Taking a 6 Month Bike Ride Across Europe (Ep. 8)

Transcript

Keith (00:00):
I'm Keith Mauer. You're listening to Travel Fuels Life.

Drew (00:15):
Hello everybody, and welcome to Travel Fuels Life, the show we share stories, tips, and inspiration to help you live a travel lifestyle. I'm your host, drew ish, and what's it like to give up your daily life for six months and head to Europe, ride a bike across the continent? Well, my friend Keith Mower did that and in fact, he's going to share all of his stories with us. He has some interesting fun stories and some stories that are a little bit hair raising, but this is all about conquering things and becoming a better traveler. And what I love about Keith is that he is really good at giving tips. So if this is something you're considering doing, I think you're really going to enjoy the show today. And I appreciate him for stopping by my home here during the holidays and sharing some of his time to reveal all these little stories and tips that he's got for us so we can plan out a similar trip potentially. So for my sitting room here in Greenville, South Carolina, got a couple of scotches poured and the microphones powered up, and it's time for a little travel chat with my friend Keith Mauer. Keith, welcome to the show.

Keith (01:26):
Hi Drew. Thanks for having me.

Drew (01:27):
Sure, sure. So you and I met couple years ago at a place called the Commerce Club that's right here in Greenville, and we were actually in a travel club for a short period of time. That's right. And while doing that, actually the first time I was there, I got to watch you do your discussion of the trip you took across Europe on your bike. And I kept thinking, I just drove across Europe and I thought I had accomplished something. And here you are on two wheels, having to deal with the elements and all the other things that you have to deal with. And also it's going to take a little longer probably to go from one place to the other, whereas I can just speed along on the Audubon and be there in no time. So the logistics are a whole lot different in terms of how you travel versus how I would travel. So I thought this would be an excellent opportunity for us to go through that and expose everybody to a different kind of travel across Europe. So get a little background on you. Where did you get the travel bug? First of all? Did you travel a lot as a kid or?

Keith (02:43):
Well, I took a trip to Ireland back in 2006. It was actually a study abroad program through my school. Went for two weeks and did a cultures class in Ireland and saw many of the historic sites. And we took a bus from place to place and we had tours and talks at the different landmarks and went to the museums and altogether had a course of it, but it was very academic, obviously learned a lot, but it was very structured, might be a good word to describe it. That was really my first exposure to doing something overseas and really immersing myself and learning as much as I can about it. So I did that. That was only for about three weeks and coming back. And I knew that I wanted to get back someday on my own and be able to do all the things I wanted to do that were off tour. Right. So I'm going to do this someday. And that's kind of the initial impetus to all this.

Drew (03:51):
Okay. Yeah. So how long was it before? Did you go back to Ireland at any point on before the big trip? Did you

Keith (04:00):
No, I didn't. Okay. I didn't get back again before the bike trip.

Drew (04:03):
Okay. So how many years was it between your initial experience of going over there and planning the trip out?

Keith (04:09):
It was probably 2000, probably about eight or nine years.

Drew (04:14):
Okay. And are you a cyclist? Do you bike a lot and take trips? You're from upstate New York,

Keith (04:20):
Correct? Yes, yes. Upstate New York, Albany. And I was a cyclist. I was commuting to work on my bike, which is about a seven miles one way. And up upstate New York, we had all kinds of weather, obviously in winter and snow and slush and everything. And in hindsight, that was maybe good preparation for that trip. But yes, I rode, not competitively, but there were some group rides we did with the local cycling club and that prepared me a little bit too. So yeah, I was into cycling beforehand, but this was really my, well, not even my first for Forer into bicycle touring. I had one trip that I had planned to go out around Lake Champlain up into Canada back down through Vermont. And it kind of got an ill faded start when I wound up breaking a spoke on my rear wheel and had no way of fixing it. So that was my first trial at this and it didn't go very well. I wound up having to get the bike back to the car and drive everything home. So it did not get very

Drew (05:32):
Far. And after that experience, you said, Hey, let's take this on the road to Europe and see how that goes. Right,

Keith (05:39):
Right. Well, it was a lesson because one of the things in preparing for my trip is how much do I just go through what I have and how much do I do I buy new and there's a lot of things that I could probably get by with what I had, or I could spend a bunch of money and get something brand new that might be a little bit better. And that was kind of in preparing for things, is it really worth getting a whole new bike In this case it was it really worth getting a whole new whatever piece of equipment it was. In most cases I did opt to get the newer thing that was going to be really exactly what I needed rather than trying to make something work. And in hindsight, I was very glad that I did that.

Drew (06:22):
So did you do anything endurance wise in terms of camping or things that would've prepared you for long stretches away from conveniences?

