had lots of visitors in Uaymitun this winter... friends just left this morning so I’m looking forward to relaxing now and catching up on your adventures!

Oh, no! It’s been interesting reading all the discussion about how hard and constraining this sounds to folks. It’s not too late - if you think you’ve made a mistake, just cancel them all or most of them. Very easy to do, unless you opted for any that weren’t cancellable.

Maybe next time. Did you forget the whole Hotel Bookings all the way around? There will be no deviations!!!!!! Dodie is hating this method. She feels locked in and trapped.

We were stationed near Kaiserslautern, Germany for 2 years, and took almost weekly trips to visit dozens of tourist areas while we were there. (1976-78) My favorite castle is Neuschwanstein! It is a real, steep hike up the road to its doorstep! I loved all of the intricate woodcarvings as well as the "fairytale" design. You will be covering a number of places we visited. Looking forward to your tour.

Or, you could bike just a few miles north, see Munich, and check in on fellow CycleBlazers Susanne Gibson and Janos Kertesz.

Sounds like a pickle! We booked everything in advance when we were in the Yucatan because it was Christmas and New Years and we figured we would have a hard time finding places during that time, but once we got to Cuba it was pretty free and easy and we rarely had problems. I suppose a lot depends on whether you are in busy places, which it sounds like you are. It's nerve wracking for sure, knowing one little error can cause a gigantic collapse of plans. Ah well, you two are masters of all this! You will sail through with flying colours I am sure!