I remember one documentary that Noah and I watched once while shaping bread called "Money as Debt" that explained the history and basics of banking in a way that I really liked.  But then it went on with some crazy ideas of an ideal economy that would work thru an honest system......rrriiiiiiight (think of Dr Evil saying right).

So heres the stats,which I may add to when I think of more

distance: 8100km (5000 miles)

duration: 12 weeks

nights in campgrounds: 6

nights in hotel or motel rooms: 10

youth hostel nights: 8

days off including Oracle Jen's walks: 9

tires used: 3

tubes used: 3

chains used: 2

dt spokes broken: 6

wheelsmith spokes broken: 0

cost per day including airfare: will figure that out when I get back

estimated calories per day: 6000

butter intake: 1kg per week

beef intake: way way less than ideal (I missed my Rosie)

starting body weight: 73kg

current weight: less than 70 I bet (69 when I got home)

Some things have become old on tour, like navigation.  Especially in France signage is randomly terrible.  More than once we went to the office of tourism to find our way out of town.  And then there's my spoke problem.  Even though I am not using the rear (disk) brake at all I managed to break three more spokes.  Of course when they break at the nipple you have to take off the tire and rim strip.  And for one outbound left spoke I had to take off the rotor which takes some time on a rohloff, with the shifter box and chainstay brace thingy in the way.  I think (hope?) there is such a thing as downhill spokes that are 2.4mm at the nipple.

So I got better fast and we enjoyed an easy day into Spain.  As we entered the Pyranees we met up and rode with Andy Gordon from England.  He was bandit camping and traveling light (admittedly he was getting cold at night).  At one time he raced for GT and was ranked 25th in the world on mountain bikes, but that was in the early 90's.  "When you could still get results like that without dope" as he put it.  When asked he said he thought the top guys at the time were on the sauce (our heros J.T. and N.O. I suppose) he said he thought so.  When Andy was 22 he had to stop racing because he came down with chronic fatigue.....for TEN YEARS!!!!  Oh man that's rough, I can sympathize with him cuz I had it for two years, not fun.  That's how I got into the whole healthy eating, my kilo of butter a week and plenty of raw beef.  I can't imagine 10 years of no cycling.

The gorges in the Pyranees are awesome.  I took some pictures.  Some places reminded me of the Rockies of Colorado and others of the Gila forest in New Mexico.  Jen said one area was like Northern California.  Definately quite arid and I used plenty of sunscreen to keep from drying out.  One campsite was at the edge of a canyon....nice.

Then I had a second tough spell with a sore back.  And during two days over two ports per day in the Spanish pyranees...ouch.  But I toughed it out and saw more great scenery.  Apparently we were only a week behind the Vuelta a Espana as we rode rt 260 west for three days.  Many climbs had names like Contador, Sastre, and Valverde freshly painted on them.  And for some reason Nick Noyens was painted all over one port, I thought he was Belgian.

And suddenly we were going our seperate ways the next day, I felt kinda sad.  It had been quite an adventure with Oracle Jen over the past 12 weeks.  I jotted down the directions to Madrid from her map and left her my dragonfly.  The next mornoing we rode 35 k's before parting ways.  It was a crisp sunny morning that featured a Llopis sighting in a remote village with a population of 40 (smaller than E Alstead) and then I rounded up four spanish horses that were loose in the road with my bike.  I think I could have been a cowboy, if cowboys rode bikes.

The mornings are cold and the sun comes up after 8am here cuz the time zone didn't change since we entered Poland.  I ride with all my warm stuff for a lot of the morning.  After parting with Jen it was scenic for a bit then became quite descolate and remote.  Dry ground, not many trees and plenty of wind.  Ocassionaly very nasty wind.  Then the Banesto ATM told me my debit card expired...ooops.  I still had 21 euro and my credit card and made it to Madrid, checked into a youth hostel (I hope its quiet at night), and am resting before the flight home.

