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Venice to Venice (via Malaga, Rome and Naples by train, plane, bus, tram, taxi, Uber, Venice canal airport water taxi, and 29km on foot) In 1999, freshly finished the final thesis paper of his undergraduate degree, Ed stuffed a hastily-purchased hiker’s pack with unnecessary “essentials” and took off with a troupe of friends to “do” Europe. Over 20 days, he bounced to 11 cities in seven countries - navigating to all the must-see sights by paper map, sampling exotic street food like deep-fried Czech cheese, drinking beer in public squares, sleeping on trains and not-so-much in hostels, and reflecting out loud about the meaning of it all. By the flight home, the cheap pack (stuffed even fuller with unnecessary souvenirs) was falling apart, and Ed’s back, legs, feet and psyche were exhausted. It was awesome. But Ed isn’t 23 any more. Even at 33, with baby Heron on Joce’s back trekking across France, Spain and Italy, Ed ably lugged a 57-pound (much better-quality) pack stuffed with four months of “essentials” for a young family of three. No problem. But now Ed’s somewhere in the vicinity of 43. So now we have bikes: all that weight is shifted off the shoulders onto the pannier racks (and thanks to Joce the discerning packer, now it’s truly only the essentials). We pedal freely from town to town, experiencing Europe one kilometre at a time, breathing the fresh country air, unrestricted by the timetables of trains and buses. We sleep peacefully under the stars in our tent - a cacophony of birdsong rousing us instead of late-night drunken revellers. It is awesome. However, Malaga. Yes, indeed, this week we’d come to the final gauntlet in our saga of Spanish visa requirements. You can catch the earlier episodes of our nerve-fraying quest in the blogs from Weeks One and Four - but for now, let’s say that we’ve earned our temporary residency extension that allows us to stay in Europe beyond the oddly restrictive three-month limit. Or have we? In order to know for sure, we had to return (again) to the Comisaria provincial de policia nacional in Malaga where we began our pan-European bike tour - ten weeks and 4,554km ago - to pick up our Foreigner Identity Cards granting us a full year of access to Europe. Since we were in northern Italy, we had to fly. Since we were flying, we might as well take that detour to Rome and Naples that the boys were so eager to see. So now we had a four-day itinerary bouncing about Europe - and since it would be too much to lug our bikes along with us, we were going backpacking. But we didn’t have backpacks - only the hydration packs we carry on day hikes. This was just as well, since the discount flights we’d booked charge big Euros for checked luggage. We would just have to fit four days of “essentials” into a glorified pocket. Boy, did we miss our bikes. The toughest part was the dominos: that series of planes, trains and buses that we had to catch at each stage, in order to catch the next step in the series. On our bikes, we could pedal at our pace and arrive when we got there. But our discount flights (especially the one that cost - we shit you not - 1.95 Euros per person before taxes, total 39 Euros for all four of us) were likely to leave us on the tarmac if we weren’t an unspecified amount of early. We were sure there had to be a catch. “Oh, you wanted to actually get on the flight?” Heron jokingly predicted the ticket-taker’s greeting. “That’ll be a hundred Euros, please.” “Oh, you wanted to be allowed to get off the plane when we land?” ventured Sitka. “Two hundred Euros!” We had nightmares of being flown to Rome, Alabama and told to find our own way back to Italy. Or worse: missing a domino and giving the Spanish bureaucracy a reason to deny us our hard-won visa extension. Alas, our stress-induced adrenaline rush lasted the full four days, and we not only toppled every domino from Verona to Venice to Malaga to Rome to Naples to Venice - we had a right rip along the way. In Venice, we trusted our bikes and 95 per cent of our Earthly belongings to Mauro the mechanic for a four-day tune-up, then visited the city of canals that stunningly exceeded its lofty hype. This marvel of history and engineering and culture and resilience had us enthralled with its as-advertised uniqueness - right up until we had our own racing-through-Venice moment when we couldn’t find our water-taxi stop mere minutes before it was supposed to whisk us to the airport for Domino Number One. We peered down alleys and backtracked like rats in a lab maze until a chilled-out dude leaning against a medieval cathedral smoking a cigarette pointed us the right way. Full-tilt we ran down a narrow channel to the main canal, leaping onto the boat that had already left the gate, Heron dragging along in the water to his armpits while we hoisted him aboard. Okay, so we made it just as the boat was pulling up to the dock. But it still felt like we were chasing a jewel thief or fleeing a Bond villain, dashing frantically through the famous Venice streetscape with all its twists and turns. And the satisfaction as we calmly floated beneath the Rialto Bridge, our mission complete, was the full-on Venice experience. Next day, we woke up in our hotel in Malaga (with two alarms this time), biting our nails in anticipation of our Cita previa appointment at the provincial police station where our residency cards supposedly awaited. We followed the same protocols as our previous visits - but this time, the Supervisor of No was nowhere in sight. The kind woman who efficiently took our passports and paperwork (but not, as promised, our long-form birth certificates proving our biological kinship to our children), then handed us our drivers-license-sized Spanish IDs, was perplexed as to why we kept asking if this was FOR SURE the final step. “So, after today, we don’t have to come back? No mas?” Joce insisted the fourth time. “No. No mas. Is good.” We practically ran out of the station before one of her colleagues could arrive to correct her. Then we celebrated with a beautiful walk along the same Mediterranean beach we had pedaled ten weeks before. Next day, we woke up in our campground cabin in Rome and soon were glad to have not brought our bikes. The cycle trails in northern Italy are well separated from car traffic, so we had not yet noticed the Italian way of driving. As our Uber chauffeur shuttled us at the speed of sound through rush-hour traffic toward St. Peter’s Square, swerving between lanes and at one point darting in the middle of two lanes, almost wedging the car between two huge tour buses, we noticed the horn-honking frenzy of Italian roads. “It’s really aggressive,” beamed our buddy from back home whose family met up with us near Trevi Fountain. He inexplicably enjoys borrowing his father-in-law’s car and diving into the crazy fray. “You just have to go for it.” We were much happier on foot through the ancient alleyways between St. Peter’s - Sitka’s favourite - and the Colosseum - Heron’s favourite - with Ed in his full-on element recounting all the fascinating historical details of the Parthenon, the Roman Forum and everything in between. We caught a glimpse of the perils of family backpacking when Ed paused a particularly hilarious anecdote about gladiators and found no familiar faces around him. Twenty minutes later, we miraculously found each other among the throngs of Colosseum visitors in the, well, colossal arena. And we made a better plan to stay together when not pedaling one behind the other on quiet country roads. That night, we were in the birthplace of pizza, devouring wood-fired Napoletanas and Margheritas in a back-alley restaurant, marveling in the scrumptious simplicity of fewer toppings. Our Naples stop was predicated on our family’s collective love of this particular foodstuff, so we shared several ‘zas again on the way to the airport the next evening. It’s possible we may never put veggies on our pies again. In between, we took a sardine-tin train out to Pompeii for more mesmerizing history (how we avoided contracting Covid over these four days, we will be forever stumped), giving Sitka even more firsthand visual to enhance his Grade 7 social studies class come September. He has so eagerly absorbed the stories from these places that he could likely shove Ed aside and teach the course himself. At long last, we arrived at the gate to our 1.95-Euro flight and boarded without any extra costs or complications other than the President of Algeria causing a one-hour airport shutdown. Our tiny backpacks of essentials did the job (the boys even had space for a little souvenir), and we stumbled upon an open-air food festival in Venice on our walk that night. Mauro the mechanic had our bikes in stunningly better-than-new condition (even shiny clean, too). We’d backpacked in our 40s, with our two keen and resilient boys venturing by our side. Our feet were sore, our minds were full, and we were exhausted. It was awesome.

Varna to Verona, 387km; total 4,554km Wedged between two massive dolomite slabs, hands gripping with all their 12-year-old strength, little legs starting to feel gelatinous, Sitka wasn’t sure of his next move. Glancing to his left, he took in the majesty of the vertical face of the massif he was presently scaling. To the right, nothing but air and a faraway alpine range - the jagged Italian Dolomites he’d been dreaming about for months. Upward was the next peak he was aiming for - surely another false summit with more craggly cliff to climb beyond. If he dared look down, he may have seen the meagre edge of the last rocky platform he had stood at, but mostly the dense tops of spruce trees in the gulch 500 metres straight below. And his big brother and dad panting in the foreground trying to keep up. But looking back ain’t how our pre-teen rolls. He’s always face-forward seeking the next fun thing - noticing the awesome in even the toughest of moments. He was more than 2km above sea level atop Ifinger Mountain in the Italian Alps, and he was in heaven. But he was also a tad exhausted from climbing this “Via Ferrata” - a hybrid of hiking and rock climbing first concocted by European mountaineers seeking a safer route up otherwise unreachable peaks. A series of steel cables and rebar rungs are affixed into the rockface - affording more options for grips and footholds - with periodic anchor pegs for clipping in one’s safety harness. During World War I, the Italian military used this strategy to gain the higher ground on their Austrian enemies. Today, there are more than 2,000 around the world, mostly in Europe - ideal adventures for ambitious climbers without superhuman forearms, keen for the rush but less stoked about the mortal danger. To wit, Sitka - our intrepid yet cautious daredevil, who actively seeks out crazy new endeavours (often in disregard of his slender frame still awaiting an early-teen growth spurt), then carefully assesses the plan for guaranteed safety. On this medium-difficulty Via Ferrara, his next foothold would often be at eye level, but he was undaunted. Plus, he had a bergführer. And so, as he pondered his next step, Sitka felt a gentle tug in his harness, and he rose ever so slightly until he heard the click of his carabeeners grasping the anchor above. Tomas, our mountain guide, held Sitka’s straps so his young charge could concentrate on his grip to the rock. Once or twice, he offered a little boost. “This part is a bit hard for die kinder,” he smiled with calm reassurance. (Later, Sitka would confess, “It was maybe a bit above my level. But I LOVED it!”) Ed and Heron were on their own - left with an exhilarating mix of pure adrenaline rush and fill-your-drawers fear. We were awed by nature’s magnificent creation, by the views we thought we’d only ever see in movies, by the physical challenge of scrambling nearly straight up a stone behemoth, and mostly by how Sitka was bounding up the same path with legs half the length of ours. As for Joce, a debilitating fear of batshit-crazy heights prompted a rare beer-and-a-book in a vineyard in beautiful Schenna, our Alpine home for a few days off our bikes and onto different modes of adventure. Yeah, we all love our bikes and the incomparable thrill of seeing the world at 20km/hr, outside and moving our muscles. But cycle touring isn’t just the ends - it’s also our means of accessing countless experiences in between. In a recent podcast interview, Joce called it “Biking from one fun thing to the next.” And that’s the best way to describe what we’re really up to. Nearing the halfway mark of our Europe Epic, we decided to settle somewhere spectacular and do some of the other things we each love to do. We spontaneously shifted our route a bit further east toward Italy’s Dolomites, which Sitka discovered a year ago while researching our summer ride through the Canadian Rockies. His Number Two favourite family activity is mountain trekking. But the Dolomites are still too snowed in for hiking in May, so we arranged the next-best week off, in neighbouring South Tyrol. Deep up into the wide, flat Adige River valley we rode, with vineyards and apfel orchards coating the entire plain and spreading way up into the sub-alpine spruce forest. Patches of light green are shaven out of the mountain sides for cow and sheep pastures, with dots of cottagey villages on tiny plateaus that seem impossible to reach by road. Our cozy apartment in Schenna overlooked the epicentre town of Meran below - with an outdoor pool amidst the orchards and idyllic views up, down and all around of all the places we could explore on foot. In this part of the Alps, Italy is on the flag but German is on the tongue - affording us another week to master our numbers above five (Sitka is zwölf and Heron is virzehn, but Ed still gets antsy calling to reserve campgrounds) and other basics of this very satisfying language to speak. On our Via Ferrata with Tomas, we added the words for hand and foot, left and right, WATCH OUT! and “very important.” On our other days, we found slightly less harrowing yet equally stunning trails thanks to Meran’s network of cable cars (Joce’s Number Two is alpine hiking, ideally beginning in the alpine instead of scaling cliffs to it). On one trip up, we switched to a one-person chairlift that felt closer to a rollercoaster, but the destination was well worth it. We met herds of mountain goats, still-melting snow and surprising numbers of retired Germans with fitness levels we now dream of having when our time for endless free-time comes. The slower pace allowed us to have full family conversations and begin plotting next stages for this trip and future ones, too. This isn’t to say lazy days: our bike-hardened legs wobbled after trekking a few measly hours up to the Ifinger saddle on the first day, then again after cresting into a series of alpine lakes up from Dorf Tiro for an impromptu swim (Ed’s Number Two is plunging briefly into glacial waters, ideally with bits of ice still floating on top). A nationwide transit strike threatened our final dayhike, but we dusted off our bikes and pedaled up to Verans for homemade apfelstrudel in an alpine hut (Heron’s Number Two may well be flash-learning languages after ordering in full sentences and a German accent that had our server bragging to his colleagues about “the Canadian kid who speaks better German than the Europeans that come here”). Some fun things can come by bike, too, like the rugged ride up (and screaming return down) the Sentiero del Ponale along the steep mountainside dominating the northwest edge of Italy’s largest lake, Lago di Garda. Of course we also cooled off from the latest European heatwave in the popular holiday lake, coated with windsurfers and packed with German vacationers enjoying a national long weekend - well worth the 25km round-trip detour over the modest 287m San Giovanni Pass. Ed got a bonus Number Two this week, when the family agreed to stop by Bolzan’s archeology museum renowned for housing Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old ice mummy discovered in the 1990s not far from Schenna. Beyond the occasion to flex his history-teacher chops, he (and Sitka who toured the exhibit just as deliberately) left bedazzled by the ingenuity of humankind - of prehistoric civilizations to engineer tools and even a primitive backpack within the confines of their technology, and of modern minds to parse so many details about Ötzi’s life from such slender artefacts. We had a few more world-schooling opportunities this week, after leaving Schenna and riding back down the Adige’s incredibly well-maintained and well-used paved bike path (a tourist destination itself) to Trento - whose fabulous medieval plaza hosted the 16th-century Catholic Council plotting a response to the Protestant Reformation - then out of the Alps into fair Verona, where Joce let loose her inner literature aficionado with an afternoon crash-course on Shakespearen quotes that ended with a visit to the famed balcony at La casa de Guilietta. We camped in the courtyard of the Castelo San Pietro with a view over the old city that could have been clipped from a travel brochure. We’re often asked in Europe about how the boys can skip out on school so easily in Canada - then come understanding nods when we explain all the rich learning that comes outside a school’s walls (and this coming from a classroom teacher Dad). In addition to Ed’s regular tangents about history and politics, the boys devour details about the places we see (Sitka often has to be dragged away from every info board or sign he sees) and often are the ones leading the “Wikipedia” tour of a landmark or town. They each read obsessively like some other kids might “game” - Heron is into Dan Brown novels set in the cities we’re visiting and steeped in topics of intellectual interest; Sitka pores through Greek and Roman mythology and is beyond psyched to deliver the lessons to the rest of us in Athens and Rome. And they still keep the family budget, letting us adults know our average spending and when we can afford to splurge on the next fun thing. Learning on the road is practical learning that doesn’t feel like work or school in the same way it does back in the four walls of the classroom. They may even tell you they haven’t learned a thing - but they order dessert in five languages, understand how archeologists know whether a frozen corpse was lactose-intolerant, and now use Shakespeare quotes in everyday conversation. Alas, despite his language skills and his parents’ educational tendencies, Heron’s Number Two activity remains surfing. And mountain biking. So he’s now tasked with finding days off in Croatia and Sweden to fill his bucket. Sitka is looking into snorkeling in Greece, and Joce is keen on kayaking a Norwegian fjord. So many fun things to do, so far apart with so little time. Thankfully, we have our bikes to get us there.

