Archive for the ‘Touring’ Category

Nina and I just returned from a 6-day trip to Umbria in Italy and found the roads to be as bad as ever.

Should you be planning a ride into Umbria in Italy, then be advised that even the main through roads there are in very bad shape. The province doesn’t have money and most main roads are littered with potholes, only with some tar poured in here and there….. which with air temps of 40C an more is quickly coming out again!

The Dolomiti roads (Alto Adige and Friuli) and Toscany roads are in much better shape.

We would advise NOT to ride at night (you won’t notice all the holes in time) and be very careful by day, especially on the faster roads (4-lane through roads).

Umbria and its thousands of ancient little towns is still VERY MUCH worth a visit ! Just be careful!

We bit the bullet and traded our Jeep Cherokee for a brand new company car: a Mercedes Viano diesel MPV that seats 4 (or even 5 if needed) PLUS a huge luggage compartment. And of course it has a hook to tow the bike trailer.

Although this was the biggest investment so far for our little company, we are very happy with it and put it to the test with a 4000 km Alps tour last week, taking some people from Seattle through 8 countries in 8 days ! It performed wonderful, is very comfortable and for once we did not have to watch our luggage quantity!

The Viano is equipped with snow tires, climate control, traction control, anti-skid, automatic hill-braking, ASB, ESP and some other nifty electronics to make it safer. In the 4-person configuration it has 4 captain seats for comfortable traveling.

The Merc will be used for drive tours, photo tours and for Silver Cloud Publishing too of course….