Keith (06:34):
Yeah, so I've done a bunch of hiking in the up upstate New York has the Adirondack Park and it's a fairly large forested area and I've done multi-day backpacking trips through the mountains. And that was a little bit of my thought process as I'm planning and preparing the things I'm going to bring and how I'm going to pack and whatnot, probably even more so. Cause there's things that I was packing or was going to pack. And one of the things I learned along the way when you're traveling is that you're not the woods. You actually have access to things that you would have. And originally I had things like razor blades and things that if you were camping somewhere, like okay, you would need to bring razor blades, but when you're traveling Europe, you can find them. Right. Don't need to bring them. So there's some things I had even clothing, there's some clothing that I brought that would've been far easier just to go over, buy when you need it and then get rid of it when you don't need it and not have to pack it the entire way around.

Drew (07:40):
Wow. So how did you get everything to Europe? Because so bought a bike in the US and then you flew it over to

Keith (07:49):
Yes. Okay. Yep. Yeah, I didn't want to take a chance of having a bike that wasn't quite right. So I tried to get everything as perfected as I could here. And kind of a funny story is they had a weight and size restriction for oversized baggages, our baggage. So I wound up finding a cardboard box that was one inch short of the maximum height and filling it to about one pound short of the maximum weight. Wow. And I brought it to the airport and the girl who was there was measuring it and she had it on the scale and she gave me this look and she knew exactly what I had done. And it was a little bit tricky in getting there because I didn't want to bring luggage and then not have to, I didn't want to have the luggage after I got there.

(08:37):
So I wound up using, like I said, a cardboard box and then I was able to transfer everything onto the bike and the box. It was just done after that. I didn't have a piece of luggage to find something to do with. Right. Yeah. So that worked out pretty well. The bicycle was disassembled and put in a bag with some packaging and so on. And that I think was another $50 or something as an oversized piece of luggage. And it landed in Copenhagen and got the bike and I got this box and a couple carry-ons that I had. And right there in the airport I found a quiet spot and I had the tools on me and I just assembled the bike right there in the airport. And any other place, this might have been weird, but Copenhagen, it was no one, one said anything. And so I assembled the bike right there. Most of the bags were pre-packed and I just wheeled out of the airport and that's how I started.

Drew (09:36):
So how long were you in Europe then on that? Now you did sometime in continental Europe and then you went to England and Scotland. Ireland, yep. Okay. That's right. So how long were you in Continental?

Keith (09:51):
Let's see, I was in Continental for almost three months. There's this thing called the Shen gun Agreement, and that allows for free trade and free travel within the European area. And outside of that, or for American travelers are limited to three months now. The nice part is that you can travel from place to place. You can travel freely from Germany or to France or wherever, and there's no checkpoints, there's no passports, there's no stamps, but you're limited to three months and all those places combined. So when I landed in Denmark, which is in the Shen GaN zone, you have three months to do whatever to tour around as much as you like. And then you're kind of politely asked to leave. So it was almost three months, almost the day, maybe just a couple days short that it was in continental Europe.

Drew (10:46):
And when you say continental Europe, so you're the whole eu, you can go pretty much Eastern Europe and Western Europe?

Keith (10:53):
Yeah, I have to research what company, which countries are still involved, but it's most of central Europe, Scandinavia, Finland, Norway. I know, I'm pretty sure Iceland is in there. And after that three months and exit the Shen gun zone, you're looking at Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Russia, and then some of the eastern countries and the UK and Ireland are also outside of this Shen Ganz zone. So that's what I wound up doing. And it wound up being really, one of the key points in my traveling is at the point of three months, I need to be at a place that I can exit the Shen zone very easily. And unfortunately there are some places that I would've really loved to go to that just I didn't have time to get to. And I kind of wound up making this big horseshoe path and up at a place called Clee, which is in northern France, and there's a ferry to go over to Dover. And I wound up having to plan my trip on the time that I was allotted. So that was one of the big,

Drew (12:10):
I hear that wasn't such an easy exit either for you.

Keith (12:15):
Yeah. So kind of a funny story about this, and I was in Cal and I was there, there's a ferry to go over to the uk, and this was the first time I'd been through customs since I landed in, well, I actually went through customs in Iceland because I then was in Denmark. But I go to the customs office and they ask me all the usual questions, how long you staying? Do you have any reservations? Do you have a return tickets to the US? And these, oh, standard questions. And at the time I was really just cruising around and seeing things. I didn't have a timeline, I didn't have tickets. I was going to fly home and I was ready whenever I was ready to go home and they didn't like that. So I wound up being detained, no, in Cal. And then I was fingerprinted and eventually they denied me entry into the UK and it was bad.