Trieste to Zadar, 581km; total 5,135km “I love you, baby.” - Required Croatian marital expression Over almost twenty years of marriage, you try out the full gamut of possible pet names for each other until you settle on a few that become truly meaningful. One that Ed has never even dared is “baby” - just sounding it out in his head conjures a slimy guy in a black-and-white movie with a pencil moustache and a trench coat, whistling at the starlet as she passes by. That, and the many potential, less-than-impressed looks he imagines on Joce’s face if he were to go there. But, hey, Croatia has its rules. We were sweating both figuratively and literally as we approached our first border crossing in months, leaving Slovenia and the Schengen free-movement visa region (essentially most of Europe) into Hrvatska - country number ten of our Europe Epic. Sure, we had our freshly laminated Spanish residency cards that we were keen to show off, to prove we could stay in this convoluted Schengen land for our full six-month trip. However, we’d only just started researching basic phrases in Croatian - and you can only use “Good afternoon,” “Thank you” and “Sorry” in a limited number of combinations before conversation stalls. (How Canadian are we to have “Sorry” among our top three expressions to know while traveling abroad?) Plus, Ed gets stress-chatty whenever he crosses international borders. And let’s just say the famous Gillis sense of humour doesn’t always translate well. Fortunately, there was a bike-path detour weaving straight past the border station! Unfortunately, like a slapstick Simpsons moment, the detour weaved its way backwards again, right into the first customs booth. The burly, imposing guard stared us down on our bikes, with our silly helmets that again gave us away as being clearly non-local. Ed nervously fumbles through his trusty backpack for the passports. Damn! This is taking too long. Does this make me look guilty of something? I should crack a joke about not being able to find my stash of marijuana. Ed looks up and opens his mouth, but catches Joce shaking her head disapprovingly. But she hasn’t even heard the joke yet. The cars are lined up behind us, so the border guard shoos us aside while we find our documentation. At last, Ed heads back over, dangerously alone. He hands over the Canadian passports. “Okay, I‘ll get you your stamp,” mutters the guard. Ed needlessly whips out the Spain cards. “Oh, you’re residents. You don’t need a stamp.” Damn! Do I need a stamp? Ed fumbles through his head to remember whether passport stamps were a need, a want or a no-go. By the time he’s sorted it out, the border guard’s bemused patience has elapsed. He waves Ed hastily away. Ed fumbles with all his documents, steps on the guard’s foot and apologizes in a mix of Italian and Spanish as he bumbles back to his family - relieved to have survived the process with minimal incident. Then we all realize that we’d merely passed the Slovenian exit station. Entry to Hrvatska lies immediately ahead. A stout, middle-aged man in a well-worn white dress shirt and bureaucratic red tie scurries out of the main office to a booth on the far end of the complex. He looks put out already. This can’t be good. Ed starts anxiously thinking of witty icebreakers. Our gatekeeper to Croatia waves vigorously to get our attention, then motions for us to cross a few lanes of traffic to where he sits. We awkwardly rush our bikes over to decide our fate. Ed has the documentation neatly ready this time, and hands it over. “I didn’t ask you for nothing,” the stern voice chastens us right off the bat. Questioning eyes look us up and down. Little man hands snatch the passports onto their side of the fibreglass. Yet we detect a hint of sly smile as he continues: “I’m very angry.” He contorts his arm upward in a gesture we do not undertand. “First, I tore my muscle fibre waving you over here.” We’re still not sure whether to relax or not. Ed is bursting to join in the repartee. “Here are the rules you must follow in Croatia.” Tough voice, but now a full, grandfatherly smile peers at Sitka. “Children must get ice cream, every day. No exceptions.” “Okay!” come two young replies. “And you…” Maybe Ed’s in trouble after all. But I haven’t said anything dumb yet. “For your wife, you must buy very fine wine, and say I love you baby.” “A-ha! Yes! We will definitely follow the rules.” So it’s okay for Joce to join in the jokes now? Ed is at a complete loss as to what to say. “Have a good time in Croatia.” He shoves the passports back into Ed’s hands without having even looked inside. Joce, Heron and Sitka each grab a piece of Ed’s clothing and yank him away before he spoils the whole thing. This was our introduction to a land of endlessly long pebble beaches, pristine-clear waters, idyllic islands, soaring coastal mountains, and an exceptionally relaxed mood. Just 30 years removed from a brutal series of civil wars that ripped apart the former Yugoslavia, we couldn’t fathom how this nation of four million souls (best known to the boys as one of Canada’s nemeses in the coming World Cup of men’s soccer) could live up to its hype as an exploding holiday Mecca for vacationers of all ages, origins and interests. But in our week pedaling the northern half of the Croatian coast, we found a magazine-cover paradise to bike, swim, sail, yacht (is that verb?), sunbathe, party, hike, paddle, climb on ancient castles and Roman ruins, and generally chill out. We actually began our ride down the east side of the Adriatic Sea with an overnight in Slovenia, another former Yugoslav nation whose narrow slice of coastline with rolling hills and olive trees in the backdrop squishes neatly in between northern Italy and Croatia. The unfamiliar language was initially unsettling (we kept mixing up Zdravo and Hvala, thanking people as we approached on our bikes and saying Hello after we passed), but we were relieved to learn 24 hours later that most basic expressions are shared or similar across the various southern Slavic languages. And that folks here find it cute when foreigners garble their way through Croatian pleasantries before switching to English, which they’ve been learning since elementary school. After pitching on a stony corner campground nook between two large trailers (right on the Slovenian seafront, mind you), we decided to try cycling along the EuroVelo 8 route in Croatia with no daily destination in mind, then wait until mid-afternoon when we would look out for one of the many appealing shady, picnic-tabled sites we’d noticed all morning. Yet by the time we’d pedalled 80km on Day One (after a long bakery stop devouring burek in the magical Tartini Square in Piran), those perfect places disappeared except for a “naturalist” camp that sounded lovely until we read the billboard’s byline: Once you get here, make yourself comfortable, then stay that way. Free from clothes for the duration of your holiday. Fortunately, just as we were cobbling together an explanation of nudism for our two sons, the sky opened up and the downpour convinced us all to seek more indoor accommodation - which introduced us to the wonderful world of Hrvatska landladies. It’s Croatian custom, we’re told, to have fully equipped suites ready for family visitors - and now that Croatia has become a thriving tourist hot spot, many are making the easy move to vacation rentals. Most of the towns we cycled through felt strikingly like Cuba, with blue apartmani placards found on every other home. And so as we continued around the rugged Istrian peninsula - including a figuratively and literally breathtaking ride up and along the awesome Lamski Fjord - we discovered that staying in the homes of Croatians was a better deal than camping - for both the cultural experience and the price. Grozdana in Poreč and Emina in Pula each showed motherly concern when we arrived drenched after sudden downpours, helping us get dry and warm. Mijlenka in Rab had a pitcher of fresh juice ready, then gave us an extra room so the boys could each have their own bed. Tatijana in Povljena had a welcome shot of some homemade concoction for us (adults) to celebrate the end of our day, and Antona in Zadar spent over an hour at the post office to be sure our forgotten toiletries kit would rejoin our trip a week or so down the road. Even when we did decide to camp for a night in Rabin, way up in the hills on the east side of Istria, Marjo hustled us off into a secret corner of his farm where we would have morning shade and an outdoor kitchen to cook dinner. All of our hosts were infinitely curious about our trip, despite the often challenging language barrier, making us feel like we were the family these suites were originally intended for. Joce’s diligent (if spontaneous) route research unearthed the brilliant idea to skip past the longer, busier mainland for a spell by hopping islands just off the coast. On mountainous, thickly forested Cres, we were reminded of Canada’s Gulf Islands whilst cycling straight up for a couple hours right off the ferry, then screeching back down to the main town. The billboards and souvenir t-shirts read “No stress on Cres” so we camped beachfront for a couple nights, with a daytrip to the trippy Blue Cave in the cliffs below Lubenice, floating in the saltwater in the evenings. On flatter, relaxed Rab Island, we explored tall-treed, car-free bike paths and craggly coast before ferrying to Pag - where it’s said that the scrubby, bouldery terrain feels like a lunar landscape. We would now add “if the moon were located on the surface of the sun” after sweating through a sweltering midday with no shade and only a 24/7 drunken beach town between the ferry port and our seaside overnight stop 53km away. The beaches were theoretically close, but the steep descent down dissuaded us from cooling off if we’d only be sweatier and an hour behind schedule by the time we climbed back to the main road. At one point, our supposedly more direct “Road Bike” route led us to a steep, overgrown rocky footpath that we would have assumed was the ruins of an ancient Roman settlement - except that even the Romans wouldn’t have tolerated such a terrible excuse for a thoroughfare. Through it all, we reveled in the relative calm of island biking and the warm welcomes we received every evening. We learned a fourth word in Croatian - molim - being told “You’re welcome” so often this week. Even the two-inch-thick snakes (reputedly non-venomous but still bitey) we encountered at regular intervals politely wriggled out of our way just after making us leap out of our bike shorts. The boys especially got a kick out of the varied sounds of pure terror coming from their dad whenever a slithering reptile darted out, then back into, the roadside brush. At only one point was the laid-back Croatian style less appreciated - when our catamaran captain managed to whisk us and a dozen dazed others across the Adriatic Sea between two islands without ever touching the steering wheel. At least not with his hands. From launch until we entered the harbour at Lun, the man was entertaining (unabashedly flirting with) three female passengers who were specially invited to the front deck. Periodically, he would reach in with his foot to course correct, with Joce and Heron staring in outraged disbelief. Ed, of course, was chatting with the Hungarian family next to him, oblivious to the atrocious navigational practices of the skipper. We did arrive alive, and were later informed that “rules” in Croatia are generally met with shrugged shoulders and a preference for living in the moment. And so it was that Ed, knowing full-well that Joce rarely finished a small glass of wine, let alone a whole bottle, picked up a refreshing lemon radler for Jocelyn one evening, popped the can top, kissed her and (when in Rome) said, “I love you baby.” And Heron and Sitka haven’t missed a day of ice cream.

