It's travel days and we are off for our amazing bike tour in Europe. We left the house way too early in the morning only because of all the flooding that has happened in our area and we had an hour and a half drive to the airport.

We did not encounter any road flooding, which was great, considering how bad the flooding has been in Texas over the last week.

We got to the airport in plenty of time to check in and relax.

We had one oversized bag which we knew we were going to have to pay extra for. I've learned as an accountant that information is important. It's important that you share the correct information but sometimes it's important that you don't share too much information. When we were asked what is in our oversized bag we were overly helpful in telling them it was a bicycle. The luggage did not exceed the maximum weight allowed, but the bag is a little too long for airline travel as a regular piece of luggage so we have an extra charge for it. The interesting thing about this piece of luggage is that if we call it a bicycle it was way more expensive than if we had called it sports equipment. This makes zero sense to me but I can't begin to understand the complexity that is airline charges. I found the charge for this piece of baggage that was only a few inches longer than regulation and underweight for regulation to be utterly obscene. It was two and a half times as much as it was in 2018 and even then that was expensive. The ticket agent we dealt with on site at the airport was very helpful in telling us how we should present this bag next time. I think even he was appalled at how much he had to charge us.

I could see what was going on with this bag and all of a sudden I clammed up and stopped giving them information. My husband, who is normally  a man a few words (like one or two on a good day) decided to be very chatty and helpful with the information he was giving the airline  agent.

I finally told him to stop oversharing, but alas it was too late. Cha CHING for the bag. Hey, you want to talk bike? You're gonna pay!

I did not see this as a good sign foretelling future events for this trip. Our flight to Frankfurt was delayed and we originally had only two hours to make a connection to Prague, the starting point for this tour. I was very concerned we were going to miss that flight given that we had to go through immigration and customs upon our arrival in Europe. I also worried our luggage would not make it.

I'm happy to say that none of that happened. Everything arrived intact, the young man that picked us up at the airport to take us to the hotel was a delight, I enjoyed a good local beer and some chicken schnitzel for what should have been breakfast but was actually lunch.

I'm writing this blog on about two or three hours of sleep in the last 24 hours so excuse my errors. I'm also writing it on a phone so I probably won't notice mistakes as easily as I normally would.

I am lounging on our bed as my husband is in a small storage closet next to the hotel lobby trying to assemble our bicycle built for two.  I've already inquired one time if he needed me to help and he informed me that he would call me if he did so I am taking advantage of the fact that he doesn't need me at the moment.

I did go down and help out with easy tasks, like tightening screws and bolts. We thought we lost my pedals so there was some tense moments. But the bike got re-assembled and is ready to go.

So far, we have run into some really nice people and we have run into some people that are a bit less friendly than others.  We have gone to lunch, dinner and we have gone to the bicycle shop which is only a few blocks from our hotel.

Food and beer are much cheaper here than in the US, which was a pleasant surprise. Trying to diet on this tour might be challenging. I had schnitzel for lunch but salad for dinner. I had eaten two good sized meals on the plane ride over so I wasn't too hungry after those meals and a big lunch.

You can check out photos from our tour on Instagram under 7th_decade_redhead.