The hotel offered a 6:00 a.m breakfast so we thought we'd take that and then be on the road we'll before 7:00.
Great.
Except.
Except, over breakfast Stephen had to make a rapid departure before eating on account of an upset tum!
Bugger.
Our risk management plan for events like this has swung in to action, and at this stage we have several options.
So here I am still in the hotel room while we wait for a medical facility to open.
The hospital opened at 8:00 so rather than try a Doctor or chemist we trotted off to the hospital. The system is very efficient and Stephen was in and out in about 45 minutes. Diagnosis was a virus and a script was given for some meds.
Back to the hotel and to bed for a sleep for Stephen while Peter and I went and found a bakery. By 10:30 after a sleep Stephen was up for a train ride but not a bike ride. So we decided to stick together and take the train through to Ulm which was where our next nights accommodation was booked.
We took advantage of the extra time to do a bit more foward planning, both over the next few days and also beginning to think about our time and route in Britain.
What follows next is an explanation on how we plan and map out our ride, that was written earlier for an occasion like this. It will hopefully ensure we will end up in Paris in time for the start of the Olympics and in London by August 22 for Peter to take his flight home followed by Stephen on August 24.
As a Financial Planner I would help clients with managing their investments and we would have a "Strategic" and a "Tactical" view as to how much of their portfolio is allocated to each of the asset classes.
A strategic view is the longer term, big picture view while the Tactical view is the here and now.
The analogy I would use would be of Team N Z and the America's Cup. The Strategic view is they want to win the race, crossing the line first, and while it is a straight line to the finish line, variables like, wind, tides, current and competitors getting in the way and upsetting their plan will mean they will have to tack (change/correct/modify) their course along the way to the finish line.
So Team NZ would have a Strategic plan and a Tactical plan, both contributing to their overall success.
And so it is with riding 3,500km's from Rome to London via Paris and the Cotswolds. I have that end goal as my Strategic plan and together with Peter and stephen we spent many hours on across Tasman Zoom sessions planning the route. That's the map I published in my earlier post.
Our Tactical planning then involves Zoom sessions of breaking that Strategic plan down into "Chunks" of about 500 km's and looking more closely at the route taking into account things like nightly accommodation - is there somewhere we can stop for the night (as we are not camping so can't just stop on the side of the ride wherever).
We leave it like that until we get riding and then each night we look at our Tactical plan and refine it further as to, distance, climbing, food stops and accommodation, what there is to see along the way and how we feel etc.
We then research and find the accommodation for the next one or two nights which may mean fine tuning the route.
This gives us maximum flexibility and does not put the pressure on us of having to be at a certain place on a certain date (other than Heathrow on the 1st September for me). It does however mean we need to come up with tomorrow night's accommodation tonight. In my last two European rides with Peter, covering probably 10,000 km's using this system we have always found reasonable accommodation.
Note: This system does not work well at all back home in NZ/AUS and you need to adopt a different approach to your Tactical planning (ask and I'll write another essay on why that is so and how to overcome it)!
So where am I going with all this you might ask?
At last night's planning session we found it difficult to come up with a route from Florence to Bologna that was A) cycle friendly B) had a town or village at an appropriate overnight spot and C) had accommodation available.
Fortunately here in Europe (but not at home) we have another tool available in our kit to help overcome that situation and that is to simply hop on a train to relocate ourselves and that is perhaps going to be our option. However we have plenty of time (two days - one of which is going to be a "touristy rest day" in Florence ) and lots can change in that time so we haven't made any decisions just yet.
Will there you go and if you've read this far and also read the Blog for when we were in Florence you will know we took the train just se have done today.
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