Week 14 - Dubrovnik to Vlorë, 548km; total 6,117km (new family tour record) As parents, one quality you hope most for your kids to develop is resilience - that intangible ability to bounce back from failure and overcome life’s inevitable adversities. We have no idea what we did - if anything - but Sitka’s resilience is, in the truest sense of the word, amazing. Over his first twelve years, our 70-pound wonder has broken his wrist, his thumb and his nose. He’s fallen off a dock into a Muskoka lake, and off a boardwalk into a marsh in the Cascades. So far on our Europe Epic, he’s fallen down a flight of stairs, almost lost an eye to a tree branch, got stung by a jellyfish, and wiped out on his bike enough times that he once tearfully asked us, “Why do I keep hurting myself?” This week, whisking carefree along the backroads of Albania while discussing currency speculation and how inflation works with his Dad, Sitka glimpsed a three-foot-long whipsnake slithering madly all over the asphalt after Ed’s pass-by woke it from its sunning slumber. He swerved back and forth to avoid the indecisive serpent - more worried about running it over than getting bit - then into Ed’s panniers, losing control and (like we’ve recited his whole biking life) erring away from traffic, ending up in a crumpled heap on the shoulder with Joce and Heron colliding behind him. It was a pretty intense crash - enough to make Ed’s heart skip several beats until he could drop his own bike and run back to be sure his little guy was okay. But it is seemingly impossible to shake the sunshine out of that kid. As he always does, he popped up, dressed the wound (a few sweet-looking scrapes on his ankle was luckily all he suffered this time), wiped the tears and resumed his merry enjoyment of every bit of life - inquisitive, considerate and game for anything. In this way, Albanians are Sitka’s kind of people. For over twelve centuries, this peanut-shaped bit of land on the Ionian Sea north of Greece, east of the high heel of Italy’s boot, and otherwise surrounded by the volatile former Yugoslavian nations has been conquered and dominated by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians and other historical bullies. Shortly after they finally asserted independence from 400 years under Ottoman thumb, the Italian Fascists moved in, then the German Nazis until the Communists took over. For 50 years a tyrannical, paranoid dictator burned bridges with the West, then the Soviets and then China - leaving Albanians a deeply islolated and repressed people. Today, after thirty years of variously corrupt, vaguely democratic governments, it’s believed that more Albanians have migrated away for better opportunities than the number who’ve stayed. But in our brief week cycling north to south along the beautiful, beach-lined coast and inland through the agricultural heartland of corn, grapes and olives, we’ve met some of the most resilient, optimistic and above all sincere people on the planet. In Shkodër, Ed met Bujari while wandering the side streets far from the touristy old town seeking spare tubes for Sitka’s balding tires. The local bike mechanic and his son were adjusting brakes and replacing cables for the neighbourhood kids outside a ramshackle shop. “Oh, I have these sizes,” the bearded old man assured Ed. “I will go home and be back in ten minutes.” Off he rode, and sure enough returned with the exact right tubes, insisting to be paid the measly locals’ rate and no more. “But you biked all the way home to get these for me. It’s so generous.” “Then you go to Google and make a good review.” We talked for a quarter-hour about bikes and the Yukon and Albania - and of course he got the best review ever. And the Albanians were just getting started with us. For the past five days, we’ve been honked at, and waved at (quite often while hanging precariously out of the vehicles that had just honked), and high-fived, and cheered on, and boisterously “Hello”ed near constantly by people who seemed purely thrilled to see us. It’s well beyond the friendly greetings in more northern Europe, and feels somehow different than the typical swarms of kids keen to meet foreigners in poorer places. It seems to be a genuine curiosity about visitors, and an interest in getting to know us. “Where are you from?” is always the first question - from old men, middle-aged women, teen boys and little girls alike. “Ah, Canada.” A knowing nod. “A beautiful country. Like Albania.” In Kamëz, the conversation with a posse of pre-teens on bikes lasted quite a while as our new friends absorbed every ounce of information about us, our trip, and our home. “You Canadians are good people,” the rotund young ringleader concluded with a gravitas decades beyond his age, then cycled away. Of course, all of this is happening in English. Our heads still spinning from trying to master the very basics of Croatian, we got all mixed up with the entirely distinct Albanian language. It didn’t help that we went from Bok for Hello to Përsëndetje, and from Hvala for Thank You to Faleminderit. It took the whole week to get the pronunciations right, and even when we thought we’d nailed it, our new friends were still laughing at us. “Oh it isn’t laughing,” a few reassured us. “We’re just very happy that you’re trying.” Indeed, we would generally get contented smiles even from those older Albanians with whom we interacted more like a silent movie (it’s only younger generations learning English after the end of communist isolationism). At one point, Ed couldn’t find eggs in a grocery store, so he had to flap his wings and cluck at the cashier to communicate his needs. Fortunately, Ed’s chicken dance is world-class, so we ate well the next morning. For all our interactions, however, it’s beyond clear that Albanians love little Sitka - who has proven his resilience and tolerance as his poor cheeks have been prodded and squished and smooched by countless grandparents who could just eat him up. “I don’t like it. But I don’t mind it,” he explained as we told him he has every right to say No Thank You. “It’s just how they do things here.” And how they do things here seem to be looking up. On a superb tour of an expansive underground nuclear bunker built by the paranoid communist leader (there was one built for every 11 citizens), our enthusiastic tour guide Lirinë - Albanian for “Freedom” - painted a grim picture of the recent past and even the challenging present. “In communism, everyone has a job but there was never enough food. Now there is plenty of food on the shelves but no jobs so most of us can’t afford it. “But we’re Albanians. We keep moving forward.” Over our week we saw some signs of a brighter future fueled by resilient forward motion. Crumbling old concrete-box houses are being replaced or spruced up with vivid paint jobs and stonework facades. Small entrepreneurs are everywhere - selling produce and homemade olive oil from their car trunks, and especially in beach towns like Durres, Vlorë and Himarë that are blooming with modest, charming hotels and restaurants with thoughtful touches, enthusiastic service and ample, lovingly prepared meals. Impressively, after 50 years of bans on religion, we found mosques and churches side by side, and a mural in the town square of Kavajë - with rainbows and clouds - reads Së bashku do ia dalim: “Together we will succeed.” “Religions are not our problem,” said Lirinë. “It’s the politics that hold us back.” The most noticeable aspect of past and future to a family on four bikes is the prevalence of other cyclists on the roads with us - almost all from the older generations for whom car ownership was illegal up to the 1990s. Men and women in all states of fitness pedal about in their dress shirts and slacks, blouses and dresses. Elderly couples ride side by side bantering away like Albanian Ma and Pa Costanza. Thirty years on, however, the roads and driving infrastructure are still in rudimentary shape. Gaping holes are found along the sides and middle of the street, making cycling amongst the chaotic traffic quite the sport. There are hardly any lanes or stoplights, even at major intersections. We found a few rare bike lanes in city cores, but the outskirts of the capital Tiranë, for example - industrial, patchy and shoulderless - are stressful, hellish riding. Yet we somehow felt entirely safe biking in Albania, snake incidents aside. On highways, frantic town intersections and country roads barely wide enough for one car, let alone two, we discovered a general trait that will surely serve our Albanian friends well as they navigate an uncertain future: for all the chaos, order was found in patience and courtesy. These aren’t words usually descriptive of drivers anywhere, but here the (overwhelmingly young) motorists wave others through first, slow and halt for pedestrians anywhere, and almost unerringly wait until their path is clear. There’s a lot of starting and stopping, and nudging forward to communicate intent. Cars stop suddenly and park, crooked, in the middle of busy streets and highways, in ways that would drive North American drivers to road rage. But those who come along behind calmly wait and veer around the inconvenient blockage. Even the honking is near-universally good-natured: letting other drivers (and cycling families) know they’re coming, and then an extra honk as they pass to wave hello. Albanians clearly love their cars. The first word we learned on the road was lavazh - indicating another of hundreds of car washes in a country apparently now obsessed with keeping their cars clean. And you should see how slowly they ride over ubiquitous speed bumps (most fashioned from used six-inch-thick mariners’ rope. For a people under constant oppression and higher-up control for time immemorial, Albanians are strikingly go-with-the-flow. Sincere. Thoughtful. Genuine. Game for anything. This country will be a must-visit destination like Croatia very soon, and its people will be the drivers. After all they’ve been through, their resilience is inspiring. Just like a 12-year-old we know with the ankle he mangled trying not to bike over a snake. ——— Prologue (Artfully at the end): Montenegro Before we became entranced by Albania, we cycled a couple days up, up, over and across the spectacular mountain-scape (it’s a word now) of Montenegro. The name suitably describes the mammoth karst heaps covered in deep green oak forest that dominate the region, forcing cyclists to wind steeply up and down countless switchbacks numerous times a day, through idyllic valleys with tiny centuries-old hamlets and along the mountainsides far above vast gorgeous bays and lakes. It’s a sweaty, excruciating, magnificent and endlessly rewarding biking. A harrowing highway ride out of Dubrovnik brought us to the border of this quirky country that was the last to sever from Serbia and set the post-Yugoslavia map of today. Soon we ferried across at Lepetane to the Bay of Kotor, the seeming cottage country of the Balkans surrounded by soaring mountains on all sides leading to the delightfully preserved medieval town of Kotor. Next day our map showed almost three kilometres of elevation gain and three back down - the climbs and descents were dizzying in the intense mid-June sun, until a flat tire (our second in as many days after just one in three months) derailed our progress. It happened in just the right spot, however, as we had just passed an oasis among the barren mountains - a little shack serving cold drinks at shady tables where a family could rest while Dad switched out tire tubes. We had our first glimpse of Albanian-Montenegrin generosity when the elderly woman behind the counter of the small shack brought a heaping pile of sweet dough balls and jam, signalling without words that they were gifts for the boys who had clearly worked so hard to make it this far in the rugged terrain. That night we slept in a small apartment built into the side of a cave in Podgorica. We also met a dozen Americans at another snack hut haven in the Montenegrin mountains - aged 70 to 82 on their annual bike touring expedition, and the first (!) with electric bikes. One of the elder riders casually recounted having heat stroke the day before. “I just lied down and waited for the van,” he shrugged as if it were just any other day for a fellow his age - leaving Joce and Ed freshly inspired to keep pedaling well beyond our Bike-Touring-With-Kids days.

