I've had a very intense last few weeks. My last girlfriend got e. coli from eating spinach and nearly died. I lost my job at the OF because I was too distracted because she was in the hospital so I was making mistakes left and right. Now I'm wondering if I'll even go on the bike tour. I have an interview at Walgreens tomorrow for a Pharmacy Technician position and I have no idea whether I'll get the job, what time the shifts will be or whether it'll be part time or full time. The pay will be around $9/hour vs. the $12/hour I got for lunch shifts and $16/hour I was getting for brunches,
but with any luck I'll get a full time position so it'll even out. Also, with the training I'll get from this job, I can work at a nearby hospital and get $12.80/hour and over $14/hour if I work PRN (am on call). I'm thinking about getting a car in order to drive 6 miles to work every day at Walgreens and to visit my ex. Getting a car, however, will be expensive. First, there's getting the car, then there's gas, insurance and maintenance. Sounds like the $600 I needed extra for the bike tour would go into having a car. I could always take the bike tour in two summers from now instead of next summer. I still have the bike on layaway, but I may never be able to pay for it. I have about $800 in the bank right now, but that will most likely go toward paying for rent next month, as well as electricity, cable, student loan payment etc. I still have another paycheck to pick up from the OF which will probably be about $60 as well as maybe $50 in tips, and I have about $100 in cash on me right now. Hopefully I'll get the job at Walgreens and start making money so I can add the extra money to birthday money and get the bike ASAP. A lot of my plans will depend on whether or not I get the job at Walgreens and how often I plan on seeing my last girlfriend over the next year, which will be up to her. Now that I have all this time on my hands and I just got the Internet at home, I've been thinking about playing WoW again, which I know is a bad idea, but I can't resist it much longer. $15/month as well as eating up all my time is definitely a bad idea. I'll try to focus my time on writing these blogs as well as writing up my experience of what happened over the last few weeks, because it's been two of the craziest weeks of my life. Hopefully soon I'll figure everything out and get the bike and I can then start shopping around for equipment.

My last girlfriend called me up a few days ago to tell me she was in the hospital. This took the wind out of my sails as far as planning this bike tour goes. I've been very distracted lately and it's hard for me to make plans while I know she's in pain at the hospital. In the meantime, I've been working every day of the week and working towards finding a second job. I tried to get a job across the street at the hospital but they require formal training as a pharmacy technician before I can get a job. So instead of working across the street for a respectable establishment for $12.80/hour, I will need to work at a Walgreens, probably a few miles away for about $9/hour until I'm fully trained in. I won't tell them this at Walgreens, but I'm totally out of there once I am fully trained. If I have time tomorrow afternoon after work I'm gonna begin price-shopping for equipment. Today at work some customers brought in their Ortlieb panniers and I talked to them about the bags for about 10 minutes. The woman had been using them for six years and they looked brand new. They were waterproof, didn't have any zippers which could potentially break, was capable of having a strap attached for easy carrying, and snap onto the rack and come off easily. The woman did say that her heel hit the bag as she biked for a while but that might have to do with her having a shorter bike than mine or her using a mountain bike instead of a road bike. Anyway, I'm sold on that model based on what I'd heard from her. She was a huge fan. Now I just need to find out which store around her carries them for the cheapest...

With the help of my bike expert friend who initially helped me out at Freewheel, I now remember the name of the company who made my frame: Sakai. I was right about it starting with an 's' and it being five letters long. Now all I need to do is coerce someone into picking it up for me.

I spoke to my old roommate about his bike tour plans for a while yesterday. He's planning on biking out to Washington State when he moves out there for school. He suggested that we bike to his hometown of Plymouth which is roughly 80 miles away, the perfect distance for a one day ride. I've always wanted to see his hometown anyway, so I'm certain we'll make this trip work. He is planning on buying a new bike but he'll probably end up using his current road bike which he uses for commuting at the moment. It's an old Schwinn- his Dad's actually, but he's in good enough shape that he'll be able to keep up with me and my fancy new bike.

