Butterflies. As we packed up our bikes and pointed them north, the knowledge that we needed to ride out of the metropolis of Athens was making me really nervous. The city boasts some intense traffic and the roads aren’t great either. Also, did I mention that neither of us have attempted a real ride on [...]
We worked away the evening, but as dusk fell, we hopped back on the train. We wanted to see Athens in action at night. I suppose I had pictured a deathly quiet evening stroll a la Venice, but what we found was that the city wakes up late, even on a Tuesday night! We meandered around the [...]
Our bike building session last night was an uneventful affair, right up until the moment I realized that we were missing our bike lock chain. We searched through all our luggage only to realize that neither of us remembered packing it. A quick chat with my dad at home verified. The chain never got on [...]
Three AM, and I was wide, wide awake. I am sure glad to be working through this jet lag in a lovely Athens apartment instead of from the open road. Ben, on the other hand, slept beautifully, but woke up with the sun. By 7, we were off to try another card in the ATM [...]
For anyone who had the misfortune of seeing me in real life this week, I was a bit of a disaster heading into departure. We were up nearly all night before we left, cramming things into panniers and then into bigger bags and boxes for the plane. The bike boxes were well over regulation size, [...]
With three days to departure, I feel like I spend a good block of my days explaining our touring plans. Here’s a list of the most frequently asked (and mostly unanswered) questions about our tour: Where are you going? To Athens. From there, we’ll need to get to Finland by mid-August for our flight home. [...]
For our last trip, we were anxiously arranging gear and making plans nearly six months in advance, so our decision to travel only three weeks before departure has left us in a bit of a whirlwind. Not only have we been scrambling to prepare for a long stint away, but we’ve been madly rushing between [...]
If our first bike tour taught us anything, it was that worrying too much about making plans was taking more mental energy than it was saving. This time, we might be in for a different sort of problem. We haven’t made really any plans at all! So far, we are planning to fly into Athens [...]
After what was a rather miserable winter, April brought a storm of welcome news. Earlier last month, I was admitted to a doctoral program in my field where I will begin studying and teaching in the fall. With such a major alteration in career plans and living arrangements suddenly just around the corner, another summer adventure [...]
Although we’ve been resentful of spending so much time so close to home, I can’t deny that there is plenty of benefits being local. Although we lack new landscapes to capture on camera, a brief check through my memory card reminds me how much good stuff has been going on, right here in Utah. While [...]
Admittedly, blogging hasn’t been much of a priority lately- we’ve had a lot going on and having a travel blog is pretty dull when you aren’t traveling much. Aside from our ski weekend at Christmas, we’ve stuck close to home, largely due to the hip injury I’d been trying to ignore. Unfortunately, by mid-January, the [...]
Between Christmas and the new year, we braved the intense winter weather and escaped to Teton National Park for some fresh air and nordic skiing. We had no plans except to ski, eat, and soak up the beautiful landscape. Teton is easily one of our favorite national parks, and we’d never seen it in the [...]