Zadar to Dubrovnik, 434km; total 5,569km Most dads get goosebumps of pride watching their kids score a goal, rock a recital or (in the Yukon) take down their first moose. All Heron and Sitka had to do was jump off a cliff. “Just ahead here, we have for you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dive from a 40-metre ledge,” announced our whitewater guide Dario, straight-faced until we caught on to his joke. Why would you jump from that insane height only one time - ohhhh! We were paddling down the raucous Cetina River in the jungle-like forest south of Split, with another adventure-hungry family of four from Utah (we’ve noticed that Americans tend to tell you the state they’re from rather than the country). Over the past 90 minutes we’d rambled through some intense rapids, dove into a frigid meltwater pool in a pitch-black cave, then spelunked our way out. We’d flipped into the river and floated downstream on our backs for a bit, wide-eyed looking for the water snakes that we’d seen from the boat but that Dario swore were not “usually” in this part of the river. Then came the cliff-diving portion of this particularly well-constructed, entertaining four-hour whitewater tour by Rafting Pirate - an impressive little operation run by a couple who enjoy sharing their love of the river. The rocky ledge was only five metres above the surprisingly deep river - as opposed to those 40-metre cliffs that Dario joked about - but still a daunting leap once you’re standing with your toes over the edge. One fellow from another boat froze looking down, then returned to safety, and again several times before finally taking the plunge to great cheers from the group. Ed, of course, darted straight up the path and vaulted off the cliff with his usual less-than-graceful gusto. The cameraman missed the first few seconds and only caught the top of a balding head and a hand plugging nostrils just before impact. Then it was Heron’s turn. Since he was five, he’s watched his dad jump off railway bridges in BC and harbour platforms in New Zealand into (safe) waters below, swearing he’d never do something like that. Joce always liked that reaction - but this time was different. “As long as other people have done it first, and a local assures us it’s safe,” has been Mom’s refrain whenever Dad elects to partake in this daredevil pastime - a curious passion for a guy who’s typically averse to any activity involving loss-of-control and potential for general hurt. So when the local guides rowed us ashore and gave the green light, then the majority of rafters crept up to the ledge (including another early teen who was among the first to leap), suddenly Dad peered up floating in the gorgeous cliff-lined river and saw Son standing there perched for the plunge. Without a second thought, Heron sprung off the rock - much more gracefully than Ed, it must be said - and splashed victoriously into the depths. Up he popped, huge grin on his face. “Can I do that again?” Minutes later, Sitka was slightly more hesitant at the edge, but still took the daring leap - much to the surprise and cheers of the whole group. “Did I love it? Yeah. Would I do it again? I don’t think so.” Croatia will do that to you: every day along this sun-drenched, diverse coastline there’s something extraordinary to see or do. One morning in Porec we stood in a third-century basilica dating from times when Christians were forced to commune in secret. The next, we came across a dazzlingly intact Roman gladiator stadium in Pula - in some ways more complete than the Colosseum in Rome. (In keeping with Croatia’s laidback national demeanour, another set of Roman ruins in Split isn’t cordoned off - it’s open for climbing over, picnicking on and even hosting regular summer concerts.) In Zadar, we watched the sunset with hundreds of others while listening to the eerie harmonies of the famous Sea Organ that converts the Adriatic’s waves to cathedral-like music. It was artist Nikola Bašić’s very premise to turn the bland post-war concrete harbour into something magical - and he soon added a solar-powered light show emanating from a 10,000-bulb disco floor nearby to complement the organ’s notes. On the island of Cres (where we bike-hike-swim triathloned to the fairy-tale “blue cave” we mentioned last week), we saw a billboard for a camp resort that summed up the Croatian experience - and our family travel philosophy: Once in a lifetime, every day. This remarkable nation with the fantastic coastline (in the true sense of the word - it’s a dream-like tropical paradise for outdoor lovers) has emerged from a rough history - ancient and recent - to value and cherish every day. The geography lends itself well to this live-to-the-fullest mentality, with beaches and mountains harmonious neighbours. It’s just the right place to lose sight of the bigger picture and find yourself in the moment. For the first time maybe ever, Ed has forgotten what day of the week it is just about every morning. For our world-wandering foursome, the driver of extraordinary is undoubtedly Jocelyn, who uncannily spots uniquely and superbly cool shit, then insists that we give it a go - often regardless of ever-present bike-tour time constraints. Most times, it’s not something she’s even personally keen on, but knows will be a forever memory for one of her beloved boys (that ancient basilica, for example, was for history-geek Ed). Every time, we all hem and haw, unsure we can fit in yet another exceptional experience when we still have groceries to get. Every time, she is absolutely right: our favourite-part-of-the-day sessions each evening are truly epic. For Joce, it’s simple things that bring big smiles. Just before we crossed the border to Bosnia-Hercegovina (country number 11 of our Europe Epic) for an overnight in astoundingly gorgeous Neum, we passed a series of roadside fruit stands with funky fountains cooling big jugs of juice. “Mom’s gonna love it if we stop here!” Heron shouted to Ed at the front of the pack. “I was so hoping you guys would pull over!” confirmed our Director of Awesomeness as Ivan the local farmer popped a jug of freshly squeezed apricot juice (do you squeeze an apricot?), then another of strawberry juice as we learned about the agricultural life on the Croatian coast. The authentic interactions (and quirky, fresh local products) are what Joce raises as her favourite bike-tour parts. That, sea kayaking and snorkeling - both of which we arranged for a gloriously sunny, hot afternoon in Dubrovnik - our last stop in Hrvatska. Teo, our bronzed and buff paddling guide led us to a secluded beach away from the (enthralling, marble-floored and narrow-staircases-everywhere) hectic old town and offered several floating history lessons on the now-bustling tourist destination’s long-ago glory, recent struggles with civil war and contemporary place as a go-to film and TV location (we even stumbled upon a live shoot for a Bollywood movie with two apparently famous Indian actors dancing and falling in love), plus celebrity getaway. Anywhere cool enough for Game of Thrones, Beyoncé and Cristiano Ronaldo has to be cool enough for four Canadian bike bums, right? Indeed, the farther south we pedal, the more dramatic the scenery becomes as the mountains creep closer to the sea. Just after the boys’ cliff jump on the Cetina River, we switchbacked 500m up toward the clouds (if there were any clouds in this sunny nirvana), then crested over to the most majestic panorama of sea and island we’d ever seen. Then we rode down along the cliff side, setting sun shining on the waters below - like California’s Big Sur with Renaissance-era walled forts and medieval castles every so often. We’re sad to leave Croatia, but psyched to discover what awaits as we pedal farther south to Montenegro and Albania - two new unfamiliar nations (with vastly different languages) we can’t wait to know. Riding our bikes together, getting lost in the moment, sharing experiences in places we will likely never see again - we’re building family memories so vivid that we’ll carry them and re-share them again and again. And even when we return to our routines back home, we’ll look for the extraordinary wherever we can find it. After all, once-in-a-lifetime can happen any day.

Vlorë (Albania) to Corfu (Greece), 133km; total 6,250km “This is a very important event. Get these bicycles out of here.” Disdain is probably the best word to describe the facial expression of the British-sounding woman in the poofy, bright orange (bridesmaid, maybe?) dress. The face of the greeter at this suddenly exclusive Corfu beach bar went from curious to cold in an instant. “Twenty Euros per umbrella chair,” she hastened to inform us. Then gesturing with a flicked wrist and raised eyebrows: “And the bicycles go outside.” (Oblivious that we were trampling on an important event) The look on Heron’s face was pure stunned. Of course we’re happy to leave our steeds wherever works for our hosts and fellow guests, but the reception on the hotspot Greek island was in stark contrast to the past week’s jovial greetings we’d become accustomed to in the “Albanian Riviera”. Several times a day back on the mainland, we would pull over at a thatch-roofed beach bar hut and order cold drinks between desperately needed dips in the Ionian Sea. The owner would swing on over and set us up on shaded beach chairs, asking how far we’ve ridden and (of course) where we’re from. Even though we’d usually spend a couple Euros on multiple cans of Fanta and lemonade (though by late afternoon we often added pizza or ice cream), we received five-star treatment like old friends returned home. A server would arrive with our bevies on a fancy platter, glasses with ice, and most of all a huge smile. If we tried to clear our own empties, or walk to the counter to pay, we would get a stern warning to relax and let them come to us. In Himarë - a delightful little hamlet with a line of funky beach-hotel-restaurants - they even threw in the umbrella seats for free: “Come on in. You work so hard on the bicycles. Enjoy the beach.” In Vlorë, we asked the owner about the steep, 20-kilometre-long, thousand-metre high mountain climb ahead - and the series of 10-percent ups and downs immediately afterward. Within minutes two local fishermen sitting at the bar were recruited. Brothers Oliver and Rajeb stuffed their two cars with our bikes and bags tied to the roof - “Made in Albania solution” they boasted as they solved the puzzle of fitting it all in - then drove us past a dangerously narrow section packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was so steep and slow that Rajeb had to stop midway to let his engine cool. “We weren’t busy with anything,” they signed off at the top. “And it was very nice to meet you.” We fell in love with the Albanian people last week, and this week we fell for the magnificent landscape on the southern Ionian coast. We sweated just mounting our bikes under the unrelenting June sun, melted on the way up and had to pry our hands open after braking so hard on the way down. But the beach bars (or during longer stretches at higher elevation, cliff-perched cafes with panoramic sea views) cooled our bodies and the spectacular slopes refilled our spirits. It was like cycling through Canada’s Rockies with the ocean right next to them. The vibe in Albania’s humble, gorgeous beach towns is amplified by the clientele it receives: Bulgarian, Kosovar and Serbian license plates among the eager cyclists from Germany and the Netherlands we met - a spontaneous community of travelers smiling and chatting, happy to share this beautiful space. In bustling Sarrandë, we finally found a “Wibit” inflatable water park in the sea, and within minutes the boys made a friend from Serbia to share trick ideas and help pull each other back on board when they fell in. In our brief visit to Corfu, the feeling among fellow tourists was markedly different. Those same spaces where we felt so welcome and comfortable in Albania were battle zones for shady spots. The mood was more party and cliquey. Rather than cheery greetings, we got up-and-down stares or no eye contact at all (or, in the customs line-up, audible grumbles when a kind Norwegian woman let us in after seeing we’d been stuck a while on the outside with our bikes). Not long after our unceremonious exit from the swanky beach-bar maybe-wedding, we got a tongue-lashing by another non-local for walking our bikes too far onto a pier where dozens of heads bobbed in the azure waves. Everyone in their own world - which is cool and all, but not the same groove we associated with this corner of Europe. The Greeks we met, however, were beyond friendly: Vasileios our AirBnB host set out homemade jam and biscuits, freshly pressed olive oil from his family fields, heart-shaped painted rocks, drinking water and a basket full of oranges - then dropped by to be sure the air conditioner worked for us. Nikos and Vasilis the stellar mechanics and owners at Bike n Roll set aside the afternoon to tune up and prep our bikes for our onward journey (“They are packed in the boxes with love, so you will have no problem with anything breaking.”), then insisted on driving us to the airport in the morning. Zoe the manager at Aegean Airlines took us under her wing to ensure a smooth check-in with our lunky luggage, tracking down carts in the only airport we’ve ever seen without any. On our way home at dusk from the charming old town the previous evening, we biked by a game of kids’ street soccer. “Hey, where are you from? Can you do a wheelie? You wanna play with us?” It felt like home - er, Albania - all over again. Sadly, we’ve come to the finish line of this Mediterranean leg of our Europe Epic: 6,000 kilometres the long way around from Portugal to Greece through 14 countries. Next up: Zurich to Oslo along the Rhine River and North Sea. So far we’ve seen sights we could never have imagined, and met friends we’ll never forget. We know that if we have a trip-ending injury (Joce’s MCL tear may get that way - stay tuned), we could move in to Hotel Kolagji on the Himarë beachfront for a month and still be in heaven. And we’ve learned that our daily budget can afford different things in different places: in some spots, a spacious apartment and fresh, healthy five-course dinners and breakfasts out, with several stops for hearty snacks and cold drinks; in others, a small patch of ground for our tent and groceries for salad and grilled cheese (picnic table a bonus). Either way, we’ve been content come bed time (perhaps a bit more content with more room to spread out?) because we’ve biked some of the most beautiful terrain on this big blue-and-green ball. And because we’re together as a family. (Albanian complimentary breakfast) We celebrated our accomplishment by joining the touristy masses on Corfu’s west-coast paradise Paleokastritsa. We eschewed the cliff-jumping party crowd and splurged on a motorboat rental (“It’s like driving a really fast canoe, right?” asked novice captain Ed who only once ran ashore a large rock in the middle of the sea) to a set of secluded beaches for cave swimming and diving into the open sea off a motorboat. It’s not quite the yacht experience the boys have been dreaming of. But then again, sometimes the dream you envision isn’t the dream that you find along the way.