Sometime soon I'll need to start the price-shopping for equipment. Equipment is going to be a hell of a lot more expensive than I had previously thought. Here's a rough list of what I'll need and how much things will cost before discounts:

Panniers ($150)
Handlebar bag ($50)
Rain gear ($80?)
Bike shorts x2 ($100)
Bike shirts x2 ($120?)
Special bike pump ($50)
Tools ($100?)
Helmet ($80?)
TOTAL: $730

Optional equipment:
Bike computer (tells you your MPH, highest speed, miles done so far each day etc.)
($50)
Clipless pedals ($50)
Clipless pedal shoes ($80)
Higher quality saddle ($80?)
Digital camera ($200?)
TOTAL $460

If I get all the optional equipment along with everything I'll actually need it'll end up being $1190. After a 15% discount, if it doesn indeed apply to everything listed for the stuff I need only, it'll cost me $620.50. If I get the 15% off on the optional stuff too, minus the digital camera, it'll cost me $841.50. Now that I'm writing this all out, I'm realizing that I'll need to either work extra shifts throughout the next year or get less or cheaper equipment. I'm sure there are other pieces of equipment I'll need to buy too to add to the list. Right now I'm feeling like I should just rough it and go with only the equipment I absolutely need. Apparently, bikes come with low quality saddles (seats) and pedals because it's expected that the customer will upgrade these parts. I'll probably end up just using them, unless I make a lot more money than I have been making. I've seriously considered taking a night job along with my job at the OF. I've had lots of free time lately so I could easily fit another job in.

I should also reevaluate my numbers for the cost of the trip as well as other logistics. From what I'm seeing, it looks like the cost of flights to Dublin and London are comparable, so I won't be paying more to go to Dublin first compared to London. That's nice to see. It also looks cheaper to fly from Chicago instead of from Madison because all flights go through Chicago anyway. Maybe I can bike down to Chicago to save some money. Looks like I'd save about $89 if I bike to Chicago and fly to Dublin from there one-way ($310) versus flying to Chicago first and then flying to Dublin ($399). If I manage to make my way back to Dublin with a cheap flight from Bergen, Norway, then the round trip fare will be about $790. Scratch that. Orbitz.com stopped working so I tried expedia.com and their price for $685. I'll definitely need to do some shopping around to get a good price on airline tickets. The price, on expedia.com for a one way ticket from Bergen to Madison is... ridiculous. I'm not even going to write what it is. Sounds like I'll need to take a quick flight from Bergen to Dublin. It's only about $171 for the short flight. Alright. That's my new plan. Start in Madison, bike/bus/get a ride to Chicago, fly to Dublin, bike around northern Europe, take a short flight back to Dublin, head back to Chicago and bike/bus/get a ride back to Madison. I'm glad to see it's actually feasible.

As far as planning the trip logistics, I've been using this map with it's scale to get a rough estimate of how many miles I'll be going and which general route I should take. I'm estimating it will be about 2400 miles total. If I leave shortly after school ends, I'll be heading out on roughly May 20th. I'll probably want to come back to Madison in time to move out on August 14th or so, so this leaves me with a few days short of three months. I've been estimating that I'll be on the trip for about 75 days. 2400 miles/75 days is 32 miles per day. If I want to dedicate certain days to biking and other days to sightseeing, then I'll need 2400/x = 80 --> x = 30, so if I dedicate 30 days to biking the entire day, I'll have 45 days just to sit around and enjoy the great capitols of northern Europe. I'm excited. So I'll probably need about $40 per day for food and lodging (this is a rough estimate), which will put me at $3,000.

