In the Groove

We have gotten our biketour groove on! A few very exciting things have happened:

1. Full appreciation of biking distances meausured in kilometers.
The faster the distance decreases, the faster you feel like you are biking! We finally figured out (by we i mean jonathan) the kilometers to miles conversion relationship-- 5 miles equals 8 kilometers. We have been doing about 80 km a day, so 50 miles. But 80 km sounds better, right?

2. Pre-planning warm showers visits.
For the last two hosts, we called them the day of (2a. Bought a cell phone!), and were lucky enough that they were both free, but now we are trying to go to internet cafes more often and call people earlier. The last hosts we had were SO nice and said that if they had known we were coming earlier they would have bought us American breakfast ingredients and made us pancakes like they had for their last American biking guest!

3. Routinely visiting Boulageries
This morning we stopped at our 3rd boulangerie of our France route. I had a coconut merengue cream ball for breakfast and Jonathan had a chocolate croissant followed by an apple turnover. This is the type of bike tour groove were talking about here.

4. Unabashed use of Baby powder and butt cream
Hopefully the only people reading this blog are close friends and family that know i have to share about the condition of our booties. Sooo riding for 7 to 8 hours a day can really rub your skin in some weird ways. Our gracious most recent hosts, Jean-Michel and Magalie in Villenueve gave us a cream that has been extremely helpful. So now the routine is: stop at the public bathroom, get water, then stand in the street rub this crea, on our bottoms and shake baby powder in our shorts. Its working!!!

5. Actually planned our route
We finally sat down last night and counted the number of days we have in Europe and mapped out what we want to do with those days. So here it is in 3-4 day chunks (We are currently in St. Maximin):
St. Maximin -- Lyon
TRAIN from Lyon-- Paris
Paris -- Burssels
Brussels-- Amsterdam
Amsterdam-- Berlin
PLANE Berlin -- SFO
I cant believe we didnt really plan it all the way before, but we had to feel out a few things I guess...

We miss everyone and hope everybody is enjoying their various summer endeavors!