What prompted me? I was bored with my normal forms of train, plane and car Europe (having been there a dozen times with those methods), wanted to finally get to Belgium and the Netherlands, which pride themselves on cycling, and the fiancee enjoyed the bit of time we cycled around Amsterdam on a long layover there.

I had a 82 Miyata 610, which was beaten up on a previous life that I bought for $85 and rehabbed, and she had an old Maruish mixte. Neither of us wanted to bring "nice" bikes out of fear of the claimed bike theft rates. We were credit card touring, so no camping gear, but we did load up panniers and did a couple long day rides as trip prep. Trip itself was five days of riding from Brussels to Amsterdam, which was plenty enough for her, but also enough to get me hooked!