Previously I'd thought I could get away with only $250 in equipment. Now I see it will be closer to $750. I thought I could get away with $3,500 covering the airplane tickets and the food/lodging of the tour itself, but now I realize it'll be $764.60 (round trip from Chicago to Dublin) and $171.60 (Bergen to Dublin). This isn't even considering the cost to get to Chicago in the first place, and it's assuming that each of these airlines would allow me to bring a bike along. These are things I still need to figure out. The new predicted price for airlines is $936.20. This along with the predicted $3,000 for the food and board is $3,936.20. So the total money I need to collect is $3,936.20 (airline ticket/food/board) + $750 (bike) + $750 (equipment) = $5436.20. This divided by nine for the nine months I'll need to collect this is $604. This means I'll need to make $600 extra above and beyond my normal monthly expenses every month for the next nine months. Sounds like I need to get another job.

I did it. I put down $50 for the new Fuji. After sales tax it went up to $790, so after the $50 deposit, I still need to pay $740. I don't get to ride my bike until I pay this off so I'll be working every shift possible so I can get my new bike. The bike came with coupons for 15% off all kinds of equipment so I'm going to shop around and find the best equipment out there at the best prices and determine if I should go for the 15% discount where I bought my bike or get it somewhere else. I may be able to get the wholesale plus 10% deal from my friend at #2 on the equipment. That doesn't seem as hard to finagle. They have better panniers there anyway.

I am certain I got the best bike for my price range. No buyer's remorse. Yet.

I had a lot of free time this weekend after work so I spent all of my time jumping from one bike store to the next to do some price shopping. I've decided not to use the bike store names so I'll just give them numbers. The first place I visited with the Labor Day sale bringing the Fuji Touring bike from $910 down to $745 will be called #1. The second store where my friend works will be called #2. The third store, the eastside store of #2 will be called #3. The fourth store is the sister store of #1 and will be called #4. Is that confusing enough?

So I went to store #2 to see what sort of deal I could get from my friend but she wasn't there. My other friend was there and I ended up speaking to him about bikes and equipment for close to an hour. At #2 there were only Cannondales which were on sale down to about $1140. That's out of my price range. I biked all the way out to #3 because they supposedly had the Trek 520 which is the middle of the line bike as far as cheap touring bikes go. They were out of stock for the Trek 520s. The '06 season ended as of Labor Day and the '07 season is just starting. My first friend from #2 told me I should usually go with the middle of the road bike, but after much careful contemplation, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go with the low-end bike and later in life when I have enough money I'll buy the most expensive bike out there. The differences between the bikes seem like things I can deal with. At #4, the Trek 520 was going for $1099, putting it between the Fuji and the Cannondale in price. The Fuji is the heaviest of the bikes by 1-2 lbs. I can deal with a bike which weighs only a pound more and saving $350. Some of the components in the derailleurs are of higher quality which means the shifting will be slicker and more reliable, but again I don't think it's worth the $350. Also, if I buy from #1 I'll get a 15% discount on all equipment on a one-time purchase. The panniers (the bags which fit over the back rack) at #2 were more expensive ($150) but seemed better fit for my needs, meaning they were waterproof and converted easily to a shoulderbag. When I visited #2 yesterday my friend was working and we shot the shit for about an hour before I asked about a discount while being careful not to let anyone else around hear about my dastardly plan. She clearly didn't want to talk about it at work and seemed to think I only meant about equipment. I only asked her at work because I figured that since the Labor Day sale was going on for the next day I needed to make some quick decisions. I still haven't talked to her outside of work but I've been leaning heavily towards the Fuji at #1. I went back to #1 yesterday and spoke to the manager about the bike. They had one left of my size and he said he could put it aside for me for only $50 on layaway until I made the entire $745. He said after the Labor Day Sale was over it would only go up to $795 so I didn't feel as pressured to buy it, and I felt like I could convince him to keep it at $745 if I came back in because he's in charge of the pricing and probably wants to get rid of the '06 models so he can put the '07 models up. Apparently there's absolutely no change between the '06 and the '07 models. Hopefully sometime this week I'll have all my financial ducks in a row so i'll be able to put at least $50 down for the bike and nab the 58 cm frame before someone buys it. The salesman at #3 convinced me that the S.T.I. gear shifters are bad for touring because if they break you're S.O.L. (S.T.I. gear shifters shift when you push the brake levers perpendicular to the bike frame instead of pulling on them to brake whereas bar-end shifters are much more simple and don't have nearly as many moving parts). I've decided that S.T.I. shifters are really fun and slick and would only break if I got in some terrible accident. In short, I've decided to get the Fuji. It looks a lot slicker than the other bikes just based on the colors of the frame and I had a really good feeling about it right away.

