OK. Now that I've got your attention I have to confess that what will follow here for the next 65 days or so has nothing to do with the 1978 novel by Ingeboard Day nor the critically acclaimed 1986 movie adaptation starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke "about an art dealer named Elizabeth and her sexual obsession, domination and finally degradation by a man named John, whom she meets by accident" (NYT review).

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Nope. Nothing at all, other than this gratuitous poster. 

What will follow is a daily recounting, with occasional ranting, of our circa 9 1/2 week week trip from Malmo to Lecce. I'll point out though that we do love cycle touring so the Title of our journal is accurate, albeit maybe a little misleading. 

Oh, by the way, we did see the movie when it was released and quite liked it. That being said, this journal will still have no resemblance to the movie!

This will be our first journal on Cycleblaze and I'd like to give a shout out to the folks who've put this together. So far it seems pretty intuitive and easy to use. That's when I'm sitting in the comfort of my own home, at a desk with a full size screen, keyboard and a hot cup of coffee at hand. A month or so down the road I'll see how it works in a cramped wet tent with sketchy internet and a dodgy micro computer that's on the verge of running out of power. I'm optimistic though!

As a bit of background, Kirsten and I have been happily married for just over 30 years now, and have toured off and on throughout. Our tours were mostly 1-3 weeks at a time  in Europe and the Canadian Rockies, sometimes with our kids (on tandems) and sometimes just the two of us. I retired 4 years ago and since then we've undertaken a 2 - 3 month extended tour every second year. In 2015 it was a cross Canada trip, fulfilling a lifelong dream that both of us harbored. In 2017 we set out to cycle the EV6 route from the French Atlantic coast to the Black Sea. We lost interest in that route in Serbia so we turned west and headed to the Adriatic and  the Alps and ended up cycling back to Frankfurt to catch our flight home. Overall a great trip and a great route change decision. Some of the best parts of that trip were after we headed back north-west. It was during that trip that we discovered the beauty of some of the long distance routes in Germany and hit upon the idea of a Copenhagen to southern Italy trip (we have journals for these trips that might make it over here some day)

Fast forward to today ... that's what we are heading off to do,  Malmo to Lecce!

On Wednesday, 18th Sept we fly to Copenhagen and we'll stay with Kirsten's cousin in Malmo for a few days. We then start pedalling south. Over the last few months of research and reading (including the Anderson's recent Italian trip that's here on Cycleblaze) we hit upon Lecce as our end point. We will fly home from Rome on the 21st of November. Aside from those two fixed date end points, plus two more in October (you will have to read along to find out what that's all about!) we will, as usual, make things up day by day. Read along and discover it with us!

As we always do, we will come up with a 'Song of the Day' ... something that we heard that we think is a great metaphor for the day. I'll usually try to embed a Youtube link for the song and I've discovered that if you open the link in a separate window (play around with right clicking your mouse a bit), the song will continue to play while you read the gripping prose and look at the spellbinding pictures. At least this happens for me! I also think it adds a nice touch and another dimension to the feel of the journal. But that's just me. We also end up with a pretty good playlist at the end of the trip that is guaranteed to spark memories.

End of trip addendum : A full playlist of SOTD youtube video's is available here. Click on it and listen & watch away! Our actual cycle route followed a logical sequential path across a big section of the European map. The SOTD selections also cover a big section of the musical map. However, there is no logical sequence or progression. Pure Hienz 57.

So, this is a rough plan of where we think we are headed. I'll be packing up the bikes over the next day or so, we fly in about 72 hours, and then it's 9 1/2 weeks of.....