I didn’t know what to expect from our first-ever Mosel Valley tours. The setup was a bit strange as I had done all the town and hotel research while two of our guides, Sabine and Christian, had done the route research. On most new tours I do all the research myself. More importantly, right before the two July tours we had to shuffle around guides, primarily because I broke my leg playing soccer in June and wasn’t sure I would make it to the Mosel Valley at all.

The Mosel Valley follows the Mosel river as it starts in France (Moselle in French), runs along the border of Luxembourg, and then into Germany where it ultimately flows into the Rhine River at Koblenz. It is a beautiful valley known for its winding curves, small quaint towns, and steep vineyard-covered hillsides.

For us, the Mosel is also the location of an incredible paved bike path that runs from Thionville in France - on both sides of the river for a total distance of 535.5 kilometers - down to Koblenz.

The really cool thing about the Mosel bike path for me as a tour organizer is that we can pick which side of the river offers the best skating and biking and use that path. Christian and Sabine during the tour research divided the entire route into segments based on the many bridges, scouted the path on each side, and chose the best path for our participants. During the tour, participants didn’t need any “route directions” other than one of three items: skate on the left, skate on the right, or cross the bridge to the other side. It was a perfect system.

We had a total of 50 participants in two tours last month and 40 of these skaters and bikers were Zephyr alumni. These groups have had experience with every skating and biking tour we offer. Yet, the excellent hotels, beautiful scenery, and very good bike paths garnered comments from this group:

• Loved it! The skating was superb, the hotels great, the food was nice and the group was fun.
• Breathtaking scenery in Germany. I had no idea Germany was so beautiful. The images of the hills and vineyards come back to me in wonderful unexpected moments.
• Everything was so well-planned, organized, pleasant, convenient and fun! Very little stress about the route compared to other trips. I hope this one stays on the schedule for a long time.
• We voted and this is now one of our favorite international trips and we would do it again.
• It was one of our best ever: the folks we were with, the terrain, the boat ride. and the towns we got to sightsee in. Everything was superb.
• In one word–fantastic.
• Please keep this trip on the books. All skaters and bikers should have the opportunity to savor what we all did this year.
• To all at Zephyr, thank you for providing me with a lifetime of memories.

Keep in mind, those are comments from some very well-traveled Zephyr alumni. I consistently heard comments like “we’ll come back on this trip again”, “this was our favorite trip”, and “this beats Switzerland and The Netherlands”.

And my broken leg? My outstanding guides covered for me on the first tour with Sabine, Christian, and Terry handling all the tour and pre-tour logistics without me. I was able to fly in for the final dinner and then join the second group - on a bike with my leg in a brace. Thanks to all - participants and guides - who made this a fantastic tour. For those of you reading this blog, come join us next year!

(Thanks to participant Jaime Rojo for the photos. )

It is a rare year when we sell out a trip and add a new date for the same trip. We have tried that approach in the past but in most cases, the new date just doesn’t sell well. I am not sure if it is because the new date is not listed in our printed catalog, whether people have already made up their vacation plans by the time we add a new trip, or what.

This year, things are a little different. First, we sold out our April departure to Peru for the Inca Trail Trekking Adventure and added a new October date. Now THAT trip is sold out too! Peru has turned out to be a very popular destination - and for good reason. To stay ahead of the game, we have already created and listed on our website an April 18-26, 2009 Peru date. So, if you are interested in traveling with us to Peru, plan ahead!

We have also sold out many of our Skating Adventures: Idaho and Quebec in August are both sold out and the two Mosel trips in July have only four spaces remaining total. That doesn’t leave our skaters with much choice, especially for those looking for a summertime or domestic tour. So, we have added a new Idaho Skating Adventure to the schedule: August 9-13. The Idaho tour features long, smooth skating paths that wind through forests and fields, past streams and lakes. You can’t beat it.

I was honored to be part of a fantastic tour last month in Italy. One of our alumni, Dee Opp, emailed me last October and said “If I can get a group of friends together to do a biking tour in Italy, would you set it up and be our guide?” Naturally, I said yes.

Dee traveled with us in 2003, when she joined our Montana Multisport Adventure. After that, she moved with her family to England and hadn’t found the time to join us again. This year, however, she wanted to create her own Private Adventure with friends from an American Womens Group in England, a social club for expat American women living in England.

It is not easy creating a private tour. The realities of life intercede and it is difficult to find enough friends who have the same travel interests, the same vacation schedule, and a similar budget. In fact, most people who contact us about setting up a private tour can’t get the minimum of 10 participants we require.

Dee was exceptional, however. She started off on the typical route of telling her friends, other American women living in England. She found a few takers but we seemed to be stuck at half a dozen or so. She then recruited another friend, Marian Jacobson, who helped spread the word to even more potential participants. That grew the roster even more. Finally, Dee contacted a second American Women group in a different part of London and, with their help, eventually increased the group size to 16 women.

We actually customized the trip for the group, selecting just Umbria for the tour location (it is flatter than Tuscany) and limiting the tour to five days to accommodate busy schedules. Plus, we found a flight from London directly into the airport in Perugia and started the tour by biking directly from the airport.