(13:15):
So at that point, I only had a few days left on this she gun agreement. If I go over that, then you're technically illegally sting and you don't want to do that. So yeah, I wound up going and getting a ferry ticket from the UK to Ireland to show that I actually intended to leave. And I printed some bank statements. I went to a print shop and printed some bank statements, show them that I'm not actually broke. I think their concern was that I was some kind of like a drifter or something. And I probably appeared kind of, well,

Drew (13:53):
You've just been riding a bike for three months through Europe. I

Keith (13:57):
Mean, yeah, I was kind of a little rough looking. Maybe I should have shaved what would've just made things go easier. But I wound up going back the second day and they pretty pretty quickly just stamped it. And I actually got six months to stay inside of the United Kingdom, which is how their travel. So it's a much smaller area, but you're allowed twice the time. Oh, wow. And that was, again, a little frustrating in that I really wanted to see things that were in Europe, but I was like, I just have to get going.

Drew (14:32):
So how long did you spend in the uk?

Keith (14:35):
Well, I wasn't anticipating spending a lot of time, but there's a lot of things that are very interesting and I found it much easier to travel because I'm obviously speak English. So there's a lot of things see and do. And the pace of the ride also changed a bit. I was able to take more side journeys, explore more, just be more leisurely about it than when I was in Europe and Oh, I can only spend two days here because I got to something, I got to keep pace. But I wound up being in the UK for probably two months. So I was in the UK for, yeah, about two months.

Drew (15:23):
So you went all the way up in the Scotland, you go to Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Keith (15:28):
So I landed in Dover, the white Cliffs of Dover. They had these, I think they're actually a chalk compound, but they're these famous white cliffs that come out of the ocean. They're very nice and kind of took leisurely path. One, I'm going to a place called Canterbury, which has a big cathedral. And then it went to London. Only anticipated staying in London for three or four days. I stayed there a week. By the time I was all done,

Drew (15:56):
I was in London for what I planned two and a half days. I had a hundred pinpoints on my Google maps. Like there's no way I'm doing all this. I got through a lot of it, but I also didn't get to see as much of it as I, I'm like, I'm going back to Scotland, man, maybe I should take a quick flight over to London and spend a couple of days more because there's just so much to see there.

Keith (16:20):
Yep. I mean a lot of history, the museums were great. I went to a bunch of museums when I was in London, other parts of the country or other parts of the Europe, the museums were fantastic. And you see things and you kind of look back and say, I kind of remember seeing this in a textbook in high school and this rings a bell and especially some of the art museums. And it's like, I definitely recognize this. I don't remember where the history behind it, but things that I recognize, and especially when I was in the uk, you could learn about it. And that's one of the things that I, if I were to do it again, kind of wish I could have done differently because when I was traveling in Germany and also in France, there were a lot of things that were translated or bilingual or you could switch the little headset to English or something like this. But there was a lot of things that you would just be riding along one day and you'd come up to a monument and there's all these cars and lots of people around and I'm reading, I have no idea what's going on.

(17:28):
It's like this, something happened here. Yeah, it's important, but without asking someone, even if you could find someone to ask, I'm not going to impose on someone to explain me the whole thing. Right. So that was something that knowing a little bit more about the language, I knew enough in each language to be polite, to ask for basic things, basic numbers and color numbers, colors, just basically enough to get by. And it would've been difficult because I landed in Denmark and then I went to Germany, I was in the Czech Republic and I was in France. And it would've been difficult to learn all to become fluent in all languages, but I certainly could have and maybe even should have done more to be able to understand what's going on firstly, but also to meet people and build more of a connection as we went

Drew (18:21):
Along. I think that is the tough part. I mean, we can get to a point where you walk into a place and you start to talk to somebody about where do I go for this? So you can pick up some easy phrases, but it's so much more that you miss when you don't dig a little bit more into the culture and ask deeper questions. And I think we as Americans now probably going to get spoiled over the next few years of travel because so many people are now starting to speak English. But wherever you go, I'm in Kunta, Hora, Czech Republic, and somebody's asking me questions in English and I'm going, I didn't really expect this. Yeah, I figured here's the one spot that I probably would, I'm away from a major tourist area. It's still a decent amount of tourism around there, but still, as you start getting further out, you expect to hear less and it sort of makes you almost get lazy and not take that for granted. So as you're traveling through from place to place, did you stay in hostels along the way and pension and do that sort of thing? Or did you just camp out? How did you handle lodging where when you were going About

Keith (19:43):
When I started the trip, I thought I was going to be doing a lot of camping. I had a tent, a bed roll, a small camping stove, fuel, and I always kept some food, either some kind of a pasta or an oatmeal with me. So I always had food and a little bit of food and shelter on me. And that allowed me to really go wherever I wanted and not have any qualms about, especially when I was really say up in Scotland there's this dirt road that just runs off into nowhere and it's like, let's do it. Right? So

