Shakeout Ride and Updates
Preparations are in full swing and we just completed a 3-day / 2-night shakeout ride. Video there: https://youtu.be/6etcLq7uY7M This was the last test ride we will do and it went really well. We have a short list of things to change but overall, we feel good about being ready. Visas have also been the topic of a lot of concern for us. All of the European countries we plan to visit are party to a visa agreement called the Schengen agreement. The agreement states that an American traveling in the Schengen zone automatically receives a Schengen visa upon arrival. However, the Schengen visa only allows you to stay in the Schengen zone for 90 days in any 180 period. Since our trip is planned to be about 160 days, that would mean that we would need to spend 70 days of our trip outside the Schengen zone. There were two workarounds I was looking into. The first is to simply plan to be outside the Schengen zone for the 70 days. The challenge is that there aren't that many countr