When I was meeting people on my journey, they had two questions. The first one, are you not scared? The second one, why? No, I was not scared. Very easy answer. But, the why question got me. Because I had only one answer. Because I can. And honestly, that was true. I never had the dream to go on such a long-distance bike trip. I simply wanted to have a significant break and a challenge that seemed worthwhile. I had money saved, and I had time. Good enough.
This one keeps me awake at night. Like really. Yesterday evening I was listening to how to wild camp and I saw myself sitting alone at night in a forest and peeing my pants. Hearing sounds, imagining the worst. Usually I listen podcasts about serial killers to fall a sleep. So my repertoire how bad could look like is gigantic.
Long story short. I would love to say that I just camp wherever I find a good slot. But I can't. At least not now. I will need to get comfortable with the idea and slowly ease in, ideally with some companions. But it will happen. In the meantime I'm figuring out some alternatives.
When traveling for business, I'm really good at packing. During my life I have assembled quite some clothes, but magically they're all fitting together. So I can pack quite minimal, generally I only fly with hand luggage. Hiking similar. And while this might sound not too charming, I prefer to stink a little bit rather than killing my back. The first time I packed my panniers though, wow, I hardly could ride the bike. To be fair, I packed cookbooks and all crazy things. Volume was fine, but weight was not.
Now I need to pack for a year. And I'm going to do mistakes. Good thing is, I can ship things home and if I really miss something, I can buy it. So there won't be too much drama.
There are people who do a lot of research when looking for bikes, considering this, considering that. I'm not like that. I do usually have a picture in my head of what I want. And it's basically impossible to convince me of anything else. Similarly with my bike. I did have already two bikes. A Canyon road bike and a beautiful city bike, custom made for me by Santucci Cycles. Both were not made for the tour, so I needed a new one.
Some time ago I lived in San Francisco. There I encountered for the first time Surly bikes. Steel frame, and slightly old-fashioned looking. Back then I thought about getting one, now was the time!
The idea for this trip is to go with the flow. That sounds cheesy, but that's the plan. I don't have an end date, I don't need to be anywhere at a specific time, at least for the time being and I have no idea what I'm going to find on the way. Some roads might suck, some areas might be tempting to go once I'm closeby or I might meet people that I want to team up for some time. I want to leave space for serendipity. But I made a rough route, it might change completely though, but I need to start somewhere. The starting point will be Brindisi, a small town in Puglia. From there I bike up to Scotland and down to Tarifa and then up to Fulda. That's the plan. It's a rough 17500km.
Wednesday is my last day in the office. I quit. It's not quite like quitting earlier. I quit often and I mostly quit when I felt my job was done. In this case my job is done as well. What makes it different is that I don't want to work anymore. That's a bit off, I want to work, I love to work. But I decided to take a significant break and keep it absolutely open what's next. I don't have another job lined up. I'm allowing myself to go on a little adventure.
You can choose how your personal data is used. Vendors want your permission to do the following:
TCF vendors
Store and/or access information on a device
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).
Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.
Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.
Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.
Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
Ensure security, prevent and detect fraud, and fix errors
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Identify devices based on information transmitted automatically
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
The choices you make with this CMP regarding the purposes and entities will affect how personalized advertising is presented to you. We need to store these choices to respect them on future visits, and they are stored differently based on the type of site or app you're using:
For sites, your choices are saved in a cookie named “FCCDCF” for a maximum duration of 390 days.
For apps, your choices are saved in device storage prefixed by “IABTCF_”. Your choices will be invalidated after 390 days and overwritten once you make new privacy choices on this app.
For accelerated mobile page (AMP) sites, your choices are saved in local storage prefixed by “amp-store”. Your choices will be invalidated after 390 days and overwritten once you make new privacy choices on this site.
Vendor preferences
Confirm our vendors
Vendors can use your data to provide services. Declining a vendor can stop them from using the data you shared.
TCF vendors
Exponential Interactive, Inc d/b/a VDX.tv
Cookie duration: 90 (days).
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device identifiers, Probabilistic identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Users’ profiles, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Probabilistic identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Probabilistic identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Probabilistic identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Authentication-derived identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Authentication-derived identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, User-provided data, Non-precise location data, Precise location data
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Authentication-derived identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Users’ profiles, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, User-provided data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Users’ profiles, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device characteristics, Device identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
Data collected and processed: IP addresses, Device identifiers, Probabilistic identifiers, Browsing and interaction data, Non-precise location data, Privacy choices
