By 4pm, I had gotten all my last minute packing done and departed Fort Collins – hopefully until December 28th or so. I drove down and had dinner with my parents before driving a short way down the road. I was feeling a bit sleepy so didn’t get further than Limon. Tomorrow will be a longer day of driving most of the way to Dallas. Nice to finally have the cycling portions of this vacation get closer.

I’ve gotten most things packed. It goes into three groups: things I’m using in Texas, things I don’t need in Texas but will in Amsterdam and some spare items to leave at my parents. For example, my camping gear is in the second category. All three groups are a little bigger than I’d like. However, it is tough to look at some of it and wonder if I’ll really need it or not. Am I better off with an extra spare tire or will the weight hurt me more them help. My plan is to take another good look at everything in Dallas before my flight and figure out the final things to bring then.

I picked up an interesting alcohol stove. Only 1oz. Not quite sure where I can pick up methylated spirits in Russia, but if so that would be a very lightweight alternative to the stove I would otherwise bring. There seem to be enough other places to get food along the way, so not sure I want to carry too much weight to cook things.

I’ve been accumulating the possible gear on a futon in my living room. Wow! Rather daunting to see all this stuff, and how it might all fit in just four panniers. Trying to make sure I don’t bring too much stuff to carry across Asia – without forgetting some crucial things. Fortunately, I’ve got my Texas ride to help sort a few things out. After Texas Hell Week, I’ll put everything out in a motel room and see what I might really need. I’ve also see from the AAA maps and looking online that there should be enough motels between Dallas and Fredericksburg that I can leave the camping stuff in Dallas initially.

I still have a list of organizing tasks, stopping by banks, post offices, sending off my taxes, etc. Perhaps the largest task on the next few days is to pack up my specific gear into panniers and also pack and clean a bit more on my duplex. I have most of the cycling items on the list and many in a pile along the hallway, just need to pick the specific items and pack them.

One exercise I’ve been doing the past few weeks is trying to tame the amount of mail, both physical and email that gets sent to me each day. For each message take a look and ask “now why did this get sent to me” and perhaps how I might get it off the list. I’ve gotten the major ground bills changed over. Switching from prodigy to google for email filtering has helped and I’ve been getting off some random lists here and there. Once I’m on the road it will be nice to get an email or two but don’t want to wade through hundreds of junk messages to see them…

Tomorrow a day of errands and packing!

We cycled five miles round trip to the “triangle” statue in Loveland. This statue has gotten notoriety because some in Loveland raised a fuss since the statue had nude figures. Heaven forbid!, I hope these Loveland folks don’t travel to Europe.

I’ve been slowly getting everything wrapped up at work as well as getting my equipment lists finalized. I’ve also been getting airline tickets for some segments and discovering the joy of having limits on my debit cards.

This morning started with another trip to Larimer County Health department, this time to get a second round of Hepatitis B vaccine.

The other effort has been working through my packing lists. Nothing is packed yet, but I’m taking careful looks at everything I might bring and trying to decide if I want to carry it on the bicycle. Some things are pretty obvious like panniers themselves or the sleeping bag I’ll take. I’ve had more of dilemma with tents. My old tent was fine, except was getting small holes in the floor. For getting a new tent, I was looking for something that could fit two tightly and one spaciously. I got a nice “Hubba Hubba” model at REI. I also recently noticed that SAMs club had a very inexpensive “hiker tent” from Swiss Gear. Actually looked pretty good from dimensions, so bought one and now I’ll have to see which tent I bring. There is quite a bit of gear to pack and I’m starting to see how much it might all weigh. Out comes the postage scale. I’m not yet to the point of weighing individual socks to see which ones to take, but getting close.

I updated this web site to latest version of WordPress this pass weekend. Looking good so far and I enjoy WordPress as a publishing platform. One change they provided was having a different main page from blog page. I am trying that and seeing how it works.

I did some more looking at my medical insurance online to understand coverage procedures overseas. I didn’t find much and the only contact number as a 1-877 number. So, I called the provider to at least learn what number to use with international access. Six voicemail prompts and two entries of my account later, I finally got to a live person who put me on hold to let me know ten minutes later of a 1-866 number to dial from overseas. Perhaps that might work, though I am skeptical of being able to properly register a claim from wilds of Russia let alone on a 1-800 number. I’ve since browsed online and found some companies offering travel insurance policies including medical overseas and will likely to get such a policy just in case – and because it covers some things like trip interruption or medical evacuation as well. I was interested to find that their extreme sport exclusion adds things like hang gliding and motorcycle racing but doesn’t have bicycling across Russia as an extreme sport.

