June 9, 2001
I am starting to get really nervous now. Training is difficult, most of the evenings I spend in bars or restaurants, to have 'last' dates with friends and family. There is little time left beside preparing to train on the bike. Well, it will be merely be training on the job, no problem. We really have to make a 'to do list', all the things we have to do are in my head, I need to have it structured, or this enterprise will end in a nervous breakdown instead cyling away in three weeks.

We think we will take the Danuba bicycle lane from the south of Germany to Budapest. I've learned that it is very beatiful and not so steep. Good for a start. Well, a start...from Amsterdam to Budapest is more than 3000 kilometres, so it is a ferm one. To get to Freiburg, there were this bicycle lane starts, we have several options. We sort of decided to go via Enschede, where my brother and a friend of Okke's live. Not much of a shortcut, but hey, I would like to wave my brother goodbye!

We got the guide 'Asia overland' from a friend, who made a trip like this with a car. It seems to be a good alternative to the Lonely Planet guides, it has less sightseeing info in it, that's perfect for us. The guy who gave us the guide told he had seen a lot of cyclists along the way, that feels comforting. He was very optimistic about Pakistan, so now we are in doubt again about skipping it. Well, we will see.

The next three weeks we expect to be be very hectic; we both have to work just one week and after that I expect a rollercoaster of managing all our stuff, wiping away 'goodbye' tears, cleaning up the appartment and maybe do some little test rides...and buying a tent! We saw a very lightweight tent on the internet (Fjällräven's FEM lightweight), just 1,7 kilo's. Next week we're going to have a look at it, I hardly can believe we can sleep in it with all our stuff...i can hardly believe we leave in about three weeks!

June 15, 2001
We both had our last day of work on Friday the 15th of June. That left us with two full weeks to make the final preparations. There were about one million items to take care of on our 'to do' list. So, having divided a million items over fourteen days, we had a lot to do a lot to do per day! After having reached almost complete mental burnout at the embassy of Iran which informed us that getting an entry visa for their country would take almost two months - fear not, we should be able to pick up a visa in Turkey - the day of our departure somehow arrived.