Preparation and Packing
Like doing the dishes, not fun but it needs to be done
What's New?
Brutal honesty
Big Agnes and her Feathered Friend are staying home.
After three successive European tours (2017, 2019 and 2023) where we shipped our camping gear home midway through the tours, we've finally admitted to ourselves that we are now 'credit card tourers'. As a result though, the load that we're carrying will be considerably lighter. We're still in the process of packing so the final tally is yet to come, but it will be less.
Although we'll have a lighter physical load, our mental load will be greater. Having a tent and sleeping bag with us (Big Agnes and her Feathered Friend), even if we didn't use them much, was a tremendous mental safety net. We are well past the age where sleeping rough in a rainstorm would classify as an 'adventure', so we will have to find accommodation and sustenance each and every night.
This raises another issue where an honest confession is required. There was a forum thread a while back regarding whether folks booked everything in advance or if they were willing to 'wing it'. I smuggly replied that K and I were in the 'wing it' camp and that we've never been skunked.
A few days after posting this, I was reading Jacquie Gaudet's lead up to her upcoming trip. She was finding that with still many months to go until the start of their tour, the availability of accommodation was becoming quite limited. With this, we had a quick look at some of the more popular areas we would be going to (like Split, Corvara, Misurina etc) and were equally shocked at the limited supply, and cost of what was available.
With the recent memory of our 1st May 2023 near debacle in France (very basic hotel and a pizza from a food truck) still fresh in our minds, we didn't want risk a 'near Oliver' experience again, especially as we wouldn't have a safety net.
We started to book places in the popular areas and that ball kept rolling. Next thing we knew, the tour was fully booked. It actually didn't take too long, and we saw that the limited availability wasn't just restricted to popular areas. That was the case just about everywhere. Folks are back travelling in force!
We also had our first small domino crash as a result of this. About two weeks ago I awoke to an e-mail from the Croatian ferry company that they had cancelled the sailing we had booked (on Easter Sunday) from Ancona to Split.
That was it. Cancelled. No other option offered.
The next booking we could get was two days later on SNAV, the Italian ferry company so we had our first, of what hopefully will be very few, rejigs and rebookings. As a result we'll have fewer days in Split but Ravenna has been added to our itinerary!
New Body Parts
Yep, I had a full replacement of my right knee in August 2024. I was on the glide path to this for 8 years, managing the osteoarthritis (OA) in the knee with an unloading brace and hyaluronic acid injections but the time to get it done finally came.
The rehab and physio was pretty intense, and painful at the start, but we have a fantastic sports medicine community in Canmore and with great physiotherapists and physician follow up I was biking and back to yoga (gentle stuff) within two months. I was skiing, both x-country classic and easy downhill, by mid November and by the end of January I was back into full-on alpine touring which we kept up through the end of March.
This upcoming biking should be great in getting to 100% recovery.
Kirsten is still 100% original. Nothing artificial about her.
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New Bikes
With my new titanium knee we thought matching bikes would be nice.
So we got some, and here they are!
That's a far too glib a comment to describe the process and the end products. We worked with Dale Marchand and Graham Mann ( Mannmade Cycles, formerly RollingDale Cycles in Sherwood Park Alberta) to build these beautiful new rides. They are similar to our trusty Touts (the butt-hand-foot triangle is identical so riding them is like putting on a pair of perfectly fitting and broken in shoes) but they are lighter, sportier and more agile.
And they are ours in some very special ways.
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Our old 15 l front panniers are now our 'big' rear bags. As a nod to lighter weight 'bike packing' set ups, we've now got 5.8 l fork packs (Ortliebs of course! - very simple and secure attachment system). We've also got a 4 l saddle bag (bike spares / tools) and our trusty Ortlieb handlebar bags (not installed yet as I'd just have to take off the mounting bracket to pack the bikes in a day or so)
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...... and if anyone is interested ..... the bikes are custom sized Ti frames, seat post, stem and handlebar; ENVE Adventure carbon fork; Pinion P-18 gear drive system (gearbox replacing a traditional bottom bracket), 636% gear range with ~11.5% step between each gear, Gates CDX 32 tooth front cog and 28 tooth rear cog with CDX carbon belt drive ; Shimano XT hydraulic brakes; Son28 front hub with Edelux headlight and taillight (non flashing ;) ; Onyx single speed rear hub; DT Swiss EX471 650b rims with Schwalbe G-One R 45 mm tires; Ergon GP3 grips; SKS Bluemels fenders; Tubus Airy Ti rear rack; and our trusty old Brooks B17 saddles and Deore XT SPD single sided pedals (gotta have some old stuff on the bike!)
Everything Else is Still the Same
We're still going to be focused on food throughout this trip, with likely as many pictures of what we're eating as where we're riding. The areas we're riding through will have no shortage of great restaurants, some well known and heralded, others known only to locals that we'll stumble into. We'll try them all!
We're still going to have a 'Song of the DAY' (SOTD) and I encourage folks who are reading along to start the SOTD video (when there is one) to play along while you read and look at the pics. This will hopefully give you a better feel for what our day was like. Be forewarned though, my taste in music is like my humour ... it's not for everyone!
We're still going to spend a lot of time in the mountains and do quite a bit of climbing. The 'planned route' numbers are pretty similar to our last tour in 2023; approximately 3,000 km's and about 40,000 m of climbing. Most of this will be back loaded. Many of the climbs / cols we'll do will be brand new to us. However there are some we'll be revisiting after many decades. It will be interesting to see how well we remember them (if at all!)
Pre Tour Conditioning
Since there's been quite a bit of snow on the ground up until today (I'm writing this on Saturday 5th April) we've had a grand total of about 7 km's of riding around the neighbourhood. That's about the same as we had for our 2023 tour so I think we'll survive! Fortunately the first couple of weeks are in relatively flat terrain as we work our way south mainly through the Po valley. The real climbing doesn't start until we hit the Dalmatian coast.
Even with my knee rehab we managed to do quite a bit of back country / alpine touring around home with three week long hut based trips interspersed with lots of nordic (track and skate) skiing at the Canmore Nordic Centre. Fortunately we do live in one of the better places in the world to do this so our aerobic conditioning should be ok. It will take a couple of days to get adjusted to making our legs go round-and-round though.
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The snow is now melting, the bags and bikes are packed so it's time to get this show on the road!
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4 days ago
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1 week ago
Looks like we might have a very interesting start. We just got a weather warning from Air Canada … snow in Montreal tomorrow where we connect with our Milan flight! Sounds like it could turn into one of those nasty ice storms.
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6 days ago
I think your thoughts on accommodation availability are spot on. We’re certain arriving right near the start of the summer season and hopefully that means less crowds and more businesses starting to open up.
We’ll be in the Cortina / Corvara area from around 20th -28th May and then heading west to Bolzano & Merran. When will you be in the Dolomites? Any chance of an overlap?
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