Thanks for reading my blog and thanks to Chris Li at the Bikeway Source (Bedford MA) for hosting it.  Be sure to check back for photos in a week ot two and some gear review.  Velocity rims and DT spokes sure will get some harsh comments from me :)  But there will be lots of good review like rohloff, mountain hardwear, ibex, tout terrain, etc that may intrest you.  And maybe Jen will write us an entry to tell us where she went.  Maybe she met Big Mig and he towed her BOB for a day (I would be very jealous if I missed that).  I'm sure he could have gotten some euros out of that Banesto machine for me!  If anything exciting happens in Madrid I will let you know.  But there will be no more biking cuz there is a shuttle to the airport.

And Go Nat!  He's doing ironman on Jen's birthday this weekend.  His goal: 9hrs.  Go Nat go

Why were we late?  We had to go to Fucking Austria, the town of Fucking that is.  Don't believe me?  Look at a map north of Saltzburg, its just across the river from Tittmoning Germany.  Seriously.  But if you see the sign for the village called "Franking" you went past Fucking.  It was okay that we went too far because there was 20 seconds to spare in the end, 60k later.  Good thing we skipped the village of Petting (the German word for foreplay) cuz we just didn't have the time.  For some reason I can't stop laughing when I think the word "Franking" to myself.

The palace was built by a Bavarian king, Ludwig II, who was obsessed with the sun king (Louis 14th?).  Super fancy and we wern't allowed to take pictures.  Huge 300-500kg chandallers and excessivly extravagant furniture paintings, woodwork, and eveything made it too expensive to finish but the guy died anyway after he spent only 10 days living there.

We left the island palace a bit behind scedule (sun was getting low) but that was okay 'cause when we need to bust 25 in an hour after riding 100k its no trouble for us.  Now we're at Martin and Franziska's for the night just 200m from the place that the current Pope (Benidikt) lived as a child.

Franziska is Martin's girlfriend and works for Haltbare Bergbauern, a high quality dairy processor in Germany.  They make the best butter in Germany she claim's and my taste buds confim it as ture.  I was so excited when she started talking about CLA, wow!  Imagine, butter actually being marketed as healthy!  CLA is an acid found in butter from pastured animals and is probably the best food for your heart.  That's why I eat a kilo of butter a week.  "Ask your (american) doctor about" CLA and he won't have anything to say 'cause it ain't gonna make the chemist any money.

Kyle's long time friends the Straßer's have really set us up.  A barbeque the evening we arrived, things to do, places to see, plenty of food, and great stories.  I really like the one about Kyle taking them on a ski trip when he got his driver's licence.  They are accomplished athletes sponsored by companies like Marmot and summited peaks in the Andes mountains by themselves before age 20.  Funny that I still have yet to meet Kyle himself.

Sometimes its hard to remember all the things I could blog about, during the day I think to myself I'll mention such and such and then I forget.  Like the story Wes told us about the guy who bought a tanker full of oil in the middle east and took his time going to port with it.  By the time he got there the price of oil had gone sky high and he made a boat load of money, literally.  I can't remember the details but it was another story of if you're filthy rich its easy to get richer.  I've seen so many new places its hard to soak it all in.  I'm sure there were ten other things I wanted to blog about, oh well.  One thing is for sure, a bicycle is a great way to see the world.  Tomorrow we go to a castle on an island that cost more to make than Nueschwanstein.

We spent the first half of the week crossing Austria.  It was great, lots of bike paths to seperate us from the cars that often took us winding thru a farmer's fields or some woods.  And we had a tailwind a lot of the way letting us ease off the throttle.  Sunday we rolled out of Vienna on a path along the Danube river.  Just when it seemed like a hampster wheel of a river and bushes (flat & no view), we found ourselves in the beautiful Wachau valley with steep hillside vineyards, valley orchards, and the occasional castle ruin here and there.  The roads up to the castles were steep so we enjoyed them from the distance.