Drew (20:23):
I don't care if there's a restaurant on the other end, yeah, I'll eat pretty

Keith (20:26):
Much. But that being said, I really didn't use it a lot. What I found to be really the best for many reasons were the hostels. And there's organizations of hostels that are very structured and very uniform, and then you have independent hostels that are inep independent and they are a little bit unique. Sometimes they're a little bit hit or miss. You find something really different and other times you find some that are really kind of rundown. But they were great for a number of reasons. Probably the biggest one is that I was by myself all day. I was on my bike riding all day and really kind of isolated and you know, kind of meet people along the way. But when you come to a hostel, you would get a room in a dormitory, and as you mentioned, English is still the primary language. Even if you find a German and a French person and someone from Spain, you find that English is the one language that they all know a little bit of, right?

(21:37):
So everyone just kind of reverts to speaking a little. And it was great. You meet people, the hostels, you exchange, you exchange information, you go out, you have fun. And those were probably my favorite days. When you have a nice long ride during the day, then you get in and the hospitals tend to be a little bit informal compared to hotels. So I would come in and say, it'd been raining and I'm tired on my bike. And the hostels almost always would have some kind of a garage or a shed put your bike and kind of stuff. The few times that I had to get a hotel and I'd say had to get a hotel because there was either no hostels or they were all full, you kind of get a look, you come in and the marble floor and the people are looking at you, what do you want?

(22:25):
And then they're actually surprised that you do have a reservation there and that you can pay for it. So it was, and then you get a hotel room by yourself and it's, you just sit there and you watch tv, been there. This is many times. So I really liked the hospitals because they were a little, like I said, you know, could come in with your wet jacket and it wasn't a problem. And you can beat some really fantastic people. And it really wasn't anything to be like, oh, you, you're hungry, you want to go get some food, you want to go get a drink. And you meet some great people traveling around.

Drew (23:00):
Interesting that my way of traveling has always been to go to hotels and be very planned out. And I know where I'm staying tonight. I know where I'm eating tonight. I don't have to think about anything. I can just sort of enjoy everything that's going on in between and then get to that destination when I need to get to it. But you're right, when you're in a hotel room, you're there by yourself. And usually what I find is that I find bars, restaurants with bars or restaurants which are more prevalent in Europe, where you can actually sit at a table with a variety of people where people there aren't as nervous about being at the community table. Then sometimes here in the US you get people who are like, oh, that's so uncomfortable, why would I do that? Go up and ask a stranger if you can sit at their table while your eating is unheard of here. But there sometimes feels like it's just everybody wants to get to know the other people. It's much more open.

Keith (24:02):
Yep. And that was was great. I met a kind of funny story. I met a guy, I was in Belfast and I met a guy from Ecuador, and so we're out talking and I don't know anything about Ecuador, so even if we have nothing to talk about, I could ask him all about. So we go out and we go to this bar again, this was in Belfast and there's this football soccer game going on and I don't really think very much of it, but kind of talking with them and history and what you're doing here, traveling and Northern Ireland was playing Brazil I think was, they were down two to one, and this was going back 2016. And Northern Ireland has gold scored, not a winning, but a tie gold. They made it two to two. And this place, it's

Drew (24:51):
Against Brazil.

Keith (24:53):
This place went freaking nuts. Everyone in the place started screaming. I never heard people banging on the ceiling and moshing around. The doors flew open. I couldn't help but just go outside because I wasn't going to fight this crowd of people that were running outside. It was a scene and I really should have anticipated that something was going to happen. But I, watching the TV and

Drew (25:18):
Football over there is, it's a passion.

Keith (25:21):
It was,

Drew (25:24):
I had a friend of mine back in my old radio days who was from Liverpool and he was the US and doing radio at the station I was at. And we had lots of fun discussions about that. But one time I decided to invite him to go to a Clemson football game and he knew nothing about American football and they were playing against Duke. And back then Duke was not very good. And so even the stadium wasn't very full with people. And we're sitting up in the upper deck and there's a Duke fan, just one lone Duke fan sitting behind us, yelling out, you guys suck, blah, blah, blah. He was throwing everything he could throw out there. And my friend looked at me and he said, why is he still alive? Why are they not dragging him out and beating him senseless? And I thought about it and I thought, yeah, that's very different here.

(26:27):
I said, fam, it's much more of a family atmosphere, so it's not going to be beating you up because you're not speaking the same dialect as the person you're on the wrong side of the stadium kind of thing. That was a eyeopener to how passionate the people in the UK are about there. But I think all of Europe is, is very passionate about, I call it football, soccer here, but that's always the worst. That's the one sport. When I'm in Europe, I'm like tongue twisted all the time because I'm saying, so soccer, I mean football,

Keith (27:03):
European football.

