Start easy...

Last night I decided to just throw everything randomly into my bags that I didn't manage to put into my bags. This was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

I only spend a few minutes this morning and the stress of doing everything the right way was simply blown away and I didn't had to wake up completely. The last thing I needed was 2 bags of the infamous Edeka no-shit just Studentenfutter to make me feel complete.

I then started to grind my coffee to have one last very delicious french press coffee for the next 5 weeks.

I had a delicious breakfast and enough sugar to get the candy rolling. I managed to get out of Hamburg without any major hassle. For a minute or so when I arrived at the St. Pauli Elbtunnel I got a little panicky when I noticed that they finally started renovating the elevators. Got lucky, they only do one at a time.

I then cheated a little bit today because I had no paper maps available to get out of the city and my shiny new compass seems to broken. If it's for him, I would've been riding to the north east all the day. This could've been the second part of my Helsinki trink which I never finished but I still plan to.
I decided to google-map myself out of this situation and after 2 hours I managed to arrive, at least for a short time, at a very relaxing part of my route (before that - for reasons and around an hour - one truck after another overtook me).

When I got to Harburg things got even more hairy. I didn't had gmaps guide me all the way (hiding my phone inside a bad) I rode a route that probably contained all the hills you can get over when you ride through harburg. Every once in a while I had another look at my phone that I'm totally lost and doing the wrong shortcuts. I didn't stress myself about that fact, put it an even easier gear and took the next hill.

After some more lefts and rights, a water refill, a molten Kitkat and an Edeka Bulette, I finally arrived at a camping spot, put up my tent and jumped into the bathing lake.

Cheers.

P.S.: Don't ask where I am. I'm far to east to be west. Tomorrow will do. :) 

Preps or the horror of...

Hi Jungs and Deerns, I'm about to roam through europe again. This time I plan to go to Manchester, which should be much more doable than Helsinki two years ago.

This time, hopefully, I can stay calm. Man, I felt so bad last time, I had to cancel my last tour after two weeks and was left in a very bad mood for a few more weeks.


This time it's quite difficult to start going. After I did all the repairs for my bike I noticed a crack in the frame. Bike shops these days are quite busy and some of them aren't very reliable. I have that stuff planned for August now, so I accepted the challenge.
I started looking for solutions and finally got a frame that fits my setup. That's what I first thought. After I moved all parts I noticed some don't fit anymore and I started ordering new parts twice a week for the last 3 weeks.

Thanks Flo, for shooting me in my pants (no pants, just puns)!

I finally got my old/new bike going even though it's still having a very serious issue which I try to fix on my way, ... good luck me!

I decided to revert back to full analog for navigation. I noticed during my last trip, looking at my cell phone all the day won't get me on the track.
No space issues this time neither, I take my trailer with me again. It may sound crazy, but riding with a trailer forces me to go with a slower pace which actually worked well for me on my trip to Porto.


Last but not least I plan to post regularly. For that I have to rethink what happened to me the day before, and as a result, I hope, helps me letting go of all the stuff that's keeping my stress level high.