Buon Giorno Italia

May 31st Day 1

Today we boarded a plane leaving from Grand Junction, CO headed to Denver and then on to Toronto and finally Rome. As I am writing this we are on a 5hr layover in Toronto and hoping to be on our red eye flight to Rome in a few hours. So far the trip has been fairly uneventful as far as today is concerned but it has been much more eventful just trying to get to this point. For example both Monique and I had to submit our notices to work and that is where the fun began. Upon sending in our notices to work we had to do the same for our apartment which meant we needed to move all of our belongings to storage while keeping out just enough for 2 months of living a meager lifestyle on a bike. After several days of packing and moving we finally ended up with the following gear left for our trip: 1 tandem, 1 bob trailer, 1 tent, 2 sleeping bags, a stove and 2 pots, water filter, tent, 2 sleeping pads, 3 riding shorts and jerseys each, 1 light jacket, 3 pairs of underwear and 1 pair of pants and 2 shirt each. (not exactly an abundance of creature comforts!) However, we will not be seeing most of this until later this month when we will fly into Milan, Italy.
So, for those of you who may not know the “details” of our travels here is our itinerary as follows:
Today May 31st fly to Rome
June 1st-9th work out way North ending in Milan
June 10th fly from Milan back to San Diego CA
June 10th-19th Do Race Across America with TT1
June 20th fly back into Milan with our equipment (tandem etc.)
June 21st begin touring on our tandem around Northern Italy, Switzerland, France…
End of July fly back to the States
Early August move to Montana to begin graduate school

Well that’s about it for now, hope all is well.

P.S. we will post these as we have internet access so sorry if you don’t hear from us every day.

Nate