Category: Preparations

  • Accepting the kindness of strangers

    I woke up this morning and was trying to visualize how we would camp during our shakedown cruise around Lake Ontario in June, and I couldn’t quite see it. It will be difficult (not to mention expensive) to find campgrounds every time we want to stop, since we’re planning on riding about 80 km per…

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  • Shakedown Cruise around Lake Ontario

    From wikipedia: Shakedown cruise is a nautical term in which the performance of a ship is tested. Shakedown cruises are also used to familiarize the ship’s crew with operation of the craft. In our case, our shakedown cruise is an opportunity to test out all our gear and processes to ensure that it all works…

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  • Freighter Update

    This update is coming a little late. We have successfully reserved a spot on a freighter from Naples Italy to Port Kelang (Kuala Lumpur), Malaysia on or about February 1st, 2009. The itinerary currently takes us through La Spezia Italy and Barcelona Spain. We are hoping that we end up in Barcelona at a time…

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  • Learning the Language

    For me, one of the big challenges about this trip is the different languages in all the places we’re planning to go. Neither Becky nor I have great had much success learning foreign languages, so I suspect we’ll be getting by in English. I do want to learn at least a few words in the…

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  • Freighter frustration

    I have been trying for over a month now, rather unsuccessfully thus far, to book a freighter. We want to take a freighter from somewhere on the north east coast of North America (Montreal, New York, Newark, or Philadelphia) to somewhere in Europe (ideally Italy, but we would settle for pretty much anywhere on the…

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  • Current Plans

    As of today, our journey looks something like this: July 4, 2008 – Depart Ottawa and ride towards Newfoundland. We are hoping to follow the North shore of Quebec until we run out of road, and then catch ferries to Newfoundland. We’ll spend the month of August cycling around Newfoundland, and then take a ferry…

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  • Trip to the travel doctor

    Today, we paid a visit to the travel doctor. I’m of mixed feelings about the visit. I found that I trusted the Doctor’s advise, and that he really knew about the various things; but I also felt that he didn’t do a good enough job informing me about medications and shots. If I hadn’t done…

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