Kaiseraugst to Bonn, 640 km; total 7,315 km “I’d be okay with a little church vandalism,” was the only-half-joking suggestion one early morning from inside a tent, by a sleep-deprived parent who shall not be named for fear of divine recrimination. Just as we’d finally found a campground along the Rhine River with no partying teenagers, late-night karaoke bar, or sports-stadium-grade overnight security floodlights, we discovered the curiously outdated European tradition of ringing church bells every quarter-hour. All. Night. Long. “Where in the Bible does it say, ‘Thou shall not sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time’?” inquired an anonymous teenager. “Yeah, do they not have cell phones to tell time?” The kicker was the daily 6am call to prayer: a cacophony of random tollings that lasted well over a minute, jarring even our deepest sleepers irreversibly awake. Apparently this region in the heart of Europe - where the cathedral was the village heartbeat for centuries (and often still is) - has yet to adopt the modern concept of occasional sleep-ins. Or alarm clocks. Or wristwatches. We read that some parishes have voted to silence the gonging between midnight and six - there’s even a published academic study showing that locals suffer up to five sleep disruptions per night if they don’t. But hey, medieval traditions die hard. At least we didn’t have to pay fealty to the local lord and give him half our food. But while we may not have rested especially well this week as our tires turned northward along the Rhine, our days were brilliantly full of unanticipated treasures. You see, we expected this riverside route to be easy, flat and a bit bland: the border between France and Germany has been disputed and redrawn countless times over the past several centuries of war treaties, but that rivalry has been tamed as one of the great successes of the European Union. And in North America, it seems, thoughts of Germany still unfortunately conjure World War villains, Cold War walls and a chugging economy fuelled by heavy industry. Yet thanks to Jonah, Joce and Chrissy’s diligent route research, we discovered daily gems in this place at the heart of Europe - steeped in rich history from long ago, and brimming with perky personality in the present. We began our week leaving Switzerland at Basel - a return for us, having rushed through this city’s magnificent waterfront seven weeks ago en route from France to Austria. This time, we made time to meander the old town and marvel at the grand Basler Münster, a Catholic cathedral turned Protestant church during Christianity’s troubled Reformation 500 years ago, with its iconic twin red-sandstone towers and mausoleum-filled courtyard. Later as we rode along that waterfront path, we spotted a few dozen people strangely floating in the river - a creatively conspicuous climate protest, with a huge floating sign urging action. This would not be any old week after all. An hour afterward, we crossed imperceptibly into Germany for the night, then across the Rhine to France for a few days in Alsace. We discovered Neuf-Brisach, a hexagon-shaped fortified town with a vibrant market in the middle and a funky set of animal-themes art all around the grassed-in old moat surrounding the centuries-old stone walls. In Strasbourg, we wandered the canals and (un)covered bridges of La Petite France, then scaled the 338 spiral steps to the base of the imposing cathedral spire, with a sensational vista of the city that blends both cultures seamlessly - largely because it’s been won and lost so many times that it’s a wonder residents know what country they’re in. Back in Germany, we were surprised by Speyer - specifically its extraordinary gothic cathedral and its superbly hands-on Technikmuseum that showcases the engineering marvel of human transportation. From a warehouse filled with Luftwaffe fighter planes, pre-Ford cars, fire engines from all eras and places, and bikes with springs for tires, you go outdoors to a park where you tour inside a stripped-down 747 (you even go into the cargo hold), other planes and boats, a nuclear submarine and a replica of the space shuttle. If a kid doesn’t emerge from here wanting to be an engineer, they never will (Ed was musing possibilities for a return to university himself for hours afterward). We also stopped in at Worms, where the original Protestant Martin Luther was convicted of heresy in 1521; Mainz with its cavernous Romanesque cathedral and packed biergartens; and Rudesheim am Rhein, where a gondola brought us to the colossal Niederwald monument celebrating German unification after the Franco-Prussian War rallied all the domains behind Otto von Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm (who personally laid the first stone of this resplendent hilltop display of national pride). All five boys (and both moms) politely had their absolute fill of Ed’s history snippets. Having a second family along for the ride proved advantageous again this week, as we were able to spontaneously split up a few times to repair bikes and bodies (some on bike, some on train) and ensuring incorporation of everyone’s interests (Europe’s largest fish ladder at Rheinfelden for Sitka, an ambitiously large Wibit water park for all the boys, and getting functional gear shifters for Chrissy). Tommy is cycling faster and farther than we ever imagined possible, thanks to active and persistent encouragement by Heron, Sitka and his brothers. You know a kid has been on a bike for a few weeks when he starts thinking of everything in terms of distance: Tommy was telling us about his “girlfriend” back home, so we asked the conventional question, “How long have you been dating?” “A long time… seventeen kilometres.” It helps, too, that the trail is indeed smooth and flat - though certainly not bland. Most of the route is directly on the Rhine’s banks or atop the dykes constructed in the late 1800s to “domesticate” the once-wild waterway. Otherwise, it winds through thick oak and maple forest, or amongst the sprawling corn, wheat and sunflower fields. In the occasional village - each cottage-like home with an expansive mini-farm of vegetable garden - we stop for bakery delicacies and richly flavoured ice cream. On the outskirts of larger cities like Mainz, we rode past little communities of vegetable gardens with little shacks where folks from various cultures seem to gather on weekends to play and socialize away from the urban. We had some special gatherings of our own this week - timely visits from old Canadian friends who graciously plotted their travel trajectories to coincide with ours. Susanne and Josiah joined up with us in Strasbourg for some scrumptious Alsacian dining and rollicking conversation as always - a joyful treat to catch up with our dear friend and the boys’ childhood buddy from New Westminster as they prepare for life after high school. Later in Boppard, Silvia, Jitse and their three sons added to the boisterous boy energy for an afternoon, gifting us with insight into our upcoming route through their homeland in the Netherlands. Towards the end of week, the flat farmland of the Middle Rhine evolved into cliffy hills lining the river, with storybook castles peering over us as they did their vast fiefdoms centuries ago. Some castles now have “HOTEL” affixed to their walls, and the one in Bacharach is even a youth hostel. The Germans themselves even surprised us. Sure, one could generalize a reserved and formal people (compared to the Albanians we met, Fozzie Bear appears cold and distant). But at the three-generation family-run campground in Phillipsburg, and at the packed trailer park in Bingen, where Wolfgang and another mystery man generously joined Ed and Chrissy to help solve a complicated bike repair issue, and indeed all along the bike path where our friendly “Guten morgen” greetings were almost always returned with proportionate enthusiasm, we found warmth and curiosity and boundary-busting human connection. Take that, outdated stereotypes! On that note, our week ended with the most surprising town of Koblenz. The meeting place of the Rhine and Moselle Rivers was obliterated by heavy bombing in World War II, so most of the “old town” was actually quite recently remodeled after its medieval predecessor. Here we found the playful wit of postwar Germany determined to turn the page on its recent past: the Schängel Fountain features a life-sized bronze boy innocently running - until he spits a stream of water outward every few minutes onto unsuspecting admirers reading the perfectly placed plaque in the cobblestone. A few plazas away, the wood-carved human face below the Augenroller clock rolls its eyes with each second and sticks out its tongue with each hour bell. We didn’t stick around to see if it would continue chiming and charming all night long. If we had, we may have done something we’d end up regretting.

Andermatt to Kaiseraugst, 425km; total 6,675km A bicycle is a pretty impressive machine - simple compared to modern wonders like iPhones, self-driving cars or those robots that mow your lawn by themselves; yet remarkably intricate when you consider all the moving parts that need to be working perfectly for the ride to be smooth. Bearings and chains have to be adequately greased, or the bike wobbles and creaks. Brake and gear cables require just the right tension, or the bike jerks and screeches. Seat and handlebars must be at the correct, personalized height to avoid nagging pain in the knees or back. Tire tubes airtight and pumped to the proper pressure, and wheel spokes tightened to exact equilibrium - otherwise you’re going nowhere, or at best crooked. In short, a lot has to go right for a bike to get its cyclist from A to B. On a six-month, 10,000-km bike tour, add in gear, weather, and of course the most complex machine of all: the human body. So much can go wrong. We’ve been reminded of this inescapable reality over the past week - with our bikes, our gear and our bodies all showing signs of breakdown. Between wobbly headsets and balding tires, torn ligaments and migraine fevers, thunderstorms and flooded campsites, and holes in everything from our panniers to our underwear, some serious repair work was required for the epic to keep rolling. Thankfully, our collective mood was bolstered by the addition of a second family to our pedaling posse for the next month - our zany and adventurous buddies the McConnells - so our eight days circumnavigating Switzerland along the contour of the mighty Rhine River was a rip-roaring riot in spite of our faltering everything. We left the tropical swelter of Greece (with a five-hour flash-stopover to the Acropolis in Athens, where Sitka marveled in fast-forward over the august ruins of temples to his favourite mythological characters, and Ed surreptitiously disregarded the stuffy “Do Not Touch the Millennia-Old Marble” signs - as if) to arrive in cooler and drizzlier Zurich for the launch of the second act in our grand European tour. But when we unboxed our bikes for the usual breezy reconstruction, we discovered that our Greek bike-mechanic pals left us the gift of learning how to reattach the front fork they had detached - with all the various bearings and spacers whose order we had never taken time to memorize. Heron and Ed had some profound, late-night father-son quality time experimenting, YouTubing, cursing and finally succeeding in rebuilding all four bikes. Until the next morning when three of the headsets wobbled precariously under the weight of our panniers. (Imagine your car’s steering column with a half-foot of vertical give, then your front axle jerking back and forth as you accelerate.) Our morale was deflated, but our tires were not, so we improvised a tram ride to meet our arriving Yukon friends at the airport and would later seek professional help (for our bikes, not our psyches) after a brisk train ride to the source of the Rhine in Andermatt. We even found a replacement for Sitka’s very bald rear tire that had been skidding scarily for the past weeks. Just as we got our rides back in working order, our bodies started to give out after 14 weeks and 6,000 km of steady activity. Joce’s tweaked knee now appears to be a torn ligament - sore while biking, painful while walking, and excruciating afterward as it swells in revenge. We’ve gradually upgraded the quality of her brace, but it’s quite possibly easier to get a fish to stay still than to convince Jocelyn to take a rest day, so the healing has been slower than hoped. Then an intense fever-migraine combo flushed through Joce and both boys - Sitka’s horrible wails from this unprecedented cranial pressure brought tears to all of our eyes, and also his lunch back out of his belly and all over the bike path. Joce spent the same night wracked with scary shakes and chills, and was the sickest any of us have ever seen her. Joce may not stop for herself, but Sitka’s concurrent illness was finally enough for her to skip ahead by train with him the next day and meet the rest of the troupe later that afternoon. Heron, meanwhile, holds it in all day - especially now with friends his age to ride and chatter with - and then crumples into a fetal ball of misery at bedtime. Ed skipped the sickness but was exhausted carrying the physical and psychological load of caring for his beleaguered beloveds. Not exactly the funnest family to join up with for a week rolling down and out of the Alps, with two vicious overnight gale-force thunderstorms rocking and flooding our tents. But Chrissy McConnell and her three teen sons are a different breed of bike buddy. For the past two summers, they’ve gone all-in on our cycling adventures on Yukon’s remote and rugged North and South Canol Road - with endless drench-dry rain cycles, no fresh food for days on end, and thick swarms of mosquitoes in our tents, our clothes and our oatmeal. After all that awsomeness (and awesome it indeed was), they were still eager to ride along the Rhine with us. So we were hella happy to have them - fun, unfazed and indestructible. Fifteen-year-old Jonah is the stoic, steady rock who’s always there to support his single mom with whatever’s heavy that needs lifting (he’s a teenager, so of course some or much prodding is required, but in the end, there he is). He’s quiet, so whenever his cutting observational humour bursts out, we all burst out in belly laughs - and sometimes he’s not sure why. Thirteen-year-old Micah is the Energizer bunny on a caffeine bender. Always bantering or philosophizing (or screeching inconceivable noises just to hear what it sounds like), he’s a fierce warrior for justice and sticking up for the little guy - though still working out the appropriateness of some of his proposed, imaginatively cartoon-violent strategies. And then there’s Tommy, Micah’s twin, who happily goes along with whatever plan lays before him (so long as there’s ice cream or swimming at the end of it) and entertains us endlessly with silly dances, random catchphrases repeated in song, and trick challenges like bottle flips or tossing pine cones into fire pits. Tommy also has Down syndrome, which his family navigates with unbelievable grace and ingenuity - and adds another layer of magic to his already enchanting personality. Herding this pack of wild young wolf cubs is alpha mom Chrissy, who bravely brings her fearsome threesome on all kinds of ambitious adventures that other mothers wouldn’t dare imagine - even with a less unfair parent-kid ratio. She matches her boys’ wacky playfulness with gusto, all while enforcing a firm standard of respect and order when needed. And she’s also a pure blast of an adult to hang out with, even if our lads weren’t so fabulously compatible. Altogether, then, we’re a motley crew of Yukoners storming through whatever poor village stands in our path. It took us twenty minutes to go down one floor with our eight bikes on the train-station elevator, for example, because Micah kept running back up the stairs. But when we needed to get all eight bikes into three different train cars (with an 18-inch elevation gap from the platform), we operated with military coordination and precision. We’re Yukon wild-campers by spirit,so we don’t take up much space with our three small tents and tiny cookstoves, but we do make an inordinate amount of noise - so much that we quickly learned “Shut up” from fellow campers in Swiss German on Night One in the dense alder forest in Trun. We’re back to camping after our luxurious romp along the Adriatic (paying the same or more for a patch of grass and picnic dinner as we did for apartments and dining out with a table on the beach in Albania), relishing the fresh night air and vivid stars - along with the slugs and earwigs, rowdy high-school groups on end-of-year camp trips, late-night karaoke wafting in from the neighbouring outdoor bar, and endless church bells through the night. It’s yet another entirely distinct kind of bike trip, in an entirely new place. And good thing, as we’ve happened upon an especially beautiful bike ride this week from the Alpine source of the Rhine River, down through idyllic Swiss towns and hair-raising hairpins, into sweeping farm valleys of maturing wheat, sprouting sunflowers and budding apples. The ornate church clocktowers peek out above mural-covered shops and homes with terracotta roofs so warped and mossy that you’d swear they’ll collapse today - until you realize they’ve likely been that way for decades longer than your average tar shingle. Along the way we threw rocks and logs off the 70-metre-tall Versamer Tobelbrücke bridge in the “Grand Canyon of Switzerland” (an outdoor-loving teenager’s dream), explored the spiral watchtower in Schaffhausen’s 400-year-old Munot fortress, got awe-struck up-close at the thundering, rollicking Rhine Falls, witnessed a wedding ceremony that went from an austere cathedral to the top of a fire-engine ladder in the town square of Bad Säckingen, and even stumbled upon a Wibit on sunny Lake Bodensee (“the Monaco of Switzerland” according to the charming fellow who let us in). We also slipped into quiet, quaint Liechtenstein (country number 15) for an overnight at a youth hostel to dry out between storms, then back-and-forth to Austria and Germany a few times (often without even noticing the border) before ending our Switzerland circle tour at Basel, where we’d been seven weeks earlier heading southeast toward Italy. We’re still slowly recovering from injury and illness, buoyed by the contagious vitality of our family friends. “Once we’re back to healthy, this is gonna be even more awesome!” Heron mused one evening. We still have some tires to rotate, and more than a few sewing jobs on our task list. Chrissy’s gears are skipping and crackling, so there’s plenty to keep us busy as we head north along the Rhine, bouncing between France and Germany toward to the North Sea in the Netherlands in three weeks. Fortunately, the machine that is our family unit is chugging along in unison - each cog doing its part to support the others. So even when the road is bumpy, our ride is pretty impressively smooth.