It is going to be nice to get some of this stuff behind me and finally be on the road. My three largest worries at this point are (1) visa and registration (2) mechanical issues in wilds of Siberia and (3) getting by with enough language. It will be nice to just get some riding behind me and work with these sorts of things as they come up.

Last Friday word went out to my groups at work on my pending leave. So now trying to see what I can do to get everything transitioned as best as possible.

One area of potential confusion is that Russia adopted a new set of new Visa Registration Rules that took effect on January 15th. In principle, some parts become easier because registration itself is paperwork that is submitted by the organization you are visiting, rather than a stamp in your passport/migration card. Where the confusion seems to come in, is exactly which company does what and what are their new obligations. For example:

• In St. Petersburg, I am signed up for three weeks of language classes. Do I get my visa registered with the language school or at the company that issued the visa?
• While bicycling across Russia, when and where should I register the visa? I will not likely have a continuous registration because I’ll be traveling by bicycle.

Something tells me this paperwork is going to get fun to make sure I stay legal through my trip.

What happens in one month? Well, that is the first official day of leave. I’ve reserved a mini-van so I can run a few last minute errands before saying goodbye to my residence for almost 10 months. Plan is to drive to Dallas and then bicycle from there to Texas Hell Week. I’ll fly from Dallas to Amsterdam on the 24th of March. As that gets closer, I’ll likely change the countdown clock to start counting to March 24th.

This evening I gave a talk at the Fort Collins cycle club. I showed my slides from the 2006 trip. It was fun and nice to present. I’ve scheduled a “last weekend in February” ride from the Loveland Public Library at 10am and used the talk as an opportunity to invite others to join me in a short ride on February 24th.

I also signed up for a three week Russian class in St Petersburg. Hopefully help me pick up a few additional survival skills in the language as well as taking a short break from cycling Europe before setting off across all of Russia. Along the way, I’ve loaded Rosetta Stone Russian language software on my PC. Haven’t used it much, but seems useful in picking up some additional language.

A lot of attention on Russian so I’m not worrying as much about some of the countries I’ll stay in more briefly on the way to St Petersburg. Netherlands (fine, I speak Dutch), Germany (knowing Dutch and English helps me even with some German), Poland (nope), Lithania (nope), Latvia (nope), Estonia (nope). Will see how it all goes…

My bike is mostly ready to go, though the snow and cold has made riding more awkward. The plan is to leave Fort Collins and head down to Dallas at start of March. From there, I’ll do a mini-tour to ride to Texas Hell Week, ride some of that and then return back to fly from Dallas to Amsterdam at end of March.

I’ve started looking a bit more at the Russian visa’s I’ll need. Seems like you can’t order them more than 45 days in advance. I’ll get a 12 month business visa that allows for multiple entries. It looks like there are several places on the web to order such a visa. Of slightly more concern will be seeing if I can get it registered for six months at a time – from a place in St Petersburg. It seems like most of them only register it for 3 months maximum. In any case, I can now start getting paperwork in place.

My commuting bike was stolen on 10/30. Stopped in at Albertsons to get some candy for halloween and when I went out it was stolen. Taken with it my helmet and rear panniers. I filed a police report, but don’t have high hopes. This underscores one concern I’ll have in the trip of keeping a careful eye on my bike so it doesn’t disappear.

In 2006, when I did the Ukraine, Russia ride, I took a Trek 520 instead. It rode very well for the trip, and I ended up leaving it in Penza as a backup bike for the Amsterdam to Vladivostok journey.

So, as I have been thinking more about the bikes and the pro/con of which one to bring, decided I may likely end up wanting to ride a Trek 520 again instead of taking the recumbent. While it has 700c wheels, it seems like larger Russian cities have bike shops with tires in this size, and some wheels and rims. Not 100% decided yet, but I went to Lees Cyclery to price things out and see if I could get another of these bikes for the trip.

Here is a post that includes a few photos from the 2006 trip to see how well image uploads might work here. The image uploads worked, but then I moved the blog and had to change them.