Casa Robino

It feels strange being in beautiful, wonderful, friendly Strasbourg and not either camping in a park or staying with someone I met on a bridge earlier that day. Rather I’m staying with someone I met on a bridge last year . Marie of Marie and Chris, the cyclist couple who cycled across [...]

See original: Update

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Last night I finished with Luxembourg. Pretty strange since I haven’t even been there yet, eh? No, no, I mean the mapping.
When I get around to FTPing the file, this link to /maps/Luxembourg.kml should work for my entire route through luxembourg in KML format. If [...]

See original: I’m done with Luxembourg…

I’m so glad the YMCA was full. This place has been great. The desk guy is now letting me sit in the lounge area by the registration desk and keep using the internet even though checkout was 2 and half hours ago. This is after he went upstairs to get the hostel’s [...]

See original: This hostel is awesome, but I’m almost ready to go.

Olek responded to my mass status-update e-mail with a reminder of http://openstreetmap.org. “They have a cyclemap layer available from the + in the upper right.” he says. “It’s still very much a work in progress but they have many smaller, not necessarily well known, cycleways mapped.”
Thanks Olek, it’s really helpful in the places that [...]

See original: openstreetmap.org

Disaster strikes!  But entirely too often to be fair, a disaster for me has turned into something nice.  I stopped at the YMCA hostel in Basel, which Frances discovered on our last visit.  Affordable, breakfast included, free wi-fi, I figured I could get organized there.  But as I arrived they were giving the last dorm [...]

See original: Disaster!

Route from Colmar to Strasbourg chosen.  Not going to worry about GPSing it, as I have a paper map and have other mapping to try to do.  Why this route?
- it’s the only one I haven’t ridden (part of) before, and seems to wind through some small towns
- was recommended by a real traveler to [...]

See original: Route from Colmar to Strasbourg chosen (finally…)

Image shamelessly stolen from the front page of the ECF website

The full article is here: http://www.ecf.com/3850_1

See original: Bicycle Air Bags?

Spurred on by a) Andrew’s comment to the previous post, b) my realization that the European Cyclists Federation (ECF) map route #5 map (pdf is here) seems to follow major highways and not bike paths (image of Strasbourg/Colmar area bicycle map here, blowups are here: 1, 2, 3), and c) my lack of information about [...]

See original: Change of goals, mindset

A discussion between Andrew Sykes and me about the current state of EV5 is documented here on his site.
I’m curious if we’re pioneers that can lay down recommendations about where  EV5 will go?  Or does the ECF already have an “answer” that they just haven’t published yet?
Curious!
~George

See original: Are we pioneers?

Short Version: New Photo Album!

Details:
No time to edit or even cull them much, though I did separate out all the photos of road conditions along the way. The ones of my hand are a note-taking system. Two fingers is “riding with cars” while one is “separate bike lane.” One partway retracted is hard-packed dirt bike [...]

See original: New Photos!