Our Anniversary trip to Italy California--Intro
Two years ago, Angela came up with a wonderful idea.
"Let's go to Italy to celebrate our 10 year anniversary!" she said. "We could even time it so that we catch a MotoGP race in Mugello." she added.
I was skeptical at first. And then I had an idea.
"Lets tour Italy on MOTORCYCLES!!!" I exclaimed in excitement.
So it was set then. We would travel to Italy in 2011, time it so that we can attend a race at one of the greatest race venues in the world--Mugello, and we would do it all on motorcycles.
Angela even decorated a spare change jar as motivation.
We slowly started filling the "Trip Jar" as it was known to be called. And with every penny and dime added to the jar, I dreamed of endless corners in the Dolomites and riding famous alpine passes. Angela seemed more in love with the idea of seeing old cities and architecture and stuff like that. Whatever. We're going to Italy...Let's RIDE!!! And then at some point I started looking into actual costs for two people to tour Italy by bike for 7-10 days. I stopped when I got to $8000. There was just no way to make that happen. Maybe if we saved our change until I retired. But in a year and half? Ain't gonna happen.
Disgruntled at facing the cold, hard, ugly truth, I was resigned to give up. But Angela saved the day and suggested we go to California instead. We could even catch the MotoGP race at Laguna Seca. Seemed like a good compromise to me. So that's what we did.
For the first year, we did nothing but save our pennies. No real planning took place.
But once 2011 rolled around things started to come together. By January, I had assembled a list of items we needed to procure for the motorcycle portion of the trip:
Bluetooth communicators
Rainsuits
A new helmet for Angela
Bluetooth enabled GPS
Camelback hydration system
Backpack for our DSLR and lenses
And in February, we put down a deposit to rent a motorcycle for three days.
In March, I developed the route we would ride and we started reserving hotels.
View Cali Trip in a larger map
And the biggest piece of the puzzle was solved through the kind heart of Angela's sister Jean. She volunteered to take a huge chunk of her vacation days and watch our kids for us. Thank you Jean (and Jesus)!
So that's how it started. Next up--getting to Cali and Korean tacos
"Let's go to Italy to celebrate our 10 year anniversary!" she said. "We could even time it so that we catch a MotoGP race in Mugello." she added.
I was skeptical at first. And then I had an idea.
"Lets tour Italy on MOTORCYCLES!!!" I exclaimed in excitement.
So it was set then. We would travel to Italy in 2011, time it so that we can attend a race at one of the greatest race venues in the world--Mugello, and we would do it all on motorcycles.
Angela even decorated a spare change jar as motivation.
We slowly started filling the "Trip Jar" as it was known to be called. And with every penny and dime added to the jar, I dreamed of endless corners in the Dolomites and riding famous alpine passes. Angela seemed more in love with the idea of seeing old cities and architecture and stuff like that. Whatever. We're going to Italy...Let's RIDE!!! And then at some point I started looking into actual costs for two people to tour Italy by bike for 7-10 days. I stopped when I got to $8000. There was just no way to make that happen. Maybe if we saved our change until I retired. But in a year and half? Ain't gonna happen.
Disgruntled at facing the cold, hard, ugly truth, I was resigned to give up. But Angela saved the day and suggested we go to California instead. We could even catch the MotoGP race at Laguna Seca. Seemed like a good compromise to me. So that's what we did.
For the first year, we did nothing but save our pennies. No real planning took place.
But once 2011 rolled around things started to come together. By January, I had assembled a list of items we needed to procure for the motorcycle portion of the trip:
Bluetooth communicators
Rainsuits
A new helmet for Angela
Bluetooth enabled GPS
Camelback hydration system
Backpack for our DSLR and lenses
And in February, we put down a deposit to rent a motorcycle for three days.
In March, I developed the route we would ride and we started reserving hotels.
View Cali Trip in a larger map
And the biggest piece of the puzzle was solved through the kind heart of Angela's sister Jean. She volunteered to take a huge chunk of her vacation days and watch our kids for us. Thank you Jean (and Jesus)!
So that's how it started. Next up--getting to Cali and Korean tacos
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