Aug 2007

Our trip so far:

The joyous parts: wind between our toes, ice cream cafes, rolling hills, clean campings, fantastic, paved, super-well marked routes, friendly germans, cute medieval cities, cooking experiments on our camping stove, finding a sauna center next to our camping, 5 hours in the hot tub, raisin buns, and most importantly.....

WE HIT 1000 KM!!!!!!!!!!!

The not so joyous parts: butt pain, butt pain, and more butt pain. We have so much butt pain, that when we go to a restaurant, we don't even look at the price or the food, only the thickness of the seat cushions. Even then we try sit in a certain position that does not require putting any wieght on our postirior, which is something like half laying, and have sitting. So when you imagine two smelly, sweaty people with reallly bad tent-helmut hair, slouching aqwardly in thier seats, it is truly amazing that the germans have been so friendly to us.

After two weeks we are kind of falling into a rythm, but still need more time. Some days we do about 60km, and some days about 100km. Although this may seem quite lame to some of you top sporters out there, we are quite proud of our progress so far. Especially considering all of the butt pain.

Here is a look at our daily schedule:

• 8:00- on the road
  
• 8:30- gigantic breakfast
  
• 9:30- gigantic snack buffet
  
• 12:00- gigantic lunch, biergarten for Wim (he's trying to cut down)
  
• 14:00- ice cream break (amy's trying to cut down, wim is not)
  
• 16:00 or so- start thinking about a camping (wild or paying)
  
• 19:00- gigantic dinner
  

The rest of the night consists of washing clothes, dishes, ourselves, and then the long awaited sleep.

Can you find our tent?

We've done it! We left our warm, dry, comfortable house and we're on the road east! It was a really exciting feeling to pack everything and go. The best part is that we never have to return from where we came from!

Everyone along the way stares at us...probably because we are so cool. Now we're camping in Marjolein and Karl's backyard, and after a gorgeous, easy day of biking, we have really high spirits and we feel like we could go on forever. As far as we know, we're going from Lummen, along the Albertskanaal to Maastricht, on to Aachen, and then we'll follow Stan's route along the Rhein, Mainz and Donau until Budapest (if everything isn't still flooded). The route to Budapest is almost 2000 kilometers, and gives us plenty of time to work on the growing belly/buns and get into great shape. After Budapest it'll get a bit more difficult to find bike routes and camping, but it will aslo be more exciting. Alhough Iran might be a little too exciting for now, as we just heard that two Belgians disappeared yesterday in the south-east of the country. We might have to reconsider that part of our route. In any case we first have to conquer Germany, and if we don't bike fast enough, we will be dealing with months of sauerkraut and blutwurst.

Quick Stats for those interested:

Amy 21.5 kg baggage, Wim 28.5 kg baggage, bikes 16.0 kg