Duisburg (Germany) to Amsterdam, 440km; total 7,755km For a while, we thought maybe the marijuana just wafts permanently through the Dutch air, gradually building up in your system until you suddenly begin imagining things. After winding whimsically through the corn fields, maple trees and charming brick-bungalow villages of the southern Netherlands all afternoon, we were expecting to arrive at Camping de Lievelinge with the usual rows of motor homes and cabins, a small patch of grass for tents - hopefully some shade, a table and a place to swim. Instead we seemed to pass through some kind of sci-fi alternate-universe bubble, emerging and into a psychedelic dreamland in the woods. First thing we saw was a full-sized amusement-park spinning swings ride, hundreds of lightbulbs flashing and carnival music cranked to full blast. Funky tea-candle lanterns hung from trees with brightly painted trunks. There were no trailer homes - but elaborate, vividly coloured yurts; tiny wooden homestead cabins covered in trinkets and surrounded by wildly alive flower gardens; and (of course) rainbow-painted school buses converted to summer residences with streamers of Tibetan prayer flags. A bushy-grey-bearded man with a top hat, badge-covered leather vest, sequined tanktop and knee-high leather boots drove a standard-issue campground cart with two enormous speakers and a load of firewood. His assistant wore no shoes, an army-green Australian outback hat, and what looked like a canvas-sack poncho. Half the campers mulling around the outdoor bar and humongous fire pit looked like any regular folk at a summer music festival; the other half looked like they’d come for a re-enactment of Woodstock. A group of kids whizzed past riding in a toy wagon - one with a crow resting on his forearm. Two elderly women in flowing dresses approached us one point later that evening with looks of consternation - we thought we’d taken their table or were drinking our beverages the wrong way, but they were seeking a lighter to start up their joint. It took an hour for our eyes (after visiting the shower block lit like a neon-pink-themed nightclub) and brains to adjust to camping in a Tim Burton movie set. We half expected to be escorted to our site by a talking rabbit checking his timepiece, but instead we had to stake out a small claim in the middle of a bustling tent city - next to a beer hut, a soaring leafy treehouse with thin cloth drapes, a double-decker bus straight out of London, and an artificial lake with a rickety wooden diving platform in the middle, a dozen heads bobbing and nattering away. It was perfect. This contrast in campgrounds was actually in keeping with our whole week - the last with our Yukon bike-buddies the McConnells - in a fascinating country of sharply distinct sides. Miles of flat cornfields and canals suddenly gave way to windy sea coast with tall, rolling dunes. Bike paths and cyclists are abundantly everywhere - but if you’re not following the rules of the bike road, get ready for trouble. There were moments of pure exhilaration and also of unexpected challenges. And we met some of the most welcoming, patient and laid-back people in Europe - and also some of the grumpiest. Just before crossing the border, we got a last taste of funky Germany, stumbling upon an organic outdoor health “spa” in Xanten’s town park. A striking rectangular structure - six metres tall, two wide and 12 long - is covered with a mossy plant dripping with moisture and crusted with salt. Benches beneath allow visitors to aim in the refreshing, replenishing “sea air” seeping out. Nearby, a knee-height pool with grooved bottom and neighbouring pits of bark chips, jagged stones and other materials are for sensory foot therapy. Ideal for weary cyclists in the increasing summer heat. Again we passed into a new country without noticing for several kilometres until we saw the license plates had a little “NL” instead of “D”. Soon afterward we were entering our first Dutch city, Arnhem - like a mystical bicycle Candyland. Immediately we were swept up in the bustling traffic on the “bike highway” - a direct, uninterrupted yellow-brick road (actually red asphalt) across the city that cars are required to yield to, with its own bike roundabouts and signed exits onto lesser routes. It was liberating to pedal fast and freely, yet daunting and a bit stressful with all the serious cycle commuters hurrying on their way past the meandering, gawking Canadian newbies. Indeed, our unruly gaggle of eight riders had grown accustomed to having these marvellous European paths largely to ourselves. So we struggled at first to tighten our formation (the boys love riding two or three abreast to keep up their animated conversations) and learn the new rules of the road in the land where cyclists rule. With such a complex web of trails, we often needed to stop to get our bearings, piling up and clogging the narrow path. Then we would understandably encounter angry-sounding ding-dings, shaking heads and sometimes fierce tongue-lashings we couldn’t understand - to which we could only answer (in perfect Dutch) “Sorry!” We also got earfuls if we wandered off the prescribed bikeways onto pedestrian streets (Ed was pulled over by the politie in Arnhem and given a stern first warning - saved from harsher punishment by the helmet showing his naive foreigner status), and especially if we leaned our bikes against the wrong building at a bakery stop. Given the briliantly ample, well-planned bike parking racks at every turn, there’s no excuse to mark up someone’s wall with your handlebar tape. But with over 80,000 bikes in Amsterdam alone, we frequently found racks stuffed full, and mostly designed for kickstand-equipped varieties without all our wide loads of panniers. So we often found ourselves craning our heads for somewhere to park - a curious turnabout from bike life back in Canada where we lock up against any pole and giggle at drivers desperately seeking spots. In this strange new world of bicycle domination, we were struck by the extraordinary patience and chill of the grand majority of Dutch travellers - in cars as on bikes. Driving must be tough in a place where bikes are prioritized in urban design and yielding rights - but we met nary a grumpy or impatient driver, and in fact were graciously waved ahead even when we didn’t have the right of way. Meanwhile, the intense volume of cycle traffic on constantly criss-crossing paths surely must lead to countless crashes and derailleur-benders. But aside from the few path-rage moments we caused, we watched bikers and walkers interact with efficient anticipation of each other’s movements. In the odd instance of a near-miss or little bump between bikes or biker-walker, both culprits would stop, check in and touch hand to shoulder to ensure alles is goed before moving on. It’s an impressive culture of care and respect between strangers that we could use more in North America. Once back in the countryside, we could spread out again a bit, though we were never alone. Even more than other places we’ve visited in Europe so far, elderly couples cycle lovingly together (the Dutch way of cycling with one’s sweetheart is to rest one hand on your darling’s arm while pedaling), on daily errands or just out for a rip (in the Netherlands, though, they’re still old-school hardcore on non-electric bikes). In Oosterbeek, one older couple slowed down after passing us, to suggest a visit to the church where the scars of a showdown between Germans and retreating English soldiers in 1944 are still starkly visible. Hearing our Canadian accents, the older generation of Dutch shift right to the war and our forefathers’ role in liberating the Netherlands from the Nazis. So we were warmly welcomed at the tiny church, shown the bullethole in the bible and told the story of the bitter battle centred around this hamlet. Standing on the same soil as these young men once did, likely scared stiff but valiantly fighting on, was a humbling lesson in gratitude for living where and when we do - and in appreciating the sheer stupidity of humans killing humans over tracts of land as lovely and peaceful as this one. Having our bike-family pals with us was especially sweet this week. Micah and Jonah first spotted the 24-metre-high waterslide at the WipeOut park in Zoelen, and without them Ed might have been outvoted for giving it a try. But the three daredevils convinced Heron to join, and after five turns plummeting in near-freefall down the watery bobsled halfpipe like a rollercoaster without the seatbelt, our bellies were sufficiently queasy for the rest of the day. Tommy hit full stride this week, pedaling right on Ed’s heels at the front of the pack and shouting regular encouragement - “Doin’ a great job, Ed!”. He can be found up before everyone else, unlocking his bike to ride laps around the campground, calling “Let’s go, my boyeees!” to his sleepy teenaged biking buddies. Tommy’s enthusiasm waned as we turned onto the long straightaway toward the North Sea and met a ferocious headwind along the last stretch of Rhine, But when we finally reached the Hoek of Holland and bounded into the saltwater waves - having followed the famous river from its source in the Alps to its mouth at the sea - his elation at achieving this remarkable feat - 1,400km over three weeks in his first bike tour - was a giddy spectacle all to itself. Before our paths split as our friends flew back to Canada, we enjoyed a few days cycling along the North Sea dunes, witnessing the ingenuity of Dutch water management at Kinderdijk, surfing in clouds of seaweed at Sheveningen, dining on sweet and savoury Dutch pancakes in Haarlem, taking a break day to tour fabulous Amsterdam (by boat, by wheel and by foot), and encountering the full force of Dutch summer holiday crowds - with campgrounds so packed we wound up stuffed in tent ghettos, crammed up against hedges and (generously on one desperate occasion) squished next to a 15-foot metal ocean buoy next to an entrance gate. But our friend Chrissy always has a way to find the fun in adversity, laughing off our ridiculous camp spots, muttering witty comebacks to bike-ragers, and encouraging us to make time every evening to unwind. At Camping de Lievelinge, we had a beer amongst the chill chaos next to the huge firepit, while the resident kids showed Tommy, Sitka and the other boys how to coax Harry the domesticated crow onto their arms for a visit. Then we returned to our site in tent city, where the dude in the top hat had brought those speakers to the beach for the community’s regular trance music night, several more fires ablaze as campers gathered to stare at the sunset. The groovy, heavy vibes became sweet white noise to which we contentedly fell fast asleep in this cyclists’ paradise where we don’t just belong - we rule. As we turned in for the night, our camp’s Mad Hatter patted Ed on the shoulder. “Welcome home, brother.”