I've had the greatest time learning about bikes over the last week or so. I almost don't want to buy a bike just so I can learn more while shopping around.

I've also been having my first doubts about the whole idea of a bike tour. I watched Before Sunrise and Before Sunset last night and they made me want to take trains around Europe instead of biking. I need to run off to work now though so I'll pursue this thought in another blog.

Introduction

Over the last few years I've been dreaming about visiting Europe. More recently I decided it would be fun to do a bike tour of the United States. Shortly after I made this decision, it struck me that I should combine my plans and do a bike tour of Europe. My new goal is to spend the entire next summer going across Northern Europe starting from Dublin, going to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, and hopefully ending up in Norheimsund on the Hardanger fjord where my middle name (Norheim) comes from. The planning of this trip will involve lots of budgeting, exercise, smaller tours to nearby areas to prepare me for the actual tour, and learning how to repair bikes.

Overview

I'm planning this trip about nine months in advance because I know it won't happen unless I'm incredibly prepared. Over the next nine months, I need to save up about $4,500 ($750 for a bike, $250 for equipment/passport/camera etc., and $3,500 for the trip itself, including plane tickets, hostels and food). With any luck, I'll be able to get my bike shop friend to underhandedly get me a deal to the tune of whole-sale plus 10% on the bike and the equipment. She said this plan would involve me coming in and picking out which bike I want, and then her having her boyfriend come in and pretending to buy the bike (because the discount she gets applies to her boyfriend). The bike's frame will most certainly not fit him because I'm taller than him, but I think the plan will work out regardless. I visited a nearby bike store today to see what sort of prices were available. After looking around, it seemed like the ideal bike for me was about $910 before the Labor Day weekend sale, which brought it down to about $745. More expensive bikes only had slicker derailleurs and lighter materials, which I admit are important, but not as important as saving $600. Right now I'm not even sure how much money I have saved up. Hopefully I can make a budget for myself soon and after I have enough money to pay off all of my rent/utilities/groceries etc. I can then dedicate all the rest of the money to a new bike. The salesman said I could have them set the bike aside for me while I save up the rest of the money, but I'm hoping to see what sort of a deal my friend at the other bike store can get for me before I blow my load.

Budgeting

If I need to earn $4,500 over the next nine months, that means I need to make $500 every month above and beyond what I'm paying for my normal monthly expenses. At this point it's too early to say what my normal monthly expenses are (although they'll probably be around $1,000) and what my normal monthly income will be but that will become more clear with time. Now that I'm an adult and I need to pay for things out of my own pocket instead of using student loans like I have over the last few years, I've learned how to have fun without spending money. I've recently begun using Quicken to see where all my money goes, and guess what- most of it goes to booze. This is the first thing I need to change about my new lifestyle in order to make ends meet.

Complications

Another added wrinkle is that I plan on taking courses full time next semester in order to complete required pre-Pharmacy courses. This will drastically cut down on the number of days I can work. I am, however, planning on taking out as many subsidized student loans as I can to pay for tuition as well as the money that I would've been making on weekdays while I'm at school.

