Here we go!

Our bags are packed, our tires pumped up, and we are ready to go! After some last minute issues printing out the homemade map to get us through the first 40km to where our nice maps begin, we are ready to go — we think. Tomorrow takes us along the Czech border about 75 km to Mikulowice, CZ for our first night’s stay. We don’t have any accomodations lined up and but know that there is at least one Pension (B&B type) and a hotel, however, it is unlikely that we will end up in the hotel. We always have the tent with us and we’ll try to use it as much as possible. Better to save our money for a few splurges here and there, not the first night.

We are bound to be sore for the first week, and from what we have read, the first week is always the hardest. We have been off our bikes for what seems like a century, but in reality is only a couple weeks. Our second day brings us to the first climb, and our only, for the rest of the week, that will surely test our bodies. Luckily, we have a comfortable place lined up in Olomouc that our new couchsurfing.com friend, Tereza, is setting us up with. For those of you who do not know of couchsurfing.org, it is a social network of travellers all over the globe that offer up there couch and hospitality, in exchange for the same. It has a very good system of checks and verifications, and we hope to use it as one of our biggest tools for meeting interesting people along the way, getting to experience differents cultures,  and to save a bit of cash.

We have posted a new Map of our proposed route from Zabkowice, Poland to Istanbul, Turkey and it can always be found here, and will be posting larger pieces of this map, like the one below, throughout our journey. Wish us luck in our first few days here, and check in the next day or two (or three) for updates. For those of you who may be new to our Blog, Take a minute to read this and this, to get a little backstory. Hope you enjoy our adventure

Best

Chad and Jowita