Still more rework of Day 2

Instead of dropping down south of the Arno at San Miniato as originally planned, I've settled on a more northerly route that doesn't hit the Arno until Signa or perhaps even closer to Firenze. This route is somewhat shorter and has less traffic, and passes through some beautiful countryside. Down along the Arno it is somewhat more industrial, probably because of proximity to railway lines and plentiful water and the traffic density is correspondingly higher. I had originally been keen to use as much of the Via Francigena as was practical, but given that for this area it is entirely notional, with no dedicated path, there isn't much point.

The terrain is mostly gently rolling hills with lots of grapes. Along the way we pass the Padule di Fucecchio, which is the largest remaining swampland in Italy. We'll get a good view of the area from the road as we pass through the village of Massarella. There are some pretty towns as well, Cerreto Guidi, and Vinci (as in Leonardo da-) where there is the inevitable museum and bars with evocative names. After Vinci the road through Vitolini and Camignano climbs over the Tuscan hills and back to the Arno at Signa or even later. It is around 400m of climb, but that is only 200m more than going the other way.

The wiki has been updated.

Flights

I asked our corporate travel people at FlightCentre what was the cheapest way to buy tickets for one of the preferred airlines (QANTAS, Virgin, Etihad, Emirates) and when to buy. The answer is that the November travel expo has slightly cheaper deals than the February one so it the best way unless I want to gamble on last minute deals (no thanks). These airlines are preferred because they offer 30Kg baggage allowance which makes all the difference when you take a bike.

So wait until November it is!

Personal decision - I'll take my bike

G. has provided me with feedback on the route for the second day and I will heed his advice.  From San Miniato to Empoli I'll choose a slightly longer but considerably quieter route. It is all pretty flat on the Arno plain. I only noticed yesterday that just before we get to Empoli the route crosses the Elsa river. Last time we rode in Toscana we crossed the river in Colle Di Val D'Elsa. Another arm flows through Poggibonsi.

So I've been thinking... rent or carry? I've decided on carry. Given that it would cost around E400 to rent something decent it makes more sense to take my touring bike which  I know is perfectly set up for the task. The only downside is the cheap Torpedo 7 bike bag which provides OK protection but which sucks for wheeling the bike in bag from airport to train or train to hotel. So for less money than hiring a bike I can buy one of the Evoc bags from Wiggle which will be much easier to handle. Based on the design of the Evoc I may make some modifications to the Torpedo 7 bag to make it more rigid and easier to wheel. So I'll pack the Evoc to close to 30Kg and take only a backpack and handlebar bag as other luggage. Of course I've still got plenty of time to change my mind again before then.

Update

My Evoc bag has arrived and looks very good. Now I'll have to test it on a domestic trip somewhere!

Route refinement

I'm working with G.'s advice to improve the route for the second day. I suspect that he is a little more traffic-shy than I am, but nevertheless if there is a quieter road then even if it is a little further it is worth considering.

On the same front, the section that I was looking forward to the least in terms of traffic, from Greve to the San Giovanni Valdarno, I have now considered alternatives for. Basically there is no other route that doesn't add a lot more climbing, bad dirt roads and/or many extra kilometres. In any event if Google Street View is typical then the traffic isn't bad. There were very few cars when the Google car went through and there was one bicycle. I think we'll stick to this route.

Local help

I have luckily made contact with another cyclist who lives not far from Lucca who has explored much of the territory that we will be riding on days one and two. We met via an Italian cycling forum http://www.piste-ciclabili.com. His English and my Italian seem about on a par so Google Translate is helping our email conversation :-)

G. has suggested a couple of improvements to the first day's route, but all in all he has given me confidence that the overall route is suitable. We are even talking about him joining us on part of the ride if timing suits next year. He points out the obvious: that Lucca is worth more than a lunchtime stop, but that's the way it is unless we add more days to the trip.

I should also report that the somewhat vigorous discussion that I reported in the previous posting (with a gentleman from a bike hire place) has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. We have sorted out various small misunderstandings and I know now that very suitable bikes are available for hire from his company! The price is a little more than I wanted to pay but nevertheless it remains an option.

More lessons in listening to the customer

So I've been trying to have an email conversation with another potential provider of hire bikes. An initial email ignored, a followup ignored, another followup... then this conversation:

I still have not had a reply to my email below. I sent a followup via Google+ but still nothing. Are you still in this business?

We are in business but honestly is too early talk about September 2014.
I suggest to contact me again in december or when you have detailed list of cyclists and rental dates (from/to).

The dates are pick up on 8th September, return on 19th September, both Firenze. There are three adult male riders.

Do you kjow their height please ?

Sorry, does that affect the price? Or whether you have drop bar touring bikes with racks?
I don't want to make a booking, just to understand what sorts of bikes you have at what rough charges.