Plans for smaller tours

Once I have the bike I intend to exercise regularly by biking around Lake Mendota any days I don't work, which at the moment are Wednesdays and Fridays. I also plan on doing bike trips to Milwaukee and the Twin Cities in order to simulate touring conditions and determine what I should and should not pack. From what I understand, 80 miles is the average amount of miles which can reasonably be covered in one day. Milwaukee is about 80 miles away. This would be a good weekend trip. If I could get my Saturday and Sunday brunch shifts covered (and lose money in the process by not taking the shifts) I could head out Friday morning, arrive in Milwaukee late Friday night, spend Saturday there, head back Sunday morning and arrive in Madison on Sunday night, ready for work on Monday morning. The Twin Cities are about 280 miles away and will take about 3-4 days to get there. I'd need to bring along camping equipment and camp out each night along the way. I'm thinking maybe I can do a trip to Milwaukee before the snow flies this fall and a trip to the Twin Cities over Spring Break.

Exercise

I began the summer at 205 lbs., lost about 5 lbs. while frolicking over the summer and playing lots of ultimate frisbee, and since I started working at The Old Fashioned over the last few weeks I've lost definitely 7 lbs., and maybe 10 (I've been consistently around 193 lbs. but today I was 190 lbs. after a 7.5 hour shift with no breaks or food). I started college at 165 lbs. but grew about an inch so I think I would ideally get down to about 170 lbs. In short, I feel I could easily lose 20 pounds (from 190 to 170) and I fully intend to do that with my training over the next coming months. Hopefully I'll be able to afford my new bike with birthday present money and working extra and double shifts before we get snow here in Madison. After it snows, I haven't decided yet whether I'll visit the gym and use the exercise bikes or do the more fun option: cross country ski at the Arboretum, conveniently located just a hop skip and a jump away from my new place. If anyone wants to go cross country skiing with me, I will most certainly be interested.

Learning about Bike Repairs

In order to learn about how to repair bikes, I plan on building a bike. Over the last few months I've been working on a bike at the Freewheel Coop, a workshop where the bike parts and help are free if you strip bikes and help others who are in need, but they unfortunately have lost their space a few weeks ago. My friend who knows a lot about building bikes helped me find a quality frame which fit me as well as some drop handlebars and good pedals. At this point that's all I have. I still need wheels, brake cables, brakes, a chain, a derailleur, gear shifters, gear cables, and I'm sure a lot of other things too. The problem is that not only are the parts not free now that Freewheel has effectively shut down, I also need to get my frame back so I can work on it on my own. I recently found Freewheel's e-mail address and asked about getting my bike back. It turns out I can come pick it up from some bus (which is holding all the stuff from the workshop until they find a home) at the South Madison Farmer's Market on Saturdays from 10 A.M. until 2 P.M. It's wonderful to find out that I can pick up the bike I was working on, but unfortunately I work at The Old Fashioned on Saturday Brunches until around 3ish every week. I've considered asking my roommate to pick it up for me but I can't even remember the name of the company who made the frame so I'm not sure he'd pick up the right bike. It was some Japanese bike manufacturer with five letters in its name, starting with an 's'... I think.

In a related story, my roommate found four bikes in our new apartment's basement and we snatched them all. One is a cruiser and the other three are road bikes, one of which has a woman's frame. They are all old and of low quality. I'm hoping to scavenge some parts, namely those listed above from these bikes in order to make my new bike work.

Future Tours

If this trip works out I'll use my bike, equipment and experience to take me on a tour of the European Mediterranean, starting in Spain or Portugal, going to Nice, all the way down around Italy, then through Eastern Europe and ending up in Greece. A less ambitious but equally intriguing tour would be around the perimeter of Iceland. I might even be touring for the rest of my life, covering the U.S. as well as any other continent I feel inclined to cover.

Conclusion

This blog will be dedicated to logging all aspects of the planning for this trip as well as the events of the trip itself while I'm on it. I'm sure it will be a difficult process, but it will be even more rewarding. Hopefully at this time next year I'll be returning from my incredible adventure, full of stories, ripped, worn and ready to plan the next bike tour.