What's up with the big summer trip? Well maybe it won't be a big trip. Maybe there won't be any more big trips. It looks like it's a thing of the past when we were on the road for a month or more, when we didn't have to book ahead and didn't worry about health issues interfering. Now we book everything in advance, and only accommodations that can be canceled. Hotels are almost twice as expensive as ten years ago and we are also fussier and aren't happy with "simple" quarters. I can accept that we want more comfort at our age and we can take the higher prices in our stride. But I have become more cautious. Or to look at it another way, we are being sensible and realistic.

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That was on our tour through Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

We have now booked two weeks in Alsace, with three stops where we will ride day loops. We'll take the car to Saverne. We have planned a few rides from Saverne as our home base, then we pedal or drive to Molsheim about 20 km to the west of Strassburg for some more loops. After a couple of days in Molsheim we cycle on to Colmar for some more day trips. Janos will then fetch the car wherever it is and we drive home.

There will be no bikes on trains or one-night stands and then moving on. The problem I encountered with moving on to a new destination every day was the planning itself, not the cycling. The effort to coordinate a route with available lodgings at the right distances in between was giving me a big headache. The routing compromises I would have to make either to find a place to sleep or to book a suitable hotel were exasperating. It probably would have been easier if the trip were planned further in advance and not so many hotels were already full. That is our problem I guess, not wanting to commit ourselves too far in advance. Which was perhaps a good idea in this case. There were health issues that had to be taken care of.

We have done a few excellent trips this year, not the epic rides as in the old days, but these aren't the old days. Bicycle travel has changed and so have we. We did a short season opening tour in March, had a wonderful two weeks in Burgundy and an enjoyable four days in the Bavarian Forest.

Now we can look forward to two weeks of Alsace at the end of July and beginning of August. It's booked and there are no health issues on the horizon, hurrah! And who  knows what other trips might be on the horizon before the year is out.