The First Travel Plan
7 years bicycling touring around the world.
(see the new longer travel plan)

THE PLAN: an email letter written to our friends in before we left Arizona in February 2002.

Dear friends:

At this point we plan on spending the first four week meandering around southern Arizona in order to get our legs strong and break in the gear. Around May 1, 2002 we will cross the border at Douglas and begin the many climbs into the central Mexico highlands. Around July, or so, we want to spend a few weeks going to a Spanish immersion school in Guanajuato, Mexico. The famous velodrome, where Eddie Mercks set the hour record, is on our list as well. Around October 2002 we will descend out of the Central highlands of Mexico and cross the Guatemalan border in late November 2002.

We will spend about 5 months in Central America riding south through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica until we arrive in Panama around April 2003. At this time we plan on visiting my family in Indiana and Cindie's family in Connecticut for a month. After our time in the states we hope to continue either in Colombia or Ecuador around June 2003. Colombia is a great bike country but not the kind of place you want to visit in a bad year.

If all goes well we will follow the spine of the Andes Mountains south all the way to Southern Chile. We have not decided whether we want to go all the way to the tip at Terra Del Fuego or not but around March 2004 we plan on flying to Africa and spend several months riding in the more friendly countries (and not in civil war) of that continent.

After Africa we think that we may want to teach English in Europe. Maybe southern Spain or Greece in September 2004. Athens for the 2004 summer Olympics may be a possibility too. Besides teaching English we would like to travel around Europe for a year. There is so much to see there. I am sure we will have to catch a major portion of the Tour De France or we will surely feel like we came to dinner but never really ate.

Things get very sketchy after that but I can see us flying from Europe to Hong Kong and riding several months in China and eventually meandering south through Asia until we get to Australia. Australia will take about a year to explore. Heading to New Zealand is a requirement that I must accomplish in order to satisfy an agreement that I made with Cindie. You have no idea what other things I had to agree to before she would go on this trip, but she is my trooper and worth every effort.

(see the new longer travel plan)