Day 0s are tricky and essential to starting a cycling trip off right. This is my 6th day 0 and I have to say that this one could be the best of the 6.
So what is a day 0? The way I look at it, a day 0 is the travel/operational day that you use to prepare in country or whatever location you are at to get ready for the upcoming adventure. Day 0s can include - getting to the locale, getting the bike or assembling if you brought it, checking into a hotel, getting a local SIM if you need it, grabbing some local currency, seeing any sites that you can etc. When I went on my solo trip in 2019 across Spain and Portugal, I made a big day 0 faux pas. I planned on cycling 60miles after an overnight flight heading from the airport to my first destination. I didn't sleep on the plane, my bike box took an hour to come out, some of the roads I had routed in Madrid were closed, i didn't start until noon because of the flight... it was an absolute suffer fest. Never again would i cycle more than 20miles on a day 0.
So why was this Day 0 so good? Let's take a look at some key factors.
First off, we all got there on time. Two riders getting there on Thursday and two on Friday. No real delays, problems or missing visas!
Getting to and from a location is probably one of the biggest stress factors of the whole trip. Once you are in location and settled with the bike - everything else is cream cheese. Dad and I opted for a taxi ride to the hotel while Matt chose to be a bit more adventurous and took a train over. Shrutini I think walked with no SIM Connection. I'm not sure exactly how she made it - but she was there in one piece before we got there.
Equipment
Equipment can be a bit tricky especially on a bike trip. Equipment to me consists of everything you are going to use on the trip, from the bicycle to the lights, to the charging station, wires you are going to need to charge the electronics, potentially packing material to transport the bike back home or rental bike back to the drop off point, cable ties, rope, SIM card, phone, and even a spare phone! Yes, one time I had to go to my spare phone and it was a life saver, tools, spare tubes, spare bike parts... there are so many bits and pieces of equipment it gets overwhelming and if you don't plan appropriately it can get very heavy to carry and potentially trip complicating if you don't have the right tool at the right moment. So this aspect of the trip is learned with experience and situational on where you are going. If you are going to an isolated part of the world, it would probably be better to bring a lot of backup equipment and cut a few miles from your daily trip. If you are in a populated area, that has bike shops, maybe you don't need to bring so many spare tubes and can replenish as needed.
Matt's professional presentation |
This trip I feel like as a team we learned from previous trips and tried to scale down what we brought, forecasted obstacles that could possibly manifest themselves throughout the trip and tried to plan[ and backup plan ] accordingly. All of us brought the appropriate amount of clothes [ except for Matt who brings only paper pants and is impervious to cold - I think he is either a lizard man or has lava for blood ], we all had our charging equipment, lights etc.
A few of us brought spare pumps, Shrutini bought 4 extra tubs from India's finest online merchant - and we had 4 from the bike shop giving us 8 in total. The previous bike trip in Spain we had about 8 flats and had to stop at a shop to get a few more tubes- wouldn't you know it we were fully prepared and had 0 flats during the whole trip!! More on this later.
Food [ isn't this the most important ]: So I finally had my first Italian coffee - and over the full trip I had almost 40!! about 30 during the biking portion of the trip. The results on Day 0, the coffee was good. Not mind blowing and i think that was down to me ordering a cafe latte. I learned over the trip that I enjoyed a few different types of coffee better.
My first Italian coffee EVER! Was ok - pizza was amazing though |
The pizza and fish dishes were just awesome that first day. First lunch was good, second lunch was good and dinner was great. I had pizza in Rome one time back in 2002, last time i was there. it was just outside vatican city and i remember it being so so. This trip and especially on day 0, we had great pizza everywhere... well almost every where. One spot later in the trip was terrible!
Me and Shrutini had full mouths of food! She hid it better than me |
Best Gelato of the whole trip was found on day 0 |
I swear I must have had my mouth full of octopus and potato |
hotel Laurentia bfast spread |
Extras!!!
What do I mean by extras? Basically anything extra that we did which was fun and unexpected outside of those basic day 0 items we HAD to do - like bike pickup, sim card, hotel check in etc. Day 0 ticked a ton of boxes for me personally when it comes to extras. Multiple great meals, Matt forced us on to escooters, we went to Decathlon, checked out multiple sites,had multiple good meals, had our first chinotto and made an emergency stop at an Italian optometrist to get dad a set of reading glasses and eat half his candy bowl! The escooters were a huge surprise. I was a bit wary and didnt want anyone to get killed before the trip as we zipped in and out of Roman traffic. Thankfully everyone became a scooter pro and we were able to zip back and forth to Decathlon and pick up some water bottles, presents and energy gummies. Matt def pushed me out of my comfort zone in this one - glad he shamed me into doing it.
eScooters yooooooooooo |
Colosseum was cool - last time i saw it was 2002, hasn't changed a bit :) |
Trevi fountain - was packedddddddd. |
Just a random funny one - Would have been fun to ride a tandem |
Wow, that's awesome Steve, Matt and Shruti 👏👏👍👍
ReplyDeleteThanks bro - will get the next day published soon
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