Getting ready

And so it begins again. The big ride of the year is about to begin. The planning and hard work is about to pay off. Sounds great but in truth it is more like a comedy of errors which through a series of fortune events materialized into a great trip. I was casting about for a ride and stumbled on to this ride at the last minute on the internet. The weather has dealt us a late spring this year with snow blowing well into April so I have only 2 training rides. Fortunately I was in Phoenix and my friend Jim took me out for a ride, and my good friend Don dragged me out for a weekend ride on an afternoon I had already written off. So here we are in two days I leave for the big ride. Not much for training and scrambling around trying to organize my gear.

So let me tell you about the big ride. Firstly the ride is being put on by Bike Dreams which is a company out of Amsterdam. Here is a link to their home page: http://www.bike-dreams.com/ Just click on the two tabs labelled Italia and Alps on the right hand side of the page. It starts in Palermo Sicily, goes around the island before we take the ferry to the mainland. Once we are on the mainland we head up the coast. Pompeii is the first big town which is on the west coast of Italy. From there we continue up the coast to Rome. After Rome we head to the east coast to Venice. Then it is north to the Italian Alps and into Como. This is the first segment of the trip. From Como we head into Switzerland and then on into France and down the Alps to finish in Nice. It is a total of 4500 kms in 45 days. When you take the rest days out it is approximately 120 kms on ride days.

I am told that there are a few hills on this ride. So it should be lots of fun.

Thanks for reading along with me.

Terry