Welcome to the Orient Express

July 30 to September 24, 2006 I will be riding my bicycle (Gunnar the strong) from the French vineyards, to the spas of Budapest, and the spices of Turkish bazaars. I am about to embark on a continental tour like no other. What better way to see the world than on a seat of a bicycle!

Covering 2500 miles (4000 km for those challenged with traditional units) between Paris and Istanbul, I will be cycling 42 out of the 57 total days. I will be traveling through nine countries: France, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Try to figure conversion rates for six currencies: the European euro, Slovakian koruna, Hungarian forint, Romanian leu, Bulgarian new lev, and the Turkish new lira and thankfully have to deal with only one time zone. Not to mention of course the nine time zones it took to arrive from San Francisco!

My goal is to blog, photograph and relay to you some of the many experiences of the ride. As most of you know my longest ride has been Aids LifeCycle www.aidslifecycle.org from San Francisco to Los Angeles a 585 mile, 7 day ride that was wrought with numerous emotional and physical challenges, so a 2500 mile ride absolutely freaks me out! I expect some high “highs” and low “lows” and also see this as, the quintessential “ride to eat” ride, milestone ride (I will reach 10K miles of cycling since I went on my first Friday tib loop ride in November 2004 with the queen of the loop “downtown Julie Brown”) and a weight loss program!

I invite you to sit back, enjoy, floss, laugh, cry, go use the restroom, while perusing my site, but most of all encourage you to keep in touch by e-mail or posting comments about my site while on my adventure.

Thank you for visiting, but more importantly thank you for all the love, support and words of encouragement I have received in my preparation for this experience of a lifetime.

all the best

Donald

Left: Yours truly profile pic for the Orient Express Website www.tourdafrique.com Middle Top: The Orient Express Route. Middle Bottom: A triple chain ring - much like the one I will be happy to have on the ride. Right: Call me Barbara Bush for red dress day 5 of ALC. Note to my non-riding friends, “this is not my normal riding attire.”

Welcome to my bike ride from Paris to Istanbul