On monday we journied into the lower Alps of Austria.  I hate to use the same word over again but it seems like I always have to say "spectacular" to describe mountain scenery in Europe.  Allen Kitscher would especially love this area with the lush green pastures being grazed on the steep mountainsides.  Sometimes the bike route (there seems to be a whole network of them) would take us along back roads that we would not have found otherwise.  On one such road we stopped at a cafe in a small town and met Harry and Hubert from Saltzburg.  They were hiking for a week in the mountains and we exchanged stories.  They paid our tab and warned us the clear sky would be changing to rain soon.  Sure enough that evening we were setting up our tents in a downpour.

Tuesday started off grey but cleared by midday revealing even higher mountains.  So amazing, and these are just the small ones.  The climbing hasn't been too hard with an occasional steep couple k's here and there.  I look forward to the high alps, or so I think.  The scenery Wednesday was great as we transitioned back to hills.  One section of lakes looked like the fjords of Norway and the tailwind was quite strong at times.  Oracle Jen was especially motivated after reading her email about our host housing and took long pulls while I rested my knee which felt stiff and achy for a short time.

So far we have covered 5300k in 52 days.  When we start again on Monday there will be a month left for me to reach Madrid.  Jen stays another week or so.  The map shows there is plenty of time to make it.  And soon there will be four of us because in mid september Kyle and Hanzie plan to take a train to meet us somewhere west of here and ride with us for a week.  Hopefully we can keep up the bandit camping because it is making Europe more affordable than I expected.  We have paid for campsite/youth hostel/motel only one out of three nights thus far.  The only time we used a lot of cash was to ride the Tallink across the Baltic sea.  Oh, and our airplane tickets too.

We seem to have reached our fill of cities now (Stokholm, Tallinn, and Krakow before here) and look forward to visiting people that Jen knows in southeast Germany.  The route plan to get there will be one day on the Danube river (there's supposed to be a long bike path:), two days in the Austrian mountains and then one more day to roll across the border on the 3rd.

Immediately out of the city we were climbing foothills on smaller roads that kept us out of the bad traffic except for one 20k section.  Bandit camped in Poland for the first time 3k from the border of Slovakia.  It seemed like we were in a pickle when we kept hearing a farm tractor close by from different directions and trying to figure out how to hide better but it soon left.

The next day we entered the Titras mtn range for some great weather, scenery, and camping.  HP means KOM in Slovakian but other than that the language barrier here is kinda tough.  Not that we mind cause its been so easy for us so far.  No english on the menus kept us out of the restaraunts, plus bandit camping every night let us cross the country in four days for about $60 each.  Nice.  And the roads here are great.  Very good road surface with less cars and they go slower here.  We did end up on the freeway for 6k but no problem.

And the scenery?...... Excellent.  Twisting climbs and descents thru picturesque wilderness with villages tucked in the tight mountainsides.  Some sections reminded me of nice places in Vermont but the mountains here are tighter.  While descending thru one village a PA system set about the town via megaphones started talking to us (in Slovakian), or so it seemed because there was no one else on the street....bazzar  As we progressed east the mountains deminished in size and the valleys became bigger.  The biggest (of 5 mtn passes I think) was about 10k at 2% then climbed steady for 10k between 6 and 10%.  And the descents have been great, so rewarding after lugging our stuff all the way up.

One day, in the middle of nowhere, we came upon the Shimano and Trek/Gary Fisher headquarters of Slovakia.  I must say that of all the countries we have seen Slovakia has the most racer type looking cyclists out training, except for the city of Klaipeda Lithuania that had all those juniors.

Yesterday we crossed into Austria......on another ferry!  This ferry was no Tallink though, held six cars and traveled maybe 20 meters.  40k later we rolled into Vienna and wow this place is something!  A huge amount of spectacular 19th century arcitecture for us to see today plus some palaces and a cathedral I think.  This might be our last big city until Madrid.

