HITS

Every day that we are on tour, we watch the hit hit count for the blog. Hits are the life blood of the enterprise. After all, there is no use writing stuff if no one is reading. Normally you would look on hits as something that just happens as you tell the story, but sometimes (to Dodie's dismay) I think about what type of reporting will actually boost the hit count.

For this tour, the average number of daily hits was 848, with the best day having 1873 and the worst 329. With that much variation, you would think one could find reasons for the waxing and waning of interest. Looking at the daily chart below, there is a bt of rhyme and reason, but generally it seems kind of random. Whether we were doing well, or if not, falling off the bikes or freezing or getting ready to quit did not seem to reliably affect the hits. Hmmm.

So, generally, as the blog rolls along, more people become aware of it and daily hits increase. Also, when it becomes clear the tour is near its end, hits drop off. That latter observation shows a possible basic fact about CGOAB logs: people prefer to follow a tour that is in progress. Yes it's interesting to read a story that is set in the past, or to use it to research your own future route, but it is the current news and the checking in daily that piques people's interest.

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COSTS

We had targetted a typical daily cost for the tour of $100. That would include accommodation and food, plus incidentals, but not transportation. As it turned out, we averaged $72 for motels and $41 for food. About incidentals, listen, we had to go to the zoo (twice!) and we had to get piles of souvenirs for the grandkids, and we had to mail some of them right away. We also really did have to rent that U-Haul, and mail home that camping gear, and replace brake pads and cables and batteries, etc. So all in all, on 50 days on the road, including all incidentals, ferries, trains, etc. we had a total cost of $7000, or $140 per day. Had we been camping (also not quite free), that might have been closer to $75 per day.

Even at $140, we do consider that it's two people, and even when you stay home you still have to eat, probably buy gas and use electricity, and go to some movies, etc. So for a 50 day Winter vacation, it's not too bad, we think. (Nevertheless, a big raspberry goes out to those 10 motel owners who had us pay $100 or more for their nondescript properties!)

WEATHER

Of the 50 days, 17 could be described as "miserable", with rain and cold. And on 33 days we started out with temperature of 5 C (41 F) or less, with some zeros and one -2 C. These obviously made a big impression on us. However, quite soon really the weather became ok, and then glorious. There were 22 days when the high was 10 degrees C (50 F) or higher. And in California, of 26 days there was only rain on one!

DISTANCE

On days when we pedalled (as opposed to hiding in a motel or a U-Haul truck) we averaged just 65 km. This is low, even for the notoriously slow Grampies. The reason is first of all the shortness of the days in Winter. It's a big difference to see the light failing at 4 p.m. rather than 9 or 10 as in summer. It means you have to start looking for accommodation almost as soon as the day has begun. Next, motels are actually scarcer than camping along the coast. So if you are using motels, you may need to stop sooner, where one is available. And yes, if you are being blasted by rain and cold, you may accept an earlier stop rather than press on.

Including non pedalling days, our average in covering the 2500 km that we did was about 50 km per day. Though seemingly low, this (or perhaps 60 km/day) is actually not a bad crude rule of thumb. If you are old or quite a sightseer or a fairly early stopper each day, then if you plan, for example, a 4500 km tour, you could roughly allow 75 days. One use of this, if you are in the Schengen territories in Europe, and have only a 90 days stay, you could plan on covering 90x60=5400 km.

That's not bad, actually. With that one could easily to a circle tour like Amsterdam, Marseille, Nantes, Paris, Brugges, Amsterdam. And that just what we hope to do, real soon now!