Origins Of Travel

Kat and I are embarking on our grand European summer vacation! We will be cycling around Europe for the next 2.5 months, camping along the way, and generally trying not to re-enact any National Lampoon saga. Originally we planned to meet up in Trieste, Italy (dying place of my literary hero, James Joyce) and biking along the Mediterranean all the way to Greece. I envisioned stopping several times a day to cool off in the blue sea, lounging in olive groves, and discovering what Albanian 'indie' music sounded like. It sounded amazing! They don't even carry any travel books on Montenegro, Albania, or Bosnia at the local bookstore. Kat and I were going to go and discover what the region was like after the Kosovo War.

However, after a bit more research Kat found that while there is no real issue with hard crime, theft is a large problem in the area. And the hills, oh the hills.

While Kat and I are relatively in shape, we're not in shape for 2.5 months of mountain peddling. We're also not super skilled in the art of Taiwanese ass-kicking should that need arise. It was decided that we should scrap our previous travel plans and start over, preferably in a flatter area.

This is the route we finally decided upon.

I will fly to northern Spain for a week to visit my sister who has been studying there for the last year--then up to Copenhagen to meet Kat who will be finishing an internship with Anne Black--we'll bike Denmark, southern Sweden, down through Amsterdam, and end up in Frankfurt, Germany--mail our bikes home and catch a flight to Croatia--then Kat will fly up to Berlin and I'll go to Athens to meet up with my boyfriend, Conner, and we'll go island hopping in the Cyclades.

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While researching our cycling trip we found that there just aren't that many girl bike blogs. There are plenty bike dude and dude with girlfriend bike blogs, but very, very few chick bike blogs. To remedy this situation we'll keep this blog updated as regularly as possible and hopefully do some podcasts along the way. Once I get that up and running I will post the link.

Yay! I can't wait!