Amsterdam to Sylt (Germany), 870km; total 8,625km Bike touring, like life in general, sometimes throws you a nasty headwind. The persistent gust seem to revel in refusing your forward progress, sapping your strength and suffocating your spirit. There are few moments more discouraging than pedaling with all your juice, then glancing aside to see the grasses folding over backwards with the force of the angry air. You can’t stop and patch it like a flat tire, or pull over and wait it out like the rain. You can swear at it, and call it all sorts of names (and believe us, we do), but it can’t hear you because it’s busy being so friggin’ loud. You can’t go over it, under it, or around it. The only way to get to where you want to go is through. We encountered a steady stream of these ferocious gales this week, as we cycled along the northern coasts of the Netherlands and Germany on the Wadden Sea. Friesland (reads like a McDonalds play structure but pronounced “Freezeland” - though we did come across some yummy patat with a variety of spicy mayo dips this week) is a vibrant cultural community spanning the whole coast from near Amsterdam to the German-Danish border, with its own language, multiple dialects and ubiquitous greeting. Both Dutch and Germans in these parts replace the usual Hallo with a very hearty Moin! (“Moyn”) or even more enthusiastic Moin Moin! depending on their mood and, we suppose, whether the vicious winds are in their face or at their back. But Friesland, for all its thousands of towering modern windmills generating sustainable power, and beautiful traditional reed-thatched A-frame roofs, is unquestionably ruled by sheep. There are as many adorable fluffy muttons or more than we found in New Zealand, grazing and chewing and shitting on the bike path, so much so that some sections were legitimately slipping hazards. They’re truly very cool-looking animals, with their cuddly wool coats and curious slit-pupiled eyes. On occasion they would glance up from their gentle toil, unimpressed by us boring humans. Sometimes we’d engage in a conversation of bleats with a few talkative puffballs, and one even tried racing us for a hundred metres or so. After a few days, however, the overwhelming cute factor was overtaken by annoyance at yet another sheep gate we had to awkwardly waddle through. Maybe Denmark will have more cows. Like in life, though, if you put your head down and pedal hard into the unrelenting breeze, eventually you turn a corner and find smoother cycling beyond. But getting there takes some motivation - a little (or big) treat to look forward to, to convince your weary legs and psyche to push through. And this week, we found a little motivation for each of us. For Heron, it’s the sea - more specifically the waves that those winds whip up. The north of Holland (that province of the Netherlands often confused for the whole country) is a surfing hotspot, so we planned an off-day on the West Frisian island of Texel. The sprawling wheat fields and quaint brick-house hamlets provided the calm we all needed, and the long stretches of sand just beyond the grassy dunes provided a dream boarding experience - especially when Heron and Sitka’s early-morning lessons were led by the quintessential towering surfer dude Erik, owner of Surfschool Foamball who left life as a marketing professor to live his happy beach life. Both boys bolstered their skills by bounds under Erik’s tutelage, starting to carve and pump and other words they would have never learned boarding with their bumbling dad who jammed his toe yet again. Joce’s injured knee still prevents her from doing much more than cycling, so instead of joining on the surfboard she has been focused on unearthing unique places for us all to visit. On Texel, it was the Ecomare wildlife sanctuary with rescued seals and gannets, and a wealth of learning about the Wadden Sea - teeming with sea creatures we would have never otherwise met - that lies between this north coast of Europe and the string of islands bordering the open North Sea. A couple days later, it was the quirky bike bus across the Afsluitdijk - a 30-km-long engineering marvel that’s getting a centennial makeover with expansive wind and solar energy projects - and its fascinating history balancing protection of human spaces from flood and wildlife spaces for the future. Our bubbly little Sitka, meanwhile, is always scouring brochure racks for the next big thrill - and this week he discovered the great north-European kabelpark near Bremerhaven. On the small lake of Spadener See, you can waterski or wakeboard around a kilometre-long circuit, tugged not by boat but by a giant cable system similar to a ski-lift. Of course, Sitka and Heron caught on after a brief lesson and were soon switching beginner skis for advanced wakeboards (Heron even asked about the jumps and rails, but those required a few more hours of practice), and Ed overcame some childhood water-ski trauma to finally stand on both feet, hooting joyously five times around until his triceps ached. But after five face-plants, several gallons of involuntarily consumed lake water and a bruised shin, he gave up on wakeboarding until the next kabelpark already earmarked in Denmark. In addition to failing gloriously at sports his sons thrive with, Ed’s headwind-busting treats are baked goods (German bakeries make American portion sizes look positively puny) and the prospect of not having to shop for groceries or wash supper dishes for a night. So one late afternoon, as we rushed for the last ferry from Wischhafen to Gluckstadt, his cyclemates noted how tired he was and plotted an inside overnight with delivery pizza - plus dibs for Ed on first shower (!) - to treat the family workhorse to a little break from headwinds literal and figurative. To make these motivating treats happen, and still cycle over 100km per day on this section, we had to do some improvising that didn’t always alleviate the misery. One morning after leaving an exquisitely simple and peaceful campground in Holwert, we decided to take advantage of a brief tailwind and accelerate to catch a ferry to Emden that we’d previously written off. (Some ferries along this stretch of coast that would give a little shortcut around a big bay or long inlet operate only a few days a week, and seemingly never on our schedule.) We called ahead to the first campground we found in the port city, and were told to camp “wherever” if we arrived after 6pm - we could pay in the morning. “There is the tent space,” assured a merry batch of 50-something Germans who greeted us, excited to meet their first Canadians. They gestured at the only patch of green in a parking lot of motorhomes on the side of a road next to Emden’s pleasure-boat harbour. “Hey, it’s a place to rest our heads for the night,” Ed tried to buoy the souring mood that got worse when we found the bathrooms cost 50 cents per entry. Our super-friendly neighbours helped, as did a scenic campstove dinner on the water’s edge with English and French pop hits blaring from the bars across the bay. But after nightfall these urban Germans get rowdy. Under a nearby floodlight we hadn’t spotted earlier, our little street between the campervans became a main thoroughfare for over-revved mopeds, mufflerless motorcycles and souped-up dragsters tearing through at all hours. There were twenty minutes of fireworks at 11pm, and at 4:43 Ed had to drag himself out of his cozy sleeping bag to ask a crew of drunk 20-somethings to kindly turn down the German death metal they were sharing feet from our tent. “Oh ja, sorry sorry,” said the dude with the speakers. “My friend,” reasoned a straggler, “it’s Saturday.” “Actually now it’s Sonntag,” muttered Ed. “It’s the weekend,” unplussed. “We are Germans. We HAVE to.” Have to what was never exactly clear. Then, at 7am sharp, came the chorus of morning church bells. A perfect storm of sleep deprivation. Our spontaneity did, however, land us with a swanky rest day on Sylt, Germany’s jet-set destination island just across from the Danish border, accessible only by train (even the car drivers have to pile on a railway car to cross the narrow causeway). We each had our motivators satisfied on this three-weeks-to-go mini-splurge: Heron surfed twice on the idyllic sandy beach, Joce found an international pro windsurfing competition to watch live, Sitka - well, Sitka has been napping and reading books all day in pure bliss - and Ed has left the meal-making to the others (Joce concocts tofu stirfry wraps, Heron whips up French toast and veggie omelettes, and Sitka opens the bags of chips) and the dishwashing to a machine. On our last night, we wandered the beachfront among a brilliantly clever and funky “silent disco”: dozens of revellers bopping and grooving up a storm with special headphones that channeled the DJ’s beats directly to their eardrums - the other evening beachgoers out for a stroll or having a pint at the pop-up bar happily undisturbed by the dance party in their midst. (Maybe they could experiment with “silent all-night church bells” someday soon.) The sunset over the North Sea horizon was serenely perfect. And just like that, all the bluster of the last ten days is a distant memory.

Sylt (Germany) to Klitmøller (Denmark), 384km; total 9,009km It was pure misery. Or at least as close as one can get while on a six-month family bike vacation through Europe. The rain started shortly after we left the mesmerizing sand sculpture festival in Søndervig - a fairground filled with brilliantly conceived and beautifully etched impressions of European history, from the Black Death and invention of mathematics, to Joan of Arc and witch hunts. Back on our bikes, we were deeply engaged in discussion about epidemics and the malicious treatment of strong, confident women - and also our awe over the skill and patience required to create such intricate art that will only last a few months before melting away in the weather. So we didn’t pay much heed to the deceiving drizzle that was dabbing our panniers. It was mid-morning and the real rain wasn’t anticipated until late afternoon. Besides, we were breezing along on a glorious southerly tailwind that kept the sprinkling at our backs instead of in our faces. By noon it was coming down harder, so we and our panniers all donned our raingear to keep us dry and happy. In the classic fishing village of Thorsminde, we paused at the lone diner for a few plates of fries, then set off again into the countryside with a few measly metres of visibility ahead. When you’re well prepared for the weather, you feel untouchable. But then it just didn’t stop. Even if the gradually intensifying downpour hadn’t been so torrential, the persistence alone would still have soaked us through. You may recall that our clothes and gear are starting to show holes and cracks after five months of constant wear - and the teeming globs of wet found ‘em all. After a couple hours we may as well have been biking in a swimming pool - except with gale-force winds chilling us to the bone. Once our teeth started to clatter we pulled into the only building we’d seen in miles: a run-down flea market with a shut-down “cafeteria”. As we dug around in our panniers for dry socks and mitts, we found deep puddles in our apparently-no-longer waterproof covers, and a muddle of thoroughly soaked garments in the bottom of our bags. So we exchanged sopping layers for damp ones, and within a minute back on the road we wondered out loud why we even bothered. Normally we would hunker at the first motel in sight, but we’d discovered an accommodation desert in Denmark, and the nearest option was 30km and a ferry ride away. We met another family cycling the other way: they were heading to the train station because the only vacancy they could track down was several towns over. Even with the tailwind, the rain swamped us from all directions, leaving no dry refuge for any bike part or body part. Perhaps worst was from below, as our tires churned up a drenching, demoralizing spray from the muddy pooled water on the road - into chain links, up pant legs and all over the face of the rider behind. Pure misery. Yet somehow our sad-sack, soggy crew of four felt surprisingly serene. You see, bike-touring misery (almost) always ends in somewhere warm and cozy. If it didn’t, we may well have abandoned our favourite pastime after the first week of our Vancouver to Tijuana honeymoon ride, or after that cyclone we ran into in Matapuri, New Zealand, and definitely after the flood-inducing deluge in Trinidad, Cuba. But when we’re wet, we always scramble indoors if at all possible - and on this day our oasis was very far away, but it was coming. Reprieve from the rain. A warm shower and hopefully a fresh set of merino wool to wear. A hot supper, a little more lavish than the usual - like frozen pizza if there is an oven. Finally a use for that hot chocolate powder we’ve been lugging around for months. That kind of cozy is a special feeling that only comes after feeling abject misery. Your muscles and mind fully relax - and you appreciate it so much more because it was so recently elusive. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe or put words to. Unless you’re Danish. Hygge. Pronounced not quite like “yoga,” it’s more “Hyu-guh.” You kind of need to have the rounded “u” in the French word tu, then the “eu” in deux. It takes a while to get just right. But when you do, you know what it means. Respite. Shelter. Comfort. Cozy after misery. Apparently, hygge made a brief international splash a half-decade ago when a pile of books on how to “live Danishly” took the UK and US wellness community by storm. We’d never heard of it, but we instantly recognized the feeling from our past bike tours, and also life in the Yukon - another cold and windy, marvellously northern climate where minus-40 skiing ends in a hot tub, sauna or on a couch with a warm mug by the fireplace. The Danes seem to have hygge figured out, as we found during our first week cycling up the west coast of the North Sea in this enigmatic land of Vikings, endless farmland and blustery shores. We’ve been hearing for weeks about how we could “wild camp anywhere” in Denmark, but we never imagined the smart system of tiny wooden shelters that seem to be everywhere - each built by local community groups to provide respite from the elements for bikers, hikers and wanderers of all kinds for free. Every design is a slightly different take on the general theme of low, pitched roof (often topped with soil and wild grass), oak-plank and log walls, raised plywood floors and an open front (some have even built in sliding doors). There are thousands of these little huts with space for two to six sleeping bags (or in one case this week, just enough for our rain-fly-less tent to fit inside) scattered across the wild Danish landscape, tucked into picturesque nooks in forests and fields - like snuggly little Hobbit homes, or treehouse forts on the ground, bringing out our inner kids. A phone app tells you where each mini-cabin can be found, whether it has a toilet (usually), a drinking water tap (often) or a firepit, and whether it’s reservable (usually there’s at least one shelter at each site that is first-come, and once they were all taken so we just pitched our tents nearby for free). They wouldn’t necessarily work in bear (or raccoon) country, and certainly not in mosquito season, but they’re ideally suited to Denmark’s quick-shift summer weather: cute and cozy, surprisingly warm and dark, and just the right fit for a family of four to cuddle happily together. Hygge. The Danish make the most of their water, too. This week the boys tracked down another kablepark in the vacation hub Hvide Sande, and a quintessential northern surf town in Klitmøller, known as “Cold Hawaii” where tall and tanned surfers ride frigid waves all year long. In both places Heron upped his game, testing out wakeboard ramps and rails, and front-flipping off his surfboard. Sitka kept pace with big brother, persevering to master the expert-level speed on the cable course and landing some 180 footwork while surfing. Joce is still using her knee excuse (with good reason) and Ed pretends his toe still hurts to avoid being completely shown up by his suddenly super-skilled sons who have blown into territory their dad will never reach. It’s a new parenting feeling - watching and marvelling instead of joining and teaching - but I suppose an inevitable transition and one that’s satisfying in an entirely new way as our boys carve out their own personalities and passions. They’re meeting some splendid role models in that respect, too. In Klitmøller, young surfer dudes Peter and Erik live the dream as co-owners of Viking Adventures, giving lessons in the sea all summer and renting AirBnB rooms in their houses, all in support of their off-season wave-riding pursuits. We also met descendants of Vikings at the outdoor heritage centre in Ribe that recreates that settlement from a thousand years ago - like a Scandinavian pioneer village. These hobbyists bring their families from all over Northern Europe to the open-air market, to dress and sleep and eat as their long-ago forefathers did, while selling their authentic wares - tools, shields, jewellery and art - that they’ve crafted by passed-down wisdom. In Vestervig, it was Jan who rescued us from that horrible rainstorm in the former hospital that he’s renovating into Hawkraft - a hotel, music house and cultural centre that will soon be the living hub of the Thy region. Jan quit his job last fall to dedicate himself full-time to his dream of welcoming musicians, artists and tourists from around the world to this inspiring space with floor-to-ceiling paintings, artfully conceived kitchens, and rooms filled with instruments. Meanwhile, Jan is hosting Ukrainian refugees in the rooms that are ready - offering them free Danish and music lessons, making space in the acreage for them to grow a sunflower labyrinth in solidarity with their still-suffering compatriots, and rallying support in the community to find them employment and social connection. He welcomed us personally on our arrival, to be sure we felt fully at home in his emerging masterpiece - including the washer and dryer. There’s a certain calm determination in the Danish people we’ve met. A chill but fierce work ethic - unfazed and undaunted by big challenges. Maybe it’s the Viking blood, or having learned to thrive on the wild and windy land we’ve now cycled. But we’d like to think it’s from that feeling of knowing that there’s always warmth and peace somewhere, somehow to come. That being in touch with struggle and discomfort - wallowing in it, even - that makes the satisfying ending that much sweeter. For without the toil, there could be no hygge.