Then in a casual sub ten second discussion we decided to change our course to Munich by riding thru Slovakia and the Austrian mountains for a more direct and scenic route. Its fun to be able to just decide such things on a whim and agree so easily.  A few years ago I decided to quit racing in about ten seconds.  Later on our change was confirmed by hostelers that Vienna will be nicer than Prague.  And of course the Austrian mountains will be epic.

In the evening we got loured into a ping pong match with some drunken Aussies which was fun for about 15 minutes before we had to bail.  They were just too rowdy and Jen was the only girl around.  They sure did stay loud and kept waking me up all night.  They were drunk for more than 12 hours.  If you're going to stay so drunk while you travel why not just go to the south pole, I heard that its "beautiful" and there are pallets of booze on hand at all times.

Today we decided to get our fill as regular tourists by visiting an ancient salt mine 15k away.  It was really cool, been in continuous operation since the 13th century, Copunicus was there as was Pope John Paul II and some others.  They used horses until 7 years ago!   A horse would work and live for 1 year in the mine without coming out, fortunately not to return.  There was a huge underground chapel there which was impressive.  For some reason I liked the floor of it a lot.  Lots of wood supports, wood gets stronger and more flexible when it soaks up the salt and gets preserved a bit I think is what they said.  After descending 130 meters on steps they stuffed us in elevators, phone booth style, for the ride back up.

And, finally, I just ate some steak taretare at the best resteraunt around, both of us got stuffed for about $25.  Soooooo good!  The restaraunt is called Pod Wawelem I think, its just east of the castle.  Check it out if you ever find yourself hungry in Krakow, all the stuff in the square is way overpriced.

So the plan is to leave Krakow tomorrow (after breakfast at our favorite resteraunt and stocking up at the bakery) and go south to Slovakia.  Then turn west for Vienna and Munich leaving the flat roads and hopefully the traffic behind.

We basically went south down the east side of Poland and then curved west to Krakow.  The northern part is mostly flat and has lush green countryside with livestock farms and forests.  The Polish really love their forests even though it just seemed to be a bunch of trees to us.  As we progressed south the land became drier with more vegetable crops.  Lots of haying as the weather was nice and sunny every day, not too hot either.  Kinda reminded me of some of the tour de Toona stages actually, especially the crisp morning air with windy farm roads.  Then there were a lot of orchards for a day while the terrain became rolling.  Most of the meat consumed here seems to be pork which makes me wonder where all the pig farms are.  Closing in on Krakow we could see the southern foothills in the haze....we'll be there soon.

Riding with Jen has been ideal, no going off course to see silly tourist junk.  Just keep going and find what we find.  We managed to connect a couple old town spots, I wonder if all the villages were like that before the war.  But there are a few items Jen needs (Hi there Kyle:) for touring:  a full BOB fender (for my face), 165mm crankarms (for her knees), more than one pair of socks (for her feet), and a real handlebar bag (so she can store something outside her BOB trailer).  Even though she is the experienced tourist I still know these things.  At least she replaced the helmit she cracked up in Lithuania with the delux model for $11 from a grocery store.  Its actually kinda nice and features a bug screen on the front vents.

Back to Poland...the scenery has been much better than in the Baltics, but due to the flatness, hard to capture in pictures.  Still I take some shots here and there especially because my mom really wants to see pictures of Poland.  I am about 1/3 Polish (my biggest chunk of ancestry) and I think my mom is half Polish and that's mostly why I insisted on Poland being on the route.  Many of the locals were helpful despite the language barrier.

One family, the Kalberczyk's, went well beyond helpful and invited us to camp in their yard and wash our clothes after our longest day in Poland of 150k.  We had rolled into the town of Kurow kinda zapped looking for a motel.  A nice guy sitting with his friends outside the local "Sklep" phoned his english speaking daughter, Kasia, to help us out.  She spoke great english and we had so much fun talking that we ended up at their house for our second home stay of the trip.  It was a great experience to get a peek at what life is like here.  We sure wish Kasia and family the best and hope she gets to travel someday!  She and her brother Thomas even escorted us out of town on bikes the next morning.

