From September 7th through October 8th, 1998, I rode my bicycle through the towns, forests, fields, hills and mountains of Europe. I was accompanied by my friend Matt, with whom I'd taken two previous bike trips.

This web site is a travelogue of my European bike tour. It is a work-in-progress that I hope to complete in the next month or two.

• Table of Contents - Annotated links to all the pages
• The Travelogue - Stories, data, and pictures from the trip
• The Numbers - A table of bicycle and push-up data
• The Not-Anal-Retentive Packing List - What to take (and where to put it)

Most Recent Update: Mon, 8/7/2000 - Finished October 8th. Almost two years after the trip, I finally finished writing about it.

Sun, 8/6/2000 - Finished October 7th. One day away!

Mon, 7/31/2000 - Got started on October 7th.

Sat, 7/29/2000 - Completed October 6th! Getting close now.

Mon, 7/24/2000 - Completed October 5th.

Sat, 7/22/2000 - Completed October 4th.

Fri, 7/21/2000 - Worked more on October 4th. Done with the day hike, currently having dinner with Isabel and Josephine at the Pizzaria Roma.

Thu, 7/20/2000 - Added the Not-Anal-Retentive Packing List

Thu, 3/9/2000 - Added a few more paragraphs to Oct 4. We are currently picking schlehen along the path to Bettenfeld.

Sun, 3/5/2000 - Updated titles and descriptions for the benefit of search engines. Created the numbers page, that gives cyclometer and push-up data for the entire trip. Also added a few more paragraphs to Oct 4.

Sun, 2/28/2000 - Got started on October 4th. Described my epic struggle with Anja's water heater.

Tue, 2/22/2000 - Went back and added word counts and some headings to existing material.

Tue, 2/15/2000 - Finally finished October 3, which is 6000 words long!

Fri, 2/11/2000 - Made a few more paragraphs of progress on October 3. In addition, I cleaned up the art museum material, and added headers. I now realize headers would make this travelogue a lot easier to digest, so I plan to go back and add them to the other days as well.

Thu, 2/10/2000 - Continued October 3. I actually did much of this work previously, just didn't get it posted on the web until now. We are just about to leave the Neue Pinakothek and head back to the Oktoberfest grounds to the bus.

Thu, 1/20/2000 - Started in on October 3. Got up to the point where we'll be getting off the bus in Munich.

Fri, 1/15/2000 - Completed October 2. Ready to go to Munich for the day.

Thu, 1/13/2000 - Got started on October 2. Brought it up to the point where Anja invites us to stay at her place.

Wed, 1/12/2000 - Wrote all of October 1.

Wed, 10/27/1999 - Actually added a few paragraphs of text. Finished September 30. Also added a few more scanned slides to various pages.

Mon, 10/25/1999 - After eight months, I'm finally back to work on the travelogue. I spent the intervening time working a lot, mostly on the 2nd edition of my book, Inside the Java Virtual Machine, a project that is finally finished. I recently bought a new computer that has a USB bus, which allowed me to get the slide scanner I'd had my eye on. Today I scanned and several slides from my bike trip, and added the images to these pages. More to come.

Wed, 2/10/1999 - Continued Sept 30. I'm now sitting in the Mediotek (the Goethe Institut's media library) -- again, both in the story and in the flesh.

Mon, 2/8/1999 - Started Sept 30. I am in Rothenburg in two ways now, in the text and in the flesh. I wrote the first four paragraphs of Sept 30 while sitting in the Treffpunkt Goethe of the Goethe Institut in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Fri, 1/1/1999 - Finished Sept 29th. We're in Rothenburg now.

Thu, 12/17/1998 - Finally finished Sept 28th.

Wed, 12/16/1998 - A few more paragraphs on Sept 28th. Been busy lately.

Thu, 12/3/1998 - Made more progess on Sept 28th. We just found our way to the picnic table.

Wed, 12/2/1998 - Wrote about Herr Schnell and the macho-competitive speed contest. Sept 28th is already over 4000 words and we've only just finished our lunch.

Tue, 12/1/1998 - A few more paragraphs of progress on Sept 28th. We're just coming into Donauwörth.

Mon, 11/30/1998 - Made more progress on Sept 28th. I am now waiting for Matt near the white building full of chickens.

Sun, 11/29/1998 - Got started on Sept 28th.

Fri, 11/27/1998 - Finished Sept 27th. We are now two days from Rothenburg.

Thu, 11/26/1998 - Made more progress on Sept 27th. All that lacks for the 27th is the saga of the spilled buckeyes.

Wed, 11/25/1998 - Finished Sept 26th, the high point (in altitude, at least) of our trip. Also finished part of Sept 27th, up to the point we stumbled upon Neuschwanstein.

Wed, 11/11/1998 - Finished Sept 25th, a 3000 word piece! We're in the Alps now.

Tue, 11/10/1998 - Wrote first part of Sept 25th, up to the point where Matt and I arrived in Lindau, a beautiful town on the south-east edge of the Bodensee.

Mon, 11/9/1998 - I finally finished Sept 24. I have been busy traveling and working. My goal is still to finish this travelogue by Christmas, including adding in pictures.

Sat, 10/17/1998 - Did a major reorganization of the whole site, but didn't add any new content.

Sat, 10/10/1998 - Added two more days of text to the Log 3 page. I am now current up to Wednesday the 23rd of September.

Fri, 10/9/1998 - I am once again sitting in my own home in California, working on my own laptop. It is great to be back. I got up this morning at 3:30 AM and managed to do some work, including filling in the text for the first day of the Log 3 page, which I had written yesterday on the plane.

Wed, 10/7/1998 - Sitting in an internet cafe in downtown Frankfurt, Germany. This bike trip is now history, with a total of four countries, 1636 km of bicycling, and 6200 push-ups. Tonight I simply put the data up for the days I hadn't yet documented. I'll add the writing and, eventually, some pictures after I get home.

Fri, 10/2/1998 - Still at the Goethe Institut's Internet Treffpunkt in Rothenburg. Today I finished Daily Log 2, which documents my time in Alsace, France, and started the Daily Log 3 page, which at this point only contains bicycle data.

Thu, 10/1/1998 - Sheesh, travel writing is like pulling teeth. I spent the whole day writing and only managed to add two days to my daily log of our visit in Alsace, France. More to come.

Wed, 9/30/1998 - Finally found internet access after 9 days, this time at the Goethe Institut in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. I managed to reorganize the site a bit and add one day's account in the daily log.

Mon, 9/21/1998 - Matt and I rode from France back to Freiburg to the Equinoxe Internet Gallerie. Here we spent about 2.5 hours doing e-mail and working on our respective trip sites. After going through my e-mail, I only had time to add one entry to my daily log page.

Sat, 9/19/1998 -- A friend dropped us off at an internet cafe in Basel, Switzerland. We only had two hours to work, so after going through my e-mail I had only enough time left to add one day's log and one story. I also replaced the huge jpg in this page with a reasonably sized one created by my good friend Tom Prionas.

Wed, 9/16/1998 -- We found a nice "Internet Gallerie" in Freiburg (named Equinoxe), and I was able to submit my next JavaWorld article and update this trip site. The article was the first I've actually written sans computer. (Pardon my French. I'm practicing for my next destination.) I wrote the entire article out with pen and paper, just like they did in the old days. Once I encountered an internet cafe, I typed everything in and sent the article off to the editors at JavaWorld.

Fri, 9/11/1998 and Sat, 9/12/1998 - Spent many hours in cafe.com, and internet cafe in Esslingen, Germany.

For Matt's perspective of our trip, visit cyclethere.com.