Happy news! We’re going to France in June for a week-long bicycle tour in Dordogne. So what does that mean? Training on the bike? Well, yes, but what else does it mean? Yes! Re-learning French! I studied French for a couple of years in college (my university’s first trial of the Rassias Method of language [...]

Or, How I Think it’s Going to Work: Karen asks for details on how the cycling tour is going to work. Here’s what I think it going to happen (obviously afterward I’ll let you know what really happened). Are you bringing your own cycle? Yes. While the tour company (ExperiencePlus) provides bicycles in France for [...]

Ok, I’m ready for France, thanks to Sage Traveling’s page of French accessibility phrases: Is there a handicapped bathroom? – Y a-t-il une salle de bains handicapée ? (ee ah-teel ewn sahl duh baN awN-dee-kah-peh) Is there an entrance without steps? – Y a-t-il une entrée sans des marches ? (ee ah-teel ewn ahN-treh sahN [...]

Our bicycling trip to France is on the horizon. An emotional self-check finds me all over the place. Getting the logistics in place for this trip has been daunting and exhausting. The latest tally of the cost, including what I’m dubbing the “disability surcharge”, is frightening. The “disability surcharge” includes both the obvious costs of [...]

(Subject to change!) The stuff in italics is the tour organizer’s suggestions; my interpretation is in parentheses. The current forecast at our destination is for highs in the mid-70s and rain, so my list has been evolving over the last week or so. My goal is to keep the carry on luggage below 8 kg [...]

Everything was great. We made all our flights, the handcycle arrived with us and is still intact, we didn’t have to spend a fortune to ship it back, all the hotels were accessible, I didn’t collapse, die, have a relapse, or even any flats. The weather was cool, and rain threatened just about every day, [...]

The ExperiencePlus staff did a superb job of ensuring that all our hotels were accessible on our trip to France. There were three hotels: Brive-la-Gaillarde In the first town, Brive-la-Gaillarde (Brive the Brave!), the group normally stays at La Truffe Noir, very near the center of the medieval city. This hotel is completely inaccessible, except [...]

I’ve never been on an organized tour before, but certainly one of the great advantages of this one was the excellence of the restaurants and meals chosen by the tour leaders. Accessibility was not as high a priority for restaurants as it was for hotels, but the meals were really good. I think the philosophy [...]

You may remember that I had planned to ship the handcycle back to the US via FedEx at the end of the tour, because we couldn’t rent a large enough car to get it back to the airport. I may have also mentioned that complicating things was the fact that Monday, the day before our [...]