So we're off again on another little adventure.

When we finished our last (spectacular) more or less cut-and paste tour of several French gorges and the Spanish Pyrenees, we were musing about the next tour being a Santander to Split or even a Japanese adventure.

With lots of time to dream, ponder, ruminate and iterate, things changed and we ended up with what's going to unfold here over the next 10 weeks; a circular(ish) route starting and finishing in Milan (well, the Milan international airport, which is actually a long way from Milan).

We'll start by heading south-east through the Po valley to Ancona on the Adriatic coast, giving us a bit of a flattish warm-up. From there we're catching a ferry to Split, Croatia and we'll start island hopping north along the Dalmatian coast. That will lead us into Slovenia, new for us, and the mountains! The Julian Alps will give way to the Dolomites as we zig zag our way west. Next up will be the South Tyrol Alps and then a small diversion into the Graubünden canton of Switzerland which will set up our return to Italy via Lakes Como, Lugano, Maggiore and Orta.

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When trying to come up with a name for this tour I was playing around with acronyms of the areas we'd be travelling through. DADA was stuck in my brain for quite a while as the Dada movement "tended to make use of nonsense, irrationality, and an anti-bourgeois sensibility" (Wikipedia). This sounded particularly apropos of the way one significant part of the world formerly known as 'The Leader of the Western World" seems to be right now. 

However, the sequencing of the letters didn't fit with the chronology of the trip and that was loading more stress onto my little brain. We are going from Adriatic to Dalmatia to Dolomites to Alps. That's ADDA dammit!

That's also the Attention Deficit Disorder Association. This would also be appropriate for the current situation (wait, what was that last head spinning headline!! Look, a squirrel ...., Oh, the sky is falling!)  however these trips are about getting away from the daily noise and distractions of so called 'regular life' and focusing on moving your pedals around, moving your bike and your body down the road and savouring the moment.

With that in mind, it struck me that we would be crossing the Adda river as  it flows into the Po right near the start of our trip, and nearing the finish of our tour, we would be riding along the Adda  again as it flows south into Lake Como. This is a nice logical joining together of two ends of a string to form a circle and that works for me. So the ADDA Tour it is.

With that out of the way, and now thinking happy thoughts of pedalling across beautiful islands and through stunning alpine meadows, I remembered a wonderful book our dear friend Kim B gave our kids long ago - Dr Suess's "Oh, The Places You'll Go!". 

To quote from the inside cover 'It is the perfect send-off for children starting out in the maze of life, be they nursery school grads or newly minted PhD's. Everyone will find it inspired good fun."  I think this applies to oldish cycle travellers as well, so there's the main journal title and theme. And who doesn't like Dr Seuss???

I also have to recognize that there is not really that much that is new under the sun with our route. As with our last couple of tours, we owe a huge thank you to the greater CB community for inspiring and laying out the route for a very large part of this tour. As always, TA for the Croatian island hopping; Jill Gelineau and Susan Carpenter for their adventures in Slovenia; the Classens and Jacquie Gaudet for the Dolomites; Polly Low for the Graubünden section and once again TA and J.G. for the Italian lakes. I think it was Jacquie and Al's  ride from Bolzano to Corvara through the Alpe di Siusi, that made us say "Oh, That Is a Place We HAVE To Go'. 

So here we go.