Introduction: The Plan

September 6, 2024

Alright, here goes nothing. I pack my bike in its trusty Scicon case and throw in the Airtag. It's a great bag for ease of assembly/disassembly. I remove the wheels and detach the rear derailleur. That's it.

My sister takes me to the airport, and I wheel it onto the luggage scale at YVR's Westjet counter. 23.1kg.

I'm headed to Geneva, where I'll meet up with Tamara. We met last year in Japan while riding the Shimanami Kaido in opposite directions, and we'll be riding for ten days together before she returns to work and I continue my tour solo. She's offered to let me store my luggage at her home while I'm on tour. To date, the longest tour I've been on is nine days riding Seoul to Busan last fall. My tour this year is open ended, and I can bail out and return to Geneva whenever I want to stop. My planning is limited to a bullet point list of cool places I might want to plan around. The Moselle Valley. The Imola circuit being open to cyclists on Sep 22 and 30. La Rioja. Corsica. Because I'll be touring with minimal luggage, I'll need to follow the weather patterns closely and remain flexible.

I get into Geneva no problem, and we head over to her apartment, poring over paper maps, the weather forecast, and deciding on a route. Should we go towards Italy? That's a lot of elevation right off the bat. Along the Rhône? Too flat. Finally, we decide we'll head towards the south of France, ending somewhere like Nice, Aix-en-Provence, or Avignon. We've agreed on a few parameters for our daily distance. 60-80km, less than 1000m elevation gain, and ideally no prolonged climbs of >7%. Tamara introduces me to WarmShowers, which she uses extensively. She says it's extremely popular and useful in France. We'll use it to meet locals when we can!

To evade some poor weather out of Geneva, we decide to take the train to Saint-Marcellin, which is the origin of the eponymous spreadable cow's cheese. And with that, off we go!

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