Travel

Last week I went on my first supported cycling trip. Supported means that there are cars carrying your luggage from one hotel to the next one. They provide you with food on the tour, space for spare clothes and help out when needed. They also take pictures and sort out random stuff that comes up. It was quite a spontaneous decision on my side and I had fixed dates for the holiday, so the choice of providers of these trips was limited. My first idea for a destination were the Dolomites, but this would have required flights and more organization on my side. In the end I went with Canigou Cycling, who conveniently provide a Barcelona Airport pick up service - or for me a pick up from home. ...

Last weekend I travelled to London for the Prudential RideLondon 100. It is a 100 miles (160km) sportive going through London and the Surrey Hills. This one is held on completely closed roads and is also the biggest sportive I have ever attended, with around 30000 cyclists on the road. I stayed in an Airbnb in Homerton, which I mainly choose because it was near the Olympic Park, where the start was. And it was good to be close, because I had there by 6:40 latest. You are assigned a colour and a starting wave. They stagger the waves to avoid congestion on the road. I think faster riders will also be in the earlier waves. I guess I was somewhere in the middle. It rained all night, so the roads were pretty wet, but the sun came out a bit later. ...

Short tip this time, just to confirm to anyone googling for the 144 hour transit visa for Shanghai that it really works. I have just been to Shanghai using the 144 hour transit visa. My trip was from Barcelona via Dubai to Shanghai and finally Manila. You can find more information on the net, but this is how it basically works: you can stay only 144 hours (there are some rules on when these begin and end) it has to be transit, you can’t just return to your origin after the visit. you have to go to a third country (Hong Kong doesn’t count either) you have to use one of the two main airports in Shanghai, you can’t just use any odd border (I think there is a port option too) it doesn’t cost anything you have to have a passport from certain countries Europe/Schengen and USA are fine for example The main problem of the transit visa is that nobody knows about it. The Chinese consulate here had no idea and the Emirates staff also had not heard about it. ...

For some reason this year turned out to be a year with a lot of time spend on bicycles. While I have been cycling more since I changed to a company which allowed me to park my bicycle in the office, this year I increased this even more. One part of this has definitely be Strava, which allows me to track my riding and improvements (or not) over time. Some numbers for 2014, 2013 in brackets: ...

To go with my new Lenovo T510 I now also bought a carry-on with space for the laptop. As it goes with purchases like this I spend a lot of time researching them on the net, it just seems to be the German or nerd to do. Also quite typical for a German is to choose something which is of better quality than you need, but also not the most expensive one out there. Other bags I considered where by Rimowa, Victorinox, Samsonite and Briggs & Riley. The reason why I am writing about this at all is that the Tumi website doesn’t include the information I needed and there seems to be a lack of information about this bag on the, so this is more about the facts as an actual review. ...