Drew (27:03):
Yeah, exactly. So when going over to Europe, if I'm going for a short trip, I know the US has an agreement with Europe in terms of you don't have to go get a visa. So is this part of the agreement that you're talking about because you're staying so long, do you then have to think about getting a visa for longer periods of time or is not something you had to

Keith (27:30):
Worry about? No, no. That's not something I had to worry about. The biggest thing again for me was that was Shen gun agreement, the Shen gun zone. And only being able to spend 90 days in there before I exit. And then I think after about 90 more days, you're allowed to

Drew (27:45):
Reenter. Okay.

Keith (27:47):
So that was the biggest thing as far as planning.

Drew (27:49):
All right. So how do you plot out all of your money and taking care of bills back home? I mean, for me, the logistics of taking a short term trip, I can go, alright, well I can put my mail on hold for a month or three weeks or whatever it may be. And I know I can pay some bills up to a certain amount of point, but I mean, you're going to be wifi here, maybe wifi not. And back then was probably even much, I mean, nowadays it seems like, you know, can find wifi in quite a few places. It may not be great, but it'll be around somewhere. But how do you schedule your life so that everything is being taken care of at home while you're on the road for that long period of time?

Keith (28:42):
So when I started this trip, I was in a pretty good position. I was still pretty young. I worked, I was working for the state, I had saved up a bunch of money and I actually invested a bunch of money back in 2008. And by the time 2014 came around, it had done very well. And I was in a good position that I really didn't have any debt, a little bit of student loan debt. I didn't have a house, I didn't have kids, I didn't have a wife, I don't have a dog, I don't have anything. Right. So aside from, I donated a lot of things that I owned. I got a storage unit. It was a 10 by seven and a half foot storage unit that some furniture went in and some things that I didn't think that I could easily replace. I actually gave my car to my cousin, quit work and kind of folded it all up.

(29:40):
And I had a few that kind of helped me, Dr. I stayed at their house after, got rid of my lease for a few days and they drove me to the airport and I got my bike there and made it happen. Wow. So it was, I didn't leave a whole lot of obligations here. Probably when you make a transition like that, you need to think a little bit about, okay, well what about health insurance? What am I going to do? Because I'm going to be out of network. So now that I'm leaving work, am I going to get on Cobra or something or do I get travel insurance is what I wound up doing. And most of the things, like my student loan, automatic deductions from my bank account, all take care of themselves. My mail actually went back to my folks who were living in South Carolina at the time, and anything that was remotely important, they would either scan to me or they would call me or email me and let me know what's going on.

(30:42):
Nothing came up. Again, I didn't owe anybody anything. So it was pretty straightforward in that regards. But it was a little bit of planning, as you said about wifi. I had, one of the things I was debating, breathing, bringing, or not me, I was debating whether I was going to bring a computer because I had a laptop and I actually wound up getting one of the original Microsoft tablets. And I knew how important having all that information was, right? Cause you have so much you can do with it, but on the other side, it really becomes a liability. It becomes an anchor, something you constantly have to look after and be like, is it safe? Is it charged? Is it protected? Is it, yeah, where is it locked up? Is it so DA? All the time. And eventually I wound up, and it's also if it were to get lost or stolen, all that information is security risk.

(31:37):
So I eventually wound up getting one. Same thing with cell phone. I did change cell phone carriers, wound up going with T-Mobile that had a pretty good international plan, but I was skeptical of it. So I wound up getting what's called a spot GPS transmitter. And you can send either check-ins or even an SOS signal and for an additional fee on top of that you can send a request to be picked up. And there, there's stories about people being helicoptered off the side of the Himalayas really by, yeah. So I had one of these things, oh wow. Yeah. I had one of these things on me, on my bike because I was convinced that after I was in Iceland somewhere and I lost cell phone signal that I would potentially need to be in contact with someone about something. So I wound up spending the extra money and getting that, never needing it, but I, it gives

Drew (32:32):
You a little more confidence to go down that long road in Scotland. Yeah. There's no restaurant at the end.

Keith (32:37):
Right, right. Yeah. What else? Banking was a little tricky. I wound up going with Charles Schwab, who has a really great international plan. And I did a little bit of research on this, but again, I was concerned about the card being stolen or whatnot. So I wound up setting it up that my primary account would every week put money on my Charles Schwab account and that would kind of keep me going. So there was never too much money in that Charles Schwab account, but that was no transaction fees, no currency conversion fees, and the ATM fees were or reimbursed. And it was like, this is great, you can go to any ATM anywhere. And there it is. But on that note, I also kept some US dollars on hand. I kept 500 US dollars cash kind of buried on my bike and just, you never know. Yeah. Hey, that ATM doesn't work, now I'm broke. What am I going

Drew (33:36):
To do? Yeah, it's good to have a little backup plan. Absolutely.

