Journal entry, 1st of May 2020.

Today is Labor Day in Belgium and I suppose all over the world. This means we get a day off from work. Yay! This means I have some extra time to work on my website and other things. Or just to relax. As you see in the picture I tried to be a bit creative with resting. I won’t take that chair on my cycling trips though. I was looking at this travel chair and it looked really cool to have with us on a cycle trip. In our last trip I didn’t take any chair but when I see people with one it really looks comfortable after a whole day of cycling so for our next trip I might take one with me. So that I can even relax on labor day on cycle trips!
 
Since we are still in this lockdown I am trying to keep myself busy with researching, writing, online board gaming and trying to be creative with drawing mandalas, writing and building up my websites. And playing Age Of Empires II! I grew up with that game and it is fun to discover it again. I also still work (from home) so I still have a lot on my plate to do. The only thing I really start to miss is playing futsal. I would love to score some goals again.

Researching our new route.

In our first trip we didn’t plan our route so much. We felt that we missed some things because of that so now we will try to plan a little bit better. Since we might need to rethink our departure date we also might need to change our route. Our first plan was to cycle from Argentina too Alaska. Since we might need to postpone our trip it is possible that we will need to start in Alaska. Our route would be more or less the same but just reversed. The reason behind this is because of the seasons in those countries. In Argentina the best time to start is November. 

If we are too late then we might be stuck in some mountain parts due the cold weather. In Alaska we need to start in late spring (May) since otherwise the weather will also be too cold. This means we need to plan very well depending where we start and calculate enough time to avoid cold/bad weather.

 The departure destination will be depending on when we can start cycling. Since we were already planning before the pandemic outbreak we have already some routes and places in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. We really enjoy to do this and so in the picture below you see our route of hearts on google maps through all those countries. Every time we look at this, we get excited. We cannot wait to cycle again. And thanks to labor day we have an extra free day to plan our routes!