Details will make or break a trip.  Once you account for the fact they matter and plan for the minutia then things become very powerful and the trip takes on a life all of its own.

There are quite a number of examples to support this, here are five of them.

1.  Cell phone coverage in a foreign country.  Somehow you want a way to contact people as soon as the plane lands or you cross the border.  That or load up GPS maps, call Ubers, etc... There's always something making this not work:  the airport wifi is not reliable, it requires a SIM card confirmation, or there are colossal roaming charges involved.  Maybe your phone only has single as opposed to dual SIM cards.  The new SIM card might be incompatible with the phone also.

I'll never forget the story of when my Dad went to Israel and he had the phone on airplane mode all along but he forgot to disable mobile data.  When the phone switched to a new carrier on his single SIM, the data kicked in for a brief second despite it being on airplane mode.  He was charged a fortune for data roaming and he later argued on the phone for hours trying to reverse the charges.

How to navigate these obstacles is a headache and is anyone's guess.  But there surely has to be a way.  

2.  Technology is a double edged sword for touring.  It makes things easier, for example calling an Uber if the biking goes belly up or you're at an airport.  But if you can't get Uber to work on your phone, it is a nightmare since there are few alternatives.  The main problem with these apps is they require some additional verification besides an account password.  It's all about two step verification or OTP codes these days.  After you enter that, they want to verify your device with a text message.  If you haven't set up a phone plan it won't do you much good, i.e. we're back to point #1

3.  Google maps and GPS.  Don't even get me started on that one.  

4. How to check into an Airbnb.  Never underestimate this one.  Most often the hosts will give very detailed instructions.  But if it's your first time you can never know exactly what will happen.  When Sophia and I were trying to check into one in Surrey, the side gate was actually on a different street than the street address.

5.  Where to meet someone at an airport.  You'll want to arrange this right down to the exact point.  The Vancouver airport takes the cake for being the worst when it comes to signage. Also you'll need reliable phone connections, again point #1.  Friends and family do their very best to explain and help out but just like 99% of others, these kind of people do not go into minute detail for everything.  You're basically out of luck unless you plan for details yourself.     

Trying to plan around all these kind of things in advance is near impossible.  At some point you might as well view it as an adventure since it's a near guarantee that things will go wrong.  The above is only a partial list of all that could happen.  We left out the very obvious, that is how to transport your bike on the airlines.  The journal went into all that already.  

Another thing is to be patient.  Most people are in a pointless hurry and get frustrated when the details don't go as planned.  Time is money and all that, but for fucks sake, you can't possibly expect all these details to work out every single time.  Best you can do is learn from each trip and get smarter and smarter for the next one.  It is precisely at *this* point that the magic happens while you plan and navigate better and better each time.  It then blows peoples' heads off that you're able to seemingly figure all this stuff out on the fly.  Basically you have learned from trial and error while the others neither trial nor error in anything.