Italy is amazing, Umbria is fantastic, and the tour was the same but I won’t go into details about the wonderful time we had. This post is about our Private Adventures and I wanted to share Dee’s experience as an organizer. We love running private tours because we can adjust them to be a perfect fit for the participants and because usually the fun starts from minute one, since the group often knows each other in advance.

Check out our page on Private and Custom Adventures and let us know if you think you can recruit a group of friends, relatives, or work buddies! Remember, private tours are most likely to run when there is one very committed organizer who recruits his or her friends, sometimes friends in different social circles, to join the group and also recruit their friends. It is not easy but the result is an incredible vacation - we are already planning a reunion next year for Dee’s group!

I have focused only on Zephyr’s tours in this blog. Rightly so, too, since that is the blog’s purpose and why readers spend time reading it. At this point, however, I feel I need to speak out in support of Tibetans against the crackdown that is happening in that country.

And “country” it should be, although at the moment it is a militarily-controlled part of China. Most people who can at least place Tibet on the map probably have a vague idea that China occupied the country some years ago. That is true - and more.

I love the Chinese. I have visited China half a dozen times and love both the country and the people. Since I first started visiting China about ten years ago, the economy has visibly rocketed and people have become more open and less fearful of being themselves, although we still limit our tour group conversations about topics such as Tiananmen Square to the privacy of our tour bus. One thing I do find, however, is that the Chinese people - even those who are well educated - have a pretty strong bias in favor of China’s world policies relating to Tibet, Taiwan, Darfur, etc.

That means that on the one hand, the Chinese themselves are still under a yoke without a true ability to express themselves publicly, vote in real elections, or advocate for change. On the other hand, they have been fed enough propaganda they they support their country’s purchase of Sudanese oil, the military threat against Taiwan, and the military occupation of Tibet.

Because military occupation it is - Tibet was invaded by Chinese troops in 1950 and has been occupied ever since. And what is my impression of the Tibetan people? Having been to Tibet about an equal number of times, I have invariably found them warm, loving, and peaceful. After reading this blog post, take the time to read my other posts on Tibet and you’ll begin to get an idea about that country.

The Tibetans are protesting now, in sometimes violent ways, because they are desperate. The Chinese have occupied their country for 48 years; they are not allowed to mention or have a photo of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama; and perhaps most insidious their culture and language is being slowly marginalized as the Chinese government promotes Chinese immigration into Tibet. This is all true - and all vehemently denied by China.

This is a world tragedy and world governments do essentially nothing while it happens. How can we the people have elected representatives who know about this injustice and still do nothing? The truth is, China is powerful, no one wants to offend them, and “realpolitek” leads our elected leaders to ignore the issue.

That is simply unacceptable and we, the people of the world, should do something about this. We have the power, too. China cares badly about its image and protesting in front of Chinese embassies around the world would help. We won’t do that, though, since each of us has too many other things to worry about in life. What WILL work and IS doable is to boycott Chinese products and demand that US companies do the same. It worked in South Africa and it can work in China.

Here is what I suggest you do.

1. Spend one hour to get on the internet and learn about the tragedy of Tibet. Educate yourself.

2. Go to www.BoycottMadeInChina.org, click on Join the Campaign, and sign the Pledge form. Pledge to yourself that before you purchase any material goods between now and the end of the Olympics, you will look for the “made in” tag and not purchase it if it is made in China.

3. Send an email to your friends and ask them to go to the boycott site or, better yet, to this page for the background material first.

I sponsor a young Tibetan woman for whom I pay school tuition so she can have a good life. I have an excellent friend in Lhasa, our Tibetan guide, whose father and brother were killed by the Chinese in past protests. I am afraid for their safety.

It is a world shame that the Tibet people are losing their homeland and the rest of us do nothing.

It is amazing this is my 17th posting on the Zephyr Adventures Blog and the first one about our Netherlands Skating Adventure.

We have been running our Netherlands skate tour since 1997. It was our very first tour location and the only location back in that first year. I still remember wondering whether the concept of skating through the Netherlands on inline skates would work. Eleven years later, the success has been proven. This Netherlands tour in 2008 will be our 25th skate tour in that country.

Let’s face it. One of the reasons the Netherlands is such a great place for a skate tour is it is flat. The only hills we ever face there are when we go up and over a freeway on one of the small country roads or bike paths we use there. The bike paths are another reason the country is so perfect for skate touring. Every single town in the northern provinces where we skate are connected to each other by paved paths. The Dutch are living 21st century transportation methods.

However, I think when it comes down to it the reason the Netherlands tour is so popular with us is the culture. The Dutch are very open and warm, the landscapes are beautiful, and sitting on a hotel front porch with a beer after a long skate can make you feel you’ve hit life’s zenith. I like that - hitting your zenith with Zephyr.

In 2008, we have made a few changes to our Netherlands tour. First off, we changed our route so we skate directly from Amsterdam to our first hotel in the countryside. This eliminates a shuttle and will also give our skaters, I am sure, a sense of major accomplishment the first day. We even get to use a ferry to cross a canal on our