Reflections 2: Trip planning, Trains, Weather tolerance, Budget Busters

July 10, 2024

Trip planning:

The planning for this trip was much more a mixed bag than our previous two. This was driven primarily due to the decision to meet two sets of friends in two far away places on certain dates. The time with both sets of friends were really highlights of the trip. We enjoyed seeing Jim and Diana since they live so far away (South Carolina) and our chances to see them in general are few and far between. Dave has known Jim since their Microsoft days (1992 or so) and it was meaningful to catch up and for me to get to know him and Diana better. (Jim is very funny, and Diana is very smart and accomplished - and those are all qualities that made them fun to be around).

Our travels with Eric and Melinda—who we see almost every day with their retriever Holly since they live across the street from us in Bend — were great because we got to see their introduction to cycle touring. Plus they are just excellent company - easy going, enthusiastic, and they respond well to planning (the later quality somewhat explained by the fact that Eric was a Boeing engineer and Melinda’s professional career was in event planning; these folks are comfortable with logistics!)

Melinda and Eric, but Holly their retriever was at home.

On the other hand, it created challenges in terms of timing because we were then had pressure to get to certain places on time. That resulted in multiple train trips, which aren’t exactly our forte.

Trains: On the train front, we took eight planned train trips and two unplanned trips over 7 weeks. We never had one train trip that didn’t work out; all trains were on time (or close enough) with the absolutely glaring exception of our last minute trip from Puigcerda to Ripoll in Catalonia. We were always able to load and unload our bikes. We learned how to use the French SCNF application and website. (We also learned that if you need to book a train for your bike do it far ahead of time . We did have to book some last minute trains but options were extremely limited- so using the train is not as feasible on the fly).

All that being said, train journeys still stress us out and probably always will, although we attained some additional confidence from our “successes” this year. I suspect you will always hear us whining a bit on our train legs.I just read that Deuschbahn, the German Rail company, is starting major reconstruction and that will cause significant disruption in the system until 2030. Yikes. Talk about good news/ bad news.

Our Weather Tolerance: The weather was much more of a factor than it had been in the past. It surprised us as I would have previously said we had adjusted well to adverse weather; we have the right clothing. But the bad weather was really tough and when it went on day after day we got demoralized.

I know, I know, you see us in this outfit every day.

We had been planning to ride next spring as part of a longer trip to Europe/UK/Ireland and now we’re thinking to edit those plans a bit to eliminate some spring riding. Bad weather makes it difficult to plan longer mileage legs; it’s one thing to ride two hours in the pouring rain, but it is pretty horrible for four hours! Anyway, I will be factoring those experiences in as I start more serious planning for next year.

We have always laid our trip out and booked places ahead but next year if we are travelling shoulder season, I may try to be a little more flexible. We both agree we like to have things laid out, but of course, if things go bad and we need to change something. it costs us. This year, between changes forced by my sprained ankle and the weather we probably “ate” 5 hotel nights. We strive to be philosophical about this - it’s a cost of travel - but obvious it’s not great financially.

Expenses/ Budget: France is just a wonderful place to tour, and besides the food, culture, varied terrain etc, it’s not (very) expensive. We felt like we got very good value for our expenditures. It was easy to travel without feeling stressed, which contrasts a bit with say Norway, where a small beer is 15 euros and oysters are 9 euros each!

So, notwithstanding our unexpected expenses for changes due to weather/health, we felt like we stayed on our loose budget pretty well. The thing that really kills the travel budget is the cost of special items: the tickets for two days at the French Open were 2000 euros, and the Trek Travel 5 fancy days in the Costa Brava was 12,000 dollars. But those were expenses we considered carefully and decided on long ahead of the trip (and paid for in advance).

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