Tour tomorrow, and my Moleskine saga

So, I was planning on leaving on my little tour today, but I did some extra planning and decided to leave tomorrow. So, at 7:30am I'm getting on a train to Basel, Switzerland. I'll arrive at approximately 1:30pm, and then I'll ride 67 Kilometers to a small town called Breisach. From there, I'm planning on following the Rhein river 80km to Kehl, which is directly across the river from Strasbourg. From Kerl it's 84.5 km to Karlsruhe. Looking at the topograph for this trip, it's along a river the entire route, so there are absolutely no hills for the entire distance. In fact, it's a steady decline of 150m over the entire distance. I had originally planned to try to camp out every night in order to feel manly and to save money, but after carefully weighing my options, I realized that if I stayed at youth hostels, it wouldn't be that much more expensive per night, plus I would have breakfast included. I will also sleep better (hopefully) which will help me to ride farther per day. I'll also ride farther due to the fact that I'm not carrying an extra 10 pounds of tent, sleeping bag, pad, and wool bag liner. I am going to just be taking one set of panniers instead of the front and rears. So overall, I think it will be worth the slight extra expense. This route will be so easy, I really think I may be able to go twice as far as I have planned, or just enjoy the cities and drink coffee at cafes. I think I'll just see how I'm feeling and play it by ear. I have over a week to work with, so I'm just going to relax. The route goes for another 250km or so, so I definitely have options.

In other news, last week my Moleskine notebook cracked along the spine, and the cover started to fall off. I found out about Moleskine notebooks shortly before coming here to Germany. I was really attracted to them because of their high quality. They are hardbound journals that are hand-made in Italy and have pretty high quality paper inside. They also have a handy pocket on the inside which I use to hold train tickets and my bus pass, as well as stamps and other small things. I have 2 different sizes that I use quite regularly. This one that fell apart was the smaller 9x14cm size. I was pretty upset that it fell apart, because they aren't cheap, and I was only 1/4 of the way through with it. My larger journal is still okay.

I wrote a polite email to Moleskine, and within 3 days, I received an email from the project manager in Italy. She apologized for the bad experience, and mailed me a new journal. I just received it today. Quite impressive customer service!
Today I was at the Bauhaus(like a Home Depot), and came across this tape that looked like just the thing to repair the broken journal. I figured that a new Journal costs 10 euros, and I was only 1/4 of the way through the old one. So as long as the tape works and it is less than 7.50, it will be worth it.
The tape was only 2.50, and it worked perfectly. It is designed for book bindings, and now my old journal looks as good as new. The texture of the tape was even a pretty close match. Now I have enough extra tape to repair the rest of my journals if the same thing happens to them. It's a really satisfying feeling to repair or rebuild something instead of throwing it away.