Bike trip start! Well not quite yet

So this morning after 2 hours of sleep I headed out to catch my train from Strasbourg to Nice. 

Michel had made me a sandwich for the road and it was quickly devoured once I was on the train. 

Last night I had set out to pack as light as possible.  And it looks I failed again as I sit here looking at my backpack filled to the brim. To be fair it is a bit smaller than the one I came back with from England.  But it is definitely not as small as I'd like it to be. 

A lot of it is the various tools I need to this trip.  I did the calculation and without Alexia I plan to go all the way to Portugal (Porto).  I think it is definitely doable -  the only problem is the time frame.  With 30 days of biking ahead of me I should do about 70km per day.  But I am also stopping by each city for a couple of days to just check them out so that cuts into my time. 

My journey today on the train is quite strenuous as well.  I started at 5:16am and I will arrive in Nice around 9pm. That's more than 12 hours of journey time!  But there is a big layover of about 3 hours in Lyon.

That's all the bad news and potential problems out of the way!  On the bright side I'm super excited for this trip already and it's off to a great start!  The south is expecting to be about 20 degrees and only getting hotter with each passing day!  I have promised myself to stop the junk food and eat more fruits in this trip!  I should definitely have legs of steel and a 4 pack at least by the end of this trip. 

I have not been able to stop smiling since the start of this trip this morning!  It's adventure time! 

5am at the train station about to board my train :D 

Peace from the train ride to Nice.