Newly retired, I found had all sorts of time to get all sorts of things done! The initial whirlwind of activity related to moving and dealing with insurance and fixing things and settling in kept me busy. That is, until I realized that I had lots and lots of time. At that point I didn't get anything done. I lingered over my morning coffee, and caught up on all of the latest news, and put off my pre-trip chores. Then I realized I have a deadline coming up (the flight reservation for this trip!) which led to a flurry of activity.

I built another bike box, trimming the dimensions just a bit. I think the first one came out better. Hmmm....

I visited the Travel Clinic at the county Health Department, and ended up with only a Typhoid immunization (suggested for Turkey). Other immunizations they would recommend like Hep A and Hep B are still valid from my Peace Corps days 20 plus years ago in Africa, and I got my TDAP booster last year. I was worried about rabies (for dog encounters), which is expensive and uncomfortable, but they don't recommend prophylactic rabies shots or even have it available.

I visited a couple of bike shops to ask about properly setting up the Rohloff shifter. Not a lot of enthusiasm from the shops. I bought some cables to give it a go myself. Then I decided to leave it as is, shifting reversed, since it seems to be working well. But I added cables to my list of spares to bring.

The following linked videos for cable adjustments are for my own reference:

Rohloff Video on Changing shifter cables,

Rohloff Video on setting up external gear box,

Co-motion Video on Changing shifter cables (Note that this last video is not the shifter I have on my bike.)

I ordered some spares for my bike, to bring on the trip. A spare belt, the Rohloff oil change kit and sprocket removal tool. I'm contemplating whether to bring spare brake rotors, especially as the one for the Rohloff isn't standard. All of these unique bits for the Rohloff and Gates belt drive are dampening my enthusiasm for this set-up.

I downloaded Open Street Maps for the regions I expect to visit and loaded them on my GPS. I plotted some routes using RidewithGPS.com, at least for the early parts of the trip, and also loaded them to the GPS.

I started a spreadsheet to keep track of the gear, and to look at the weight and consider what I could do to minimize it.

My mother and sister came up from Albuquerque for a short visit. That was item 4 on my "plan" on page 1, so it represented real progress!