Keith (33:39):
Yeah.

Drew (33:39):
Yeah. Me and all my James Bond stuff from Russia with love, he's got a suitcase full of gold sovereigns. And that the story behind those is that during military operations, when they would drop you into a zone, they would give you one of those so that you had some kind of currency that could be traded or whatever you needed to do. So I can imagine I take that to heart and when I go on trips, I make sure that I have some form of cash with me somewhere. It's just because, again, you can't depend on electronics or the worst is that when you're traveling in Europe, they have holidays. It seems every day that I need an atm. So I'm going to the bank and I'm going, where do I get, where do get my cash from? Yeah.

Keith (34:34):
And I tried to break it up a little bit, so I had a little bit of cash on me, but then I had some cash on the bike also. And that was a part of trying to plan for all the things that could happen and say, what if my bike got stolen? Well, maybe I keep the most important things on me, so I got to keep a little bit of money and then I got my passwords and a couple things like this. But then what if that gets stolen? Or what if that gets lost? Right, right. So now I have to encrypt my own passwords with a, memorize you an encryption. So there was a little bit of this, you're kind of traveling on your own. It was always hectic whenever I had to, a few areas where you had to unpack the bike and then say, carry the bike up a flight of stairs and come back for all the bags. Or even just at one of the hostels. Most of them had, it had locked areas. But being able to secure your things and knowing what's important and making sure it's all together. So it was a little bit nerve wracking. There were definitely some points that I was kind of vulnerable in, but in most cases, just kind of wind up having to focus on what's important. And then maybe those things that aren't so important, you kind of come back and get them a little later.

Drew (35:56):
Right. You did tell me, actually before we started recording, about a little incident that you had with lost wallet.

Keith (36:05):
Yeah. So this was in Norberg and I lost my wallet. I'm not sure if it was stolen or if it has left it somewhere. Cause I was out drinking. And so I got back to the hostel. And the hostel, one of the nicest hostels I've been at actually had a bar on the inside and I go to pay for a drink at the bar and while it's gone, I had both credit cards in there. So I wound up using the cash that I had converted to Euros and that let me go about another week or so until some credit cards went up, arriving in the mail. But it was one of those, I had to have the credit cards internationally expedited to the hostel that I was going to be staying at. And so I wound up going, traveling to the next city where that hostel was.

(36:46):
And then I didn't know when they were going to show up. I had to sign for them. And I wound up sitting in the lobby of this hostel for about three days until eventually a guy walked in and I had my passport and I signed for the letter, opened it up, activated the credit card, called the number, activated my credit card, and I was off to the races. But it was a little blip in the road. It was kind of scary. That's actually one of the points. I did use my camping stuff because the campus sites were only very, very low cost and it was really great weather. So I didn't mind doing that for a few days and then move over to the hostels after

Drew (37:22):
That. So when you were at the hostel though, you said that they kind of took your word for it that you, you'd have money coming.

Keith (37:32):
So I only had a little bit of cash on me and I wanted to conserve it and I was trying to convince them to charge me when I checked out instead of when I checked in and that I had these credit cards that were coming in the mail and to, and this is not a normal thing obviously, but somehow I convinced them that this was okay and they showed up, I activated them, I paid for my stay, I got some cash out of the atm and I just went up.

Drew (37:59):
Maybe you shaved that day was, I mean, if you can could talk to hostel into stuff that you can't talk to border guards into. Well

Keith (38:07):
The border guards, border guards are a little tricky. So you bring up a good point or maybe a touch point here. In that planning everything on the bike, it was sometimes difficult to know what to bring. So typically hadn't had two outfits that I went in between. And the one was a pair of cycling clothes, shorts, shirt, a couple of different weights, the socks and rain jacket and hat. And I also, one outfit that was some sort of khaki pants, there's a blue button up shirt that was kind of a nylon. And I was really trying to look like I wasn't writing. That was my goal. Cause I want to be able to go into a museum or go into whatever it was and not be like, he just rode across Europe. So trying to find things that were packable interchangeable, kind of went with each other and also didn't look out of place in certain situations was a little bit challenging.

Drew (39:11):
So finding laundromats places to get your, I mean, were they usually close to a hostel and you didn't have to go hunting them or?

Keith (39:20):
Yes, some of the hostels had them. There were some independent laundromats when I went to Paris. It's really great. Yeah, I'm in Paris, woo. And the first thing you do is just go to laundry, man.

