Shifting Gears

September 23, 2026. Land in Venice, shuttle to Trieste.  The moment we landed, and I had cell service, I checked the location of my air tags. The tag in my pannier showed it was with me - that made sense as our panniers were in the plane cabin as carry on bags. But my air tag on my bike showed it was still in Newark airport back home. Yikes. I figured it needed time “to register” but 15 minutes later as I stood in the passport line, it still showed Newark and Heather’s tag showed Venice. Yikes again.  This past May, when flying home from abroad with our bikes, the bikes did not make the connecting flight and we only got them three days later. That experience has weighed on my mind and it’s one of the reasons we strive to only fly direct on our outbound flight. It’s one of the reasons we started this adventure where we did.  When speaking with Lenny (friend who we dedicate ride in his honor) last week, I said I feel a lot of pressure of trip planning on my shoulders, but o...

Welcome to new readers and welcome back to loyal readers of the Shifting Gears blog! As we say…here we go again. On September 24th, Heather & I start cycling from Trieste, Italy through Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and back to Italy, ending in Puglia. This ride is over 1,000 miles, climb 57,000 feet (that’s 2 Mount Everests of climbing!) and should take 4 weeks. Here is a visual – starting in Trieste Italy, which is a 2-hour drive from Venice airport where we are flying. Our final stop is Bari, on the East Coast of Italy, on the Adriatic. The map image is fairly accurate but AI has it’s limits so it misses a small slice of Slovenia that touches the Adriatic for about 25 miles, south of Trieste and before Croatia begins. You can see the full details of our planned itinerary in the chart at the bottom of this blog. We’ll ride self-supported – just two of us, carrying 25+ pounds each in our panniers (saddlebags) on our bikes, with no support van! Why call it an Odyssey? About 30 years...