Klitmøller to Copenhagen, 491km; total 9,500km Denmark just keeps getting better. From what we see to what we eat, where we sleep to the extraordinary warmth and joviality we encounter from the Danes we meet, this underappreciated Scandinavian nation - smaller than Nova Scotia - keeps stunning us with sublime highlights and novel experiences, even after five months exploring constant newness across Europe. We set off eastward from Klitmøller this week on an invigorating tailwind (finally!) along the North Sea coast, en route to a family-record 136km day topped by an exhilarating ride with the tide tickling our tires for five rip-roaring kilometres on the packed-rsand beach before Løkken. Boisterous waves to our immediate left, as far out as we could see, gave a wildly idyllic backdrop as we breezed effortlessly side-by-side, giggling at the coolness of it all. Two mornings later in Skagen, we rode a Sandormen (“sand worm”) bus towed by tractor out to the northernmost point of Denmark, where the North and Baltic Seas engage in an endless clash of waves crashing against each other. At the very tip of the land, a long, shallow spit lets you walk right into the middle of the battle, waters smashing from both sides as you dodge jellyfish swishing back and forth (Heron generously piggy-backed Sitka back to dry sand after this gauntlet of slimy stingy creatures was discovered). Another two days after that, we got our first glimpse of a big Danish city in Aarhus, whose ultra-modern art museum with the rainbow-tube circular skywalk on the roof signals the country’s creative and innovative urban side. We spent hours exploring the brilliant open-air history museum Den Gamle By with replica streets from the 1860s, 1920s and 1970s. While Ed was sadly aware that some of the “ancient artefacts” were from his childhood (box TV sets with channel buttons, telephones with cords, and cassette tapes), we soaked in the stunningly thorough, highly interactive exhibits (“You can touch everything, Dad!!”) in each beautifully recreated building until our heads were spinning with history overload. But then Copenhagen topped it all. For a few weeks, Sitka had been lamenting that Europe’s most bikeable city wasn’t on our bike-tour itinerary, so Joce helped him figure out a spontaneous detour with some clever train-hopping that landed us 36 hours in Denmark’s marvel-filled capital - which Sitka then diligently researched at every spare moment in order to intricately plot out each move and minute. It was an epic whirlwind in itself, and our little guy was overjoyed to play tour guide. We started with an evening climb up the intimidating spiral tower at the Church of our Saviour to get an initial bird’s-eye view of the city - then lucked into a free organ concert inside the chapel. We dined at the famous street-food market in Broens Gadekoekken - each finding a different organic, vegetarian dish from around the world - before pedaling back to our downtown hostel through the throbbing heart of the city under its bright night lights. Indeed what’s best about Copenhagen is its unbelievably well designed bike infrastructure that makes for the smoothest, safest city cycling we could ever dream of. Lanes are separated from cars and walkers, one-way on either side of the road, and they’re raised, too - leaving no doubt about who goes where, and no opportunity for confusion or collision. Intersections are bustling but seamless with clear pathways and distinct bike light signals for traffic that’s turning and going straight. While Amsterdam bike travel is poetically chaotic, Copenhagen’s is fastidiously organized and intuitive - letting us glide carefree across town from the absorbing Viking Raid exhibit and witty Norse god theatre at the Nationalmuseet; to a picnic lunch in the King’s Garden; to the ruins (and a fascinating monster-themed mental-health exposition) beneath and story-filled royal reception rooms inside Christiansborg Palace; to the iconic Little Mermaid statue at the harbour; to the super-funky neighbourhood park at Superkilen; and back to the street-food market for a second go-around. That may sound exhausting, but Sitka was still wide-eyed and ready to show us more of the dozens of GoogleMap pins he’d identified. Alas, since Heron is now determined to find an eventual study-abroad program to Copenhagen U, we felt okay agreeing to return for Part Two of the tour in the future. The city had other plans, though. On our ride home, we were blocked by a huge crowd gathered on the bike path by the entrance to a bridge. There were spotlights and rafters on the bridge itself - but no one we asked knew what was happening. Then a loud dance beat struck up, and a lone figure strutted onto and across the bridge wearing an oddly elaborate outfit. “It’s Copenhagen Fashion Week!” Heron shouted with startling exuberance, having remembered reading about it somewhere but never imagining the information to be useful. For twenty minutes a cast of strikingly diverse (in gender, ethnicity and size) young models catwalked out to the assembled aficionados in the rafters and back past us, their unemotive model faces unflinching and their abrupt 90-degree pivots exquisite. Heron and Sitka were mesmerized and impressed by the street-conscious fashion: basketball jerseys under tuxedo jackets, hoodies cinched up tight around the face and what could only be described as outside pyjamas. Then they were gone, and we pedaled on - just another evening out in Copenhagen. In between our extraordinary findings this week, Denmark captured our hearts with its extraordinary people, who continue to replenish our hope for humanity. On our second day cycling from Klitmøller, Heron’s crankshaft exploded with a worrying crack. Fortunately, we were a few hundred metres from the shelter we’d planned to camp in for the night. Unfortunately, it was Saturday afternoon, and bike mechanics by-and-large love their Sundays off. Among Ed’s frantic calls to cycle shops within a many-mile radius, he reached Mike, who used to run a bike shop but retired long ago. “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll try to talk you through it,” Mike offered, as though he had all the time in the world for a complete stranger cold-calling at Saturday supper time. His diagnosis was not so positive, but he suggested several shops who could help (on Monday) and insisted that we call back if the problem were to worsen before then. “We’ll figure something out,” was his generous sign-off. We did make it to Monday, and 150km farther to Hadsund, where Heron’s cranks were at the brink of crumbling as we pulled into Fri Bike Shop. “Sorry, we’re booked for weeks,” said the shop manager. “We have to get to Copenhagen tomorrow. Is there a train from here? Can we get our bikes on a bus?” No dice. The tall, lanky mechanic peeked over with a friendly glint in his eye. “If you come back at 5:30, and you pay me a bit extra, I will have it done,” said Jeppe - who it turns out is also the shop’s co-owner with the greasy-black hands. Working past closing time, Jeppe saved our day (actually our next several days) with a new krankboks and a heap of kindness. He never charged us the extra. He did, however, find a second problem: a split back wheel rim that threatened to blow up at any time, but for which he didn’t have the part. It would probably last til Oslo, but in Aarhus we found Niklas at the Fri Bike Shop there, who also didn’t have time but made it anyway. “If you take apart the wheel, I’ll change out the disc and cassette onto a new rim,” was the best he could offer. “Then you put the wheel back together.” As Ed ran back to the bakery where his family and bike toolkit waited, Niklas snuck out and did the whole job himself. Then he adjusted the brakes for good measure. “Can I pay a bit more as a tip for Niklas?” Ed asked the guy at the cash when he saw the bill was just for the parts. “He was so generous with his time.” “I don’t think you should,” was the soft-spoken reply. “Niklas would just say no. We all would. We just really like working here.” An hour before on the train to Aarhus, after holding the departure for the scurrying last-minute Canadian cyclists, the conductor told us we couldn’t buy tickets on the train. Should we pay online for the next train? Or at the station upon arrival? “Don’t worry about it. You’re fine,” he replied with a reassuring smile. And the list goes on. The generosity extends beyond time and freebies, though. The Danes we’ve met have been eagerly interested in our trip and lavishly encouraging of the boys especially. The bike shop manager in Hadsund - perhaps buoyed by his compatriot Jonas Vingevaard winning the Tour de France this summer - was not the first to effusively suggest that Heron consider competing as a cyclist after logging all these miles. “You’re obviously very strong. You will be an Olympian, I know it.” Above all, we feel at home here in Denmark. Sure, it’s the bike culture where cycling seems the rule and not the exceptions. And it’s also the wild camping - this week’s shelters were increasingly extraordinary, with showers and fully-equipped kitchens offered at the local community hub, welcome beers by the sliding doors on one kids’-fort-like structure, and a night in an exquisitely crafted wooden teepee. Each evening is a favourite part of our day as we track down another cozy, free mini-cabin and exchange hearty Hej’s with our night’s neighbours in nearby campervans and houseboats. But it’s mostly the warmth and calm laid-back manner of everybody that sets us at ease unlike anywhere else we’ve travelled. We’ve scoured our memory and swear we haven’t encountered one grumpy Dane. We still don’t know what “No” is in Danish (we sure do in Spanish, German and every other language we’ve heard) because no one has told us we can’t bike somewhere, or can’t park our bikes somewhere, or can’t bring our bikes on a train to somewhere. We’re truly welcome. Part of the community. It’s all fine in Denmark. And so we don’t want it to end. With one week left in our Europe Epic, we’re trying to not let the nostalgia set in just yet. On a delightful countryside ride to Frederickshaven we started reviewing all the previous Sundays and marvelling at all that we’ve fit in. It’s staggering how much vivid detail we recall - lunch stops, names of towns and people, clear descriptions of campsites - after so many hundreds of them over the past five months. These are the memories that will stick, and that will glue us together as a foursome traveling through the world and through life together. But we ain’t done yet. And we’re kind of dreading that sensation of arriving back home and feeling that the whole thing was just a long, beautiful dream. Thankfully, Sitka’s Copenhagen tour included a stop at a souvenir shop - he and Heron have amassed an impressive collection of small sculptures with the flags of each country. They’re planning an epic display case so they can re-live every sweet moment. Sitka has oodles of dessert recipes in his head from each country to replicate back home. This extraordinary epic trip may end soon, but the epic trip that is our family just keeps getting better.