Drew (39:33):
Cause it's been,

Keith (39:34):
I've riding in these clothes for a week is bad. And then he wound up doing that. I also had a waterproof bag that was on the back of my bike. And it was great for keeping the rain and the elements out, but it also doubled as a washing machine. If you had had some hot water and some liquid soap, you could actually wash your own laundry in a haphazard way. Ring 'em out, hang 'em out on the line and it works. So I did that. I did that a few times. I try not to, but the thing about the laundry mask, you still have to wear something, right? So it's like what am I going to wear when everything else?

Drew (40:12):
Did you ever have a point where you just did not have a place to stay

Keith (40:16):
Once? And there were plenty of times where you're riding and it's like, I'm going to find the next place to stay. And sometimes that that's a little bit hit or miss sometimes it winds up being great place. More often than not, you come across a place that is frankly more than you want to afford for at least the one night. But I wrote into Berlin and for whatever reason, and I learned this the hard way, I wrote into Berlin and I was really determined like I'm going to make it today, going to get there. And I didn't know there was this European football game going on at the time. And every hostel, every hotel was absolutely booked. And I rode and I rode and I called all these places and I did find one hostel that had a place for me, but I actually, I didn't find it.

(41:05):
The short answer is I didn't find it. And I had been riding about 16 hours at that time and it was starting, it was dark, it was starting to rain and it was like, okay, this is beat. And eventually I had the tent and everything on my bike. I was on this side road, I pushed my bike off into the woods and the side of the road. I went in about 20 feet and I just made camp and I slept and it was miserable. Cause I, not only did I not eat anything, I didn't sleep very well. And then the next day I packed up and I called the hostel again and they tried to tell me where to go. And they said I should get on a bus. Well, I can't take this hundred pound bike with me on the bus. So I wound up finding the bus stop and waiting for the bus to come. And eventually the right bus came and I chased it and I almost lost it a couple times. But I wound up being able to keep up enough with this bus that I found the stop that the guy had referred to. Oh. And just followed the bus into the hostel. And I took a long shower, a long hot shower, and ate a bunch of pastries. Oh my God.

(42:12):
But yeah, that's another kind of point is that when you're riding like this, you eat so much, you have this constant hunger that's going on, really. And the places like you would, a couple times I would go and I'd order dinner. They'd bring me the bill and I'd order dinner again. And

Speaker 3 (42:30):
That's the time,

Drew (42:31):
Let's do this. Right?

Keith (42:33):
Yeah. Eat,

Drew (42:34):
Eat.

Keith (42:35):
So it was a little bit of a challenge. I always had food on the bike, some kind of a starch, whether it be some kind of a bread, also some kind of a nuts circle, a sunflower seed or something like this. And fruits, particularly oranges, travel very well. They're very durable and they get kind of knocked around a little bit. So I always try to have some food on the bike to keep me going, but it really ate a lot along the way.

Drew (43:02):
So which of all the countries that you went to, which was the easiest for you to get around? Bike wise?

Keith (43:10):
Bike wise? Well, Denmark has a lot of bike trails and bike areas and they're really very organized and very put a lot of attention and money into building this. So it was pretty easy to travel. It's also very flat, which makes it easy, but it's also very windy. So be advised that 30, 40 mile an hour winds are normal, which I was not used to. The UK was easiest and the Ireland, Ireland wound up being fairly simple for the language difference. So that was easy. That was a good break from having to struggle with whatever language I was in, just traveling like this. Yeah, okay. Of the two tough

Drew (44:04):
Places, where would be a place that you were like, wow, this is a bit more challenging than I thought?

Keith (44:09):
Oh my gosh. So here's a short story. It happened a couple times. One, probably the more relevant time. I was traveling in southern Austria and I was climbing this hill and that really anything memorable, and I get to the top and I'm kind of winded and it was really one of my first really good views of the mountains. And I get up top of this hill and I see these cliffs and they're like, they go up to into the sky and there's snow on the top and it's just, it was so, I remember stopping scrunching over my handlebars and being exhausted me. How the hell am I going to do this? That was like, yeah, yeah. I got to the top. Oh my God. It was really, I can't go back.

Drew (44:58):
There's mountains in the way of where you want to go, so you're going to have to hit 'em sooner or later.

Keith (45:02):
Yeah. And that kind of gets back to a point that you mentioned earlier about logistics and I gave up my apartment, I packed up all my stuff and it really wasn't easy for me to go back. There were a couple times during the trip and not real bad, but if I had a house and if I had something to go back to, it would've been easier to just say, I've had enough and go back. But when everything's packed up, you really don't have a place to go back to. It's like, this is my one chance to really make this happen and to go back means all this other work just to reestablish myself. Right? Yeah. So that helped me persist over the hard times is knowing that there really wasn't like a viable exit or return strategy.