 As we approached our halfway rest stop in Krakow we began to struggle with being tired.  One day Jen just called it quits early when we had a tailwind and went to sleep.  I pulled a bunch the next day, dragging Jen into the wind on my drops for a few hours and paid for it the day after when she had to tow me in the last hour or so.  We've stayed in motels because they're cheap and easier than camping when zapped.  Two days ago it felt like I was pedaling underwater, the only way I could tell how fast I was going was to look at the spedometer.  But we've made it just fine and even found Jen some new tires yesterday.

So now its two days off the bike and just some walking around Krakow which I believe is the only city in Poland that didn't get destroyed in the war.  I will take some pictures, I hope to plug select pictures into all the blogs from Germany in 3 weeks or so.

More Baltic crosswinds, headwinds, and rain as I recall.  Not much scenery as the trees block the view of the sea.  But they also block wind sometimes which is nice.  While copying a map onto a piece of paper at a gas station I look up and see the Olympic ITT coverage with our clean hero Sven Tuft from Canada holding the lead until Contador took it by about a second.  Sven is known for bike touring, truely someone who loves cycling.  We watched for a while and again, non stop coverage, all TT.  I highly reccommend watching the olympics from another country!!  You'll get more coverage in a half hour in a Latvian gas station than you can spending a day on the couch in the states.  We left before the race was over and I rode inspired by Sven, using my handlebar bag as an aerobar.  But with our 40kg bikes and less watt/kg than he, we cruised at 20kph into the headwind instead of 50 like Sven can.

I actually don't know Sven personally, only thru Nat Faulkner and Matt DeCanio who both claim that he is a clean rider, unlike almost all other athletes at his level.  World records are broken all the time thanks to our good friend the chemist.  Think about why there should be anyone faster than Jessie Owens?  I like Nat's recent short blog about doping http://natbikes.com/blog/2008/07/17/156/  Another elite cyclist heavily rumored to be clean is Danny Pate who almost went to tractorfest once.  I was surprised last month when he was on facebook late at night between stages of the tour.  My mom told me he was 3rd on a stage, awesome.

So along we went until my map copying navigation failed and I made a wrong turn that led us into the ghetto of Lepaja.  After a few kilometers of run down project style housing and abandoned buildings we came upon an spectacular cathedral right in the middle of it all, so bizzare!  We pulled out our digital cameras dispite the tough/hard looking locals and snapped some shots.  Then just when I thought we were on the right track there was a missing bridge.  Kinda anxious to get back on the right road we asked a military guy (who spoke no english) and he drew us some maps on post it notes to get us going again. 

Then 15k later the sun was out and Jen picked a nice campground and I went for a swim in the Baltic sea.  Things sure can change fast in Latvia.  After some food we watched some elimination reality show get filmed called "Latvian Princess" which was down to 4 contestants sitting in a hot tub. Unfortunately it was lame like one can imagine and soon they were gone in their limo.  The next day we were gone to Lithuania.

After some terrible headwinds on our first day in Lithuania we rolled into the small city of Klaipeda and ate at a cafe.  There must be a junior program here cuz we kept seeing teenage roadies tearing around in the streets.  Great town but it was early and we rolled out of town with a surprise tailwind for our first real bandit camp of the tour (camping is allowed everywhere in scandinavia).

Our second day in Lithuania was a tough one for Oracle Jen.  After an inncident in the morning that was pretty funny and recieved a local Nelson Muntz style "HA HA" we teamed up for our second mistake of the tour.  While charging into a town for tourist info before it closed I let off the throttle confused about who had the right of way.  Jen (behind me) hit the brakes, slid out, and crashed on the slick rainy road leaving her a bit shaken up and with a big bruise on her hip.  I must say that armadillo tires have terrible wet weather traction, not to mention the tread is falling off the casing in less than 4000k!  We quickly checked into the only hotel in town which was a fancy place and had a great breakfast buffet the next day.

