Buongiorno !!

Flying to Europe from Melbourne is always a long haul, but using a mid-east airline (Qatar Airways) involves a 14 hour flight MEL-Doha as the first sector. This gets 2/3 of it away in one hop but not sure how it'll be on the way home.

Anyway ..... I arrived in Venice without problem and was met at the airport by Larry and Davey from Veloski Tours and met my roomie Rich Swenson from Minnesota as well. Rich and I both arrived a day early and so on Sunday we took a warm up ride to Asolo and thereabouts to get set for the start of the tour proper on Monday.

Italy: Venice and the Dolomites.

I've taken the plunge and booked a cycling trip for Sept 2014 to Italy. After lots of umming-and-aahhing, and an aborted trip in 2013 I'm heading into Venice on my 59th birthday for 2 weeks of riding the Veneto and the Dolomites.

There will be about 1100kms of riding and dawg knows how much climbing, but it's a great incentive for me to keep riding, stay fit amd maybe even lose a few kilos. I'll either come back riding like a champ or a completely broken man .... !!

I took the advice of a friend of a friend and chose Veloski Sports, a Seattle based tour company for the trip. Hopefully come October there will be several photo-laden posts on reddyneddy to remind me of a great trip into cycling nirvana.