Yes, because every model have different features.
I sugget to contact me again in december when we use to make rates for new season.

Mi dispiace I didn't mean to cause you any problems, I'll find a company that is better set up to answer le mie domande. Forse Florence By Bike? You obviously have your way of doing business that is not set up to handle customers like me.

No Patrick. The problem is that we don't have rates for the 2014.
For me in this moment is impossibile give you an answer, is our corporate policy. I'm sorry. Feel free to ride with florece by bike. (Corporate policy, this from the CEO).

Well that's probably about enough for this conversation, but for the future, for other customers, maybe an answer like... "Well we don't set our rates for next year until around December, but to give you some idea, the rates for this year are...xxx. We don't specifically have touring bikes like you seem interested in, but perhaps we will for next year. If you contact us again in December I will know for sure. I'd love to be able to offer you exactly what you need."...would be worth thinking about?
I know, most potential customers would have just walked away but I find it difficult. For my job I am a coach of businesses about delivery of good customer service, it is 8pm on a Friday and still I am working. For you. For free :-)

I wilk make discount for this.
This afternoon italian time i will send you categories and 2013 rates, 

So do you think I should persist? I'm thinking no. 

Move to the Googleplex completed

Perhaps it is a sickness, but I tend to plan trips, especially overseas ones well in advance. That gives me the security of knowing that I can book what I want, when I want it. It gives me the luxury of having plenty of time to plan, to optimise, to replan...

It also means that I have MORE THAN A YEAR to wait for the ride, so to alleviate some of the boredom this is likely to turn into the best documented Italy trip ever :-)

To go back a few years, here is how our trips have progressed:

• In 2003 we visited Spain. This was the first of our web-documented trips, with a dedicated, hand-crafted web site and photo storage after the event on Flickr.
• 2004 was Turkey. There wasn't much planning to do (a bus tour) but I did blog the trip and collect my photos.
• 2006 was NZ (Central Otago) and there was a planning web site, once again hand crafted.
• 2008 and 2010 were in Italy. For each there is a wiki at PBworks, a blog at Wordpress and a photo set on Flickr. Note three different suppliers of free cloud resources: the best there were at the time.
• 2012 was back in Spain. By now my move to the integrated Google environment was started: the Blog was moved to Blogger to get better integration for photo uploading etc. from Android devices. However there is still a PBworks wiki and I still use Flickr as the ultimate photo repository.

So now it is time to plan for 2014 and the move to consolidate it all in the Googleplex is finished.

These already exist:

• The wiki at https://sites.google.com/a/keogh.net.au/apennines/ which is the "knowledge base". Everyone who "signs up" for the trip can modify these pages.
• The blog at http://apennines.blogspot.com.au/ which is a narrative of the planning and the trip itself: my view of it.
• A Google+ page at https://plus.google.com/117699810052162622303 which may well end up as the short term storage for photos.
• All the document and file storage (.GPX files, insurance documentation etc.) in Google Drive.
• A Google Calendar to hold a day by day schedule.

I will of course also create a Flickr group when the time comes. I hope that some or all of this will be enjoyable, or a useful resource, or at least a chilling warning about OCD behaviour :-)

To carry or to hire?

One significant unanswered question is what bike to ride. If I take a bike should it be my road bike or my touring bike? The same question applies to hire bikes although I have yet to see a "light touring" bike like mine for rent.

The road bike's advantages are that it is lighter, has better brakes and a smaller "Q" factor. The Touring bike is more robust (cro-mo instead of carbon), takes a rack and hence panniers and has wider gearing. On the balance I think the touring bike is more likely. I can mix and match wheels and tyres as I see fit, with the 28mm Continental 4 Seasons a likely choice. They survived Melburn-Roobaix just fine. I'm willing to risk the road bike so long as I can carry enough stuff. Maybe I'll do a trial pack into the largest Ortlieb underseat bag and the largest handlebar bag to see whether that feels like three days' worth.

Hire or carry?

The other consideration, probably more important is to leave my bikes at home and hire in Firenze, but that depends on whether I can get exactly what I want from a hire company. In general they do not seem to be very flexible but I guess I have a year to negotiate :-) Because it makes the logistics so much easier this would be my preference, but I'm not riding 400km on a bike I don't trust and enjoy.

Almost every day I am exchanging emails with Lia at http://www.florencebybike.it/index.php?lang=en and we are slowly coming to an understanding.

Our heavy touring bikes are what you need.
You can't fit Ortlieb handlebar bags to our road bikes.
Our road bikes only come with 23mm tyres.

We'll get there maybe!

Maps, maps and more maps

I started out the planning using the OSM Velomap Italy. It was OK but cycle routes had annoying little gaps in them which cause Basecamp to do all kinds of weird routes which no number of intermediate points will fix.