Drew (45:57):
Right? Right. So would you do this again,

Keith (46:01):
It sounds glamorous, traveling around, seeing all these beautiful things. And that's usually people's reactions

Drew (46:08):
I'm seeing, but I'm thinking rainstorms, I'm thinking, right? Long hauls between here and there and light on food or situations like watching your bike and making sure that you're not Yep. Have it stolen. Or a lot of tension in there as well there.

Keith (46:26):
There's a bit of stress involved. You're traveling, you never really know where you are. You never really know where you're going. There's language differences. The weather right is a very big deal. When it's raining, you're or it gets dark or you're hungry, whatever. Try to just balance those that they don't all happen at once. So when you have a long day, make sure you rests well when it's going to be late, make sure you eat well. So those things that can go wrong don't all happen at once. You kind of just deal with one thing at a time. Right. But yeah, I would do it again. It's one of those things that I probably only get to do once in life. And I did it early on knowing that I wouldn't really be able to do it when I retired and I had the opportunity to do it when I was young still.

Drew (47:18):
So you'll have to listen to the podcast of our 64 year old female solo adventure traveler who bikes she just takes every year she goes off and finds another place to go bike. And yeah, she's doing the Continental Divide in Colorado, Montana. She's going border to border and at 64. So that's a tough

Keith (47:41):
One. Wow.

Drew (47:41):
You're going to have to say, you know what, maybe I could do that Whenever you got to keep yourself in shape. Right.

Keith (47:47):
Yeah, I've got to, wow. I got to inspire to something

Drew (47:51):
Very nice. Well, I definitely appreciate you taking the time out to go through and give us a feeler for what it's like to travel overseas and then do it on a bike. Cause I mean, again, that's not something I've attempted yet and I'm debating right now in Ireland about, well, what's interesting is I'm trying to plot out a trip where I'm just concentrating on two countries, Ireland and Scotland, and I want to go to some of the areas where the distilleries are. But the thing is that those areas are not very populated and there's no place to go rent a bike. So if I'm going to rent one, I'm probably going to have to rent one in the bigger cities. And then that means that I'm going to have to go in and go as far as you did in terms of now I got to figure out how to get from here to there that I'm not going just out for a leisurely ride on my bike and then I'm going back to the same hotel. I'll be using this as my form of transportation. So I'm debating whether I or I want to do that or not, or if I just want to hop a plane and fly to this spot and then maybe do a couple rent a car and do my old habit.

Keith (49:10):
So yep, I would check the weather and then make your decision based on that.

Drew (49:14):
Well, and of course, checking the weather in Ireland and Scotland, most likely you have a 80% chance of some kind of D Yeah, yeah. Watching those clouds, my memories of London are clouds. It was cloudy all three days I was there. So hopefully when I go back it will be just this amazing change of events and get lots of sunshine. Well good. Well, thank you very much. And if somebody wanted to check out your photos from your trip because you took a camera with you, I'm supposing,

Keith (49:50):
Oh yeah, I got a lot of photos. I have a blog post that I wrote along the way and there's some photos there. Then I also have the photos posted separately and I can send you the link for that if you'd

Drew (50:01):
Like. Okay, perfect. So we'll post those in the show notes and everybody can check out and get inspired by all those fun places that you went. And thanks for sharing the difficult moments too, because to me, sometimes when you paint such a beautiful picture of travel and you make it sound so glamorous, it's gives people a false sense. And to me, travel is about overcoming obstacles that they're going to happen. And you just have to keep a good sense of humor about it and you'll figure your way out of it. I mean, sometimes even if it's a somewhat fearful situation that sometimes sharpens your senses so that you overcome things you didn't even know you could possibly overcome. So that's great. I appreciate you sharing all that stuff with us. Well, thanks for having me. All right. Thank you much. All right, well, if you've been considering taking that bike trip across Europe, I hope this episode was very helpful for you.

(50:58):
And if you haven't been considering it, maybe this is a new dream to fuel for your travels. How about that? And head to the show notes page, travel fuels life.com/podcasts and look for episode number eight. And you're going to find links to the information on the Shin Gen Zone, also the Spot GPS transmitter that Keith talked about, and I've got his links to his photos and also his travel blog out there. So check it out@travelfuelslife.com. And if you enjoyed today's show, make sure you subscribe. All you have to do is hit that subscribe button on your favorite app, and that way you won't miss any episodes coming up. And jump on twitter.com/travel fuels life to see some of the cool places I've traveled to or just to send me a shout out. I'd love to hear from you. And until next time, have a great week. Safe travels and thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Live.