As we approach the home stretch of this marvelous trip, I thought I’d take the opportunity to jot down a few thoughts I’ve had along the way, especially given I’m the newbie in this sort of adventure. Whereas Jill has cycle-toured all around the world, I’ve only enjoyed a couple of excursions—taking our tandem to Burgundy and riding around southern France on e-bikes this past fall. This trip is by far the longest I’ve ever tried and I admit that I came to this trip with more than a bit of trepidation and I fear Jill had to endure my constant worrying about things that were unknown to me. Would the length of the days’ trips be too much for our batteries? What if it rains constantly? How will we take these heavy bikes onto trains? You get the idea. All the way up to our departure, Jill had to continually reassure me that all would be well. To quote one of her favorite aphorisms, “We’re in good health. We’ve got our credit cards. And we have each other. Together we can face anything.” She could have added that she’s spent months researching, planning and organizing this trip for us. She took on the vast majority of logistical issues that would have swamped me. For the most part, I merely had to show up on time and do those things I’m good at like managing our technical issues, mechanical problems, doing the laundry, etc. In my opinion, it’s proving to be an excellent partnership, not that I expected much different. 

And with that preamble out of the way, here are some of my observations:

The bikes: As had been mentioned earlier, we each are riding KTM e-bikes and they’re fairly similar to each other in that they both have beefy Bosch Performance CX motors and 750 Whr batteries, wide tires that work well on both pavement as well as on unpaved tracks. Each bike has a front fork suspension which has proven really useful when we've been on unpaved trails or cobble stones. The frames are robust and when coupled with the batteries, these bikes are heavy. At first Jill had considerable concerns about handling such a beefy machine, but she has adapted well to hers and has learned how to manage it well. Given some the extremely rough terrain we've endured so far, I think we're much better off with these heftier machines which seem to handle the roughness easily.

Our experience so far is that we’re able to ride up to 60k and 4,000’ of elevation easily on a single charge, and this is with us carrying significant weight in our panniers. At first, I was concerned about the range so I decided to try a couple of experiments at the start of our trip. I tried riding with little or no assistance from the motor, especially when we were on flat terrain. I was impressed with how easily I was able to pedal without assistance. (This proved very assuring when I was forced to ride Jill's bike with little power assist during our low battery charge trauma!) The bike rides very smoothly without electrical assistance. I soon realized that my concerns were unfounded. Jill tends to ride with more assistance than do I, but at the end of each day, our battery reserves remained pretty close to each other even when I was riding conservatively. Eventually I stopped worrying about range and let the bike do more work for me. I’ve finished each day with at least 30% battery reserves even on those days when we were climbing up 18%+ grades. You can color me impressed.

Jill and I have remarked on several occasions that thanks to riding e-bikes, we have been able to plan longer routes, climb bigger hills and ride rougher terrain than we ever could with either our tandem or our gravel bikes, especially given the weight of our panniers. Don’t get me wrong, we're still getting plenty of exercise each day. The difference, however, is that we arrive at our destinations tired, but not exhausted and we get to more fully enjoy to rides even when faced with what would be otherwise daunting ascents.  Up until recently, we’ve both been cycling purists and perhaps thought that using e-bikes was “cheating.” This trip has totally disabused us of these notions. We will return to riding our regular, non-assisted bikes when we get home, but for journeys such as this, e-bikes are the way for us to go. Of course, having the luxury of owning our bikes and being able to store them in Munich gives us a great deal of latitude in this matter.

We have yet to face any serious mechanical problems and frankly I do worry what might happen should we suffer an issue with the electrical systems, especially given we’ve been riding in pretty remote areas. Outside of the bigger cities, I doubt we could find any mechanical assistance, so we keep our fingers crossed that these rugged bikes continue to hold up for us. Our batteries are removable, and for those nights when we do not have access to electrical power where we’ve parked, we are able to take the batteries up to our room and charge them there. As Jill has noted in this journal, the inn keepers around here seem to be very used to cyclists with e-bikes and have pretty consistently provided us with covered parking areas equipped with multiple outlets for charging.

So far, the only proactive mechanical steps I’ve taken with them has been to periodically lube our chains and make sure our tire pressures remain within the proper range. When we return to Munich, we plan on taking our bikes in for complete tune-ups in preparation for our next big cycling adventure.

Photography: 

I’m also a bit of snob when it come to photography. On any trip I take, I always have serious camera gear with me. I love this hobby and my primary goal in taking photos has been to come away with images that I can print with high quality. Consequently I usually travel with a DSLR, multiple lenses, a travel tripod and a flash. I shoot in RAW format and rarely post my images online, waiting until I'm back home to fuss over the images in Lightroom and Photoshop and then print out the few I deem worthy. All those who know me accuse me of holding my pictures hostage in my PC as they usually only get to see those I've printed out leaving many to wish I'd be less picky and show more of my efforts.

I've hedged my bets for this trip. I've brought along my Olympus micro 4/3rd camera, only one zoom lens and none of the other accessories that I normally schelp along on a trip. I did this mainly to save weight and space knowing that both would be at a premium. I did worry about how I was going to transfer pictures from the camera to my tablet to use in the journal. I quickly came to realize that doing so was going to be a major hassle, maybe enough so that I wouldn't share as many pictures as either of us would prefer.

My solution was to rely upon my cell phone for documenting the journey. I have Samsung Galaxy S22+ which sports 3 lenses, a normal lens, a wideangle and a 3x telephoto. The phone is attached to my bike with a Quadlock case that provides secure attachment but is very easy to remove. As we've ridden along, I've been able to stop along the way and take snapshots that we want to have for the journal and whenever I come acrosss I scene that I particularly want to shoot, I'll also use the Olympus, taking more time for better composition and exposure. I'll wait until we're back home to work on those. Uploading photos from the phone to the journal has proven to be extremely easy.

I've been quite impressed with the quality of the shots I've taken with cell phone. Certainly they've been more than good enough for posting online. I'm looking forward to printing some of them out and comparing them to those taken with my Olympus. Although I have more focal length ranges with the Olympus and the zoom I've brought along (28mm-90mm), the three lenses on the phone camera have given me more flexibility than I had anticipated. I'll continue to use both.

I'll take a break here but will add some additional personal thoughts near the end of our trip.