Last night I discovered that http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ has what is (to my eyes) much better rendering of what are essentially the same data. I mean who needs those huge arrows for one way streets? That's only advisory on a bicycle anyway :-) So 90MB of downloads later (one copy for Basecamp, one for my GPS), I have better maps to work with! I must say that the process of requesting and receiving the map data is very polished! I wonder who is paying for it?

That's why cartography is an art as well as a science. These OSM maps are probably good enough to use on my Garmin when we are travelling. I may still purchase the City Navigator maps for use in Florence, Arezzo etc. Of course my other point of reference is Google Maps but in Italy today there is no bicycle routing,  Maybe by the time we get there?

Update

Yet another source of OSM cycle mapping data http://www.openfietsmap.nl/downloads/europe has excellent cartography and contours as well, so the advantages of both the others.

Only problem is the size of the download, over 3.8GB as a single zip file foe western Europe.

A rethink of the route

A while back, before I started on the planning of this route, I'd thought about a "coast to coast" route in Italy. It didn't seem practical because of the logistics of bike bags and other luggage. However it occurred to me that a variant of my Bologna loop would work coast to coast.

Introducing: Italy coast to coast

So I've changed the route. Instead of taking the train to Bologna and eventually returning there, the plan now takes the train to Firenze, and uses that as a base. In Firenze I will unpack the bike and leave my luggage. Then onto a regional train to Viareggio on the Ligurian coast. From there the ride commences, inland to join the Via Francigana as it heads south, through Lucca to our first night's stop at Altopascio. The next day, after crossing the Arno our route turns north-east and more or less follows the Arno to Firenze, so we get to revisit our luggage briefly.

When we arrive in Rimini, instead of taking the train to Bologna, we take the train to Firenze! 

The overall distance remains more or less unchanged, although of course there is less climbing in total as we now only cross the Apennines once rather than twice.

The latest variant of the plan is at the wiki.

One thing led to another

There was no overseas trip planned for 2014 and now there is. How did this happen?

It all started, as these things often do, with me looking at a map of Italy. I was noticing the way the Apennines curve as they switch from near the west coast at the Gulf of Genoa to almost on the east coast as they wrap around Tuscany. I was reminded of the couple of times that we have driven over the mountains, once from Firenze to Ravenna and the other from Montepulciano to Ancona. So I got to thinking about riding in the mountains and wondering how hard it would be to traverse the range.

So here is the "method" that gets me from basic idea to a finished plan.

1. Integrate the planning of arrival and departure... there is the matter of logistics, getting bikes and luggage to the starting point and all together again at the end. This resulted in the Bologna-Bologna concept which then dictated the overall shape of the route.
2. Using the OSM cycle map in Garmin Basecamp, explore routes, keeping an eye on distance and altitude gain. Use Google to find out about the towns and regions. In this instance, looking at Anghiari alerted me to the "orange flag" towns which I used for later stages of planning.
3. Open prospective routes in Google Earth to do a more detailed check on elevation changes and to "fly" the route in some areas. This resulted in some changes to the route to make the climbing more manageable.
4. Once the set of routes and hence days of riding is known it is time to start capturing all this information, so off to PBWorks to create yet another Wiki as the knowledge repository with the front page and one page for each riding day with the general description and route profile.
5. With the basic structure captured, the ride can be publicised, and the last details can be added afterwards.
6. Research the overnight towns using TripAdvisor, or where that fails an "accommodation" search on Google Maps. For likely prospects, use their web site to get more information. For example this caused me to reject one B&B because the owners have dogs and cats. Put the hotel information into the wiki and also into a planning spreadsheet to hold booking status eventually. Add restaurant recommendations where they exist.
7. Check out suitable towns as lunch stops on the mountain sections to ensure that food and water will be available. To find lunch stops the easiest thing is to cruise the town or village in Google street view.
8. Choose dates. The general time of year (September) is driven by weather considerations, but exact timing can take advantage of local events, fairs, festivals etc. In this case the Chianti Wine Festival was too good an opportunity to miss! The rest days and riding days were sequenced to make 3,2,3 chunks of riding.
9. Go back and tidy up the Wiki, add maps and photos. Drop the weather widget on the page for each day.
10. Research flight schedules to make sure that getting from Canberra to Bologna and back fits with the dates chosen with little dead time. To take a touring bike means that 20Kg luggage may not be sufficient, so Emirates/QANTAS or Etihad/Virgin with their 30Kg limits are the go! Capture all this in a spreadsheet too.
11. Initiate contact with those overnight hotels that might be problematic (where there may be little or no choice or demand may be high). Bookings will wait until after flights are booked.
12. Create this blog with the same name as the Wiki, just to be tidy.
13. Wait for September so that flights can be priced and booked.
14. Then it is just a year of waiting, dreaming and hopefully some training :-)