I have to mention that the Lithuanian pizza is great stuff and I'm sure my favorite food critics, Noah Elbers and Allen Kitscher, would agree.  Every time we had pizza in Lithuania it was real pizza, "american flatbread" style/quality with actual cheese on it, not vegetable oil cheese like typical pizza from the states.

The weather gets more like summer as we journeyed southward to Poland which greeted us with hot sun, a nice tailwind, and Oliver, a German, who waived us down to say hi after seeing us along the road a few times over the week...

The next morning we checked out a tiny pinnusula via foot and jetted to the noon ferry to Saaremaa, an island that was emptied by the soviets after WWII for missle testing and other stuff.  On that ferry a Swedish copule on a tandem gave us lots of helpful hints.  Like the reason no one waves to us is because people never wave to eachother in passing in Estonia.  This island is nice and touristy, yet very rural.  The sun came out and we pushed a huge headwind for 80+k and it was tough.  Stopped to check out the biggest crater in Europe caused by a meteor.  We didn't need to get far cause it was only another 45k to the ferry that doesn't leave until the next day (today).  We're going to check a castle here before departing for the ferry to Latvia tonight.

Last night we hung out with Benjamin from Holland.  He is very well educated about the European Union and told us all sorts of stuff.  One thing I found interesting is that Holland has the lowest use of marajuana in Europe and its also the only place it is legal....hmmm...maybe something for the rest of the world to learn from.

Today we woke up and had a pleasant morning on quite country roads as we approached Stokholm.  The scenery changed to open farmland, with some horses.  And, believe it or not, the sun came out!  When we ran out of water a nice organic tomato/cuke/lamb farmer and her Nigerian volenteer let us fill up and fed us great tomatoes.  The Nigerian guy almost fell over the BOB trailer laughing when I showed him my (arctic) tanline.  Of course this is Sweden so by afternoon it was raining again, but not for too long. 

We eventually located our youth hostel for the night.  I had been wearing the same warm weather wool kit for all of Sweden (5 days) and it was nice to clean up our stuff.  Everything is drying out in the room.  I changed my chain and to my surprise it only streched the length of one chainpin width in 3300km of riding, mostly loaded km's.  Maybe the full wrap around the chainring and cog keep the wear down.

So it was 2600km from Nordkapp to Stokholm in 24 days and now we are looking for the cheapest ferry to Tallin.....plus a couple well deserved rest days.  Its been getting dark at night which is weird after being in the Arctic.  And Family guy is on, this definately a cool youth hostel.

My mom just told me that sometimes Jen's pictures are better than mine......it might be because a lot of mine were taken while riding at 20kph, sometimes more, because I didn't feel like stopping.  Also one day was kinda boring so I took a bunch of cow pictures showing them on grass, the album isn't edited.  And, just so you know, there are lots of signs in Sweden that say "infart" and "utfart" which must mean enter and exit, its kinda funny. 

I remember seeing an automatic robot lawnmower (Jeff Britton would have loved it) just before attempting to cool at a beach on the lake at a trailer park.  Jen came up with a new jeffisim; "toss that sauce".  Next day awesome dirt road for 20k, hilly, and great camping.  Then we made it to Sweeden on August 1st after more climbing over the mountains and a couple downpours. 

Since we entered Sweeden 3 days ago its been cold and damp, raining steady and light thru the nights.  Some nasty headwind sections but the trees shelter us and its getting quite flat.  Food here is not as good as Norway, esp the bread.  Sweeden has been pretty much just trees with moss and blueberrys or grass.  We had a bit of bad luck loosing a water filter, a couple flat tires (one for each of us), and then 15k of road construction featuring deep crush stone, finnaly made use of the 1.5" tires!  Today we find ourselves in Ratvik as the main roads get busy.  Time to go buy a map, hopefully we can navigate its unnamed roads by connecting the dots of village names.  Stokholm in 3 more days to catch the ferry I hope.