For those of you who don’t know I meet my husband through our hobby at the time of civil war reenacting. We both got in to it for different reasons and in different ways but we stayed because we found the same things: an amazing group of friends that became family, a sense of adventure, excitement, and eventually each other, all set against a historical background (with a slight chance of death). It is probably the thing we miss most since moving to Europe. We have been on an unofficial quest to find something new to fill the gap. After our last trip I think we have found the solution.
On our last trip we both came to the conclusion that there had to be a better way. We love traveling and seeing new places but when you go through too many cities too fast they all start to blur together into a long check list. See the castle, town hall, cathedral, town square, and get the t-shirt. We enjoyed ourselves don’t get me wrong and the places we saw where amazing but at the brake neck speed it’s hard to truly get a sense of the country or the people. We were packed too heavy, had too many transfers, and spent too much money. In short we felt like the worst kind of American tourists.
We both agreed that this is not the way to see the world. After much thought and consideration an idea formed: Bike Touring! Here was the perfect solution, elegant, classy, and physically engaging. We can slow down and see more in a short time. We can camp and get back to nature for cheaper. In every way a win. A cheaper, more engaged, self-paced way to see new things. To be honest we haven’t been able to stop talking about it since. So it with great pleasure I introduce our new (to us) bikes!
We found a bike shop in Rome that rebuilds bikes (among other things) so in a way you could say these bikes are custom made. We are off on our first test ride today. The goal is to eventually work up to biking across all of Europe or any other continent. Let’s see if our new hobby is exciting as our old!