What a beautiful day to start my journey. I really couldn't have imagined the weather any better.

Originally, I had planned to set off at around 10am to start my big adventure. But as I was still ill last week, my preparation was anything but ideal. Fortunately, I was able to run the half marathon yesterday - not at full race pace, of course, so that I still had enough fuel in the tank for the first stage - but I didn't start packing until yesterday evening. After almost 4 hours of sleep - which was not only due to the late packing, but certainly also the excitement, because I was wide awake in bed from 2am to 3am - I got up at 7am to finish packing everything. I was helped by the packing list I had received from the pharmacist who had immunised me against the necessary vaccines. Or rather from her partner. The list was so detailed (10 A4 pages) that I had a certain amount of certainty that I hadn't forgotten anything. Many thanks for that at this point too.

After a delay of around 1.5 hours, I set off shortly after half past 12 and drove towards Baden, where my friend Simon was waiting for me. As I wanted to share my location with him live, I started the live tracking. However, this works a little differently on the bike computer than on my watch and so I only realised after a little more than 5km that the recording of my ride had not yet started (for anyone wondering why the video above doesn't start in Othmarsingen). Another lesson learnt.

Simon accompanied me for a bit today and wished me all the best and so on and seemed to have completely forgotten that he would be accompanying me all day tomorrow, for which he had taken time off work. In the best weather and with the best company, we headed east until shortly before Regensberg, where we unfortunately parted ways again. Fortunately, he was able to help me fix a small problem with my gears, so that they worked perfectly again from then on.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do a test ride with all my luggage and travelling gear, so I had to cut back on my preparation. Incidentally, my legs felt pretty good despite not getting much sleep and yesterday's half marathon, and I took it really easy. I enjoyed the beautiful weather, had my first experience with my brand new action camera and was happy to be in the here and now.

I took my first longer break after just over 3 hours of pure riding time. I used this break to write the first part of this post. From then on, it was about 30 kilometres to my first stage destination of Weinfelden. The sun was a very loyal companion today and I arrived in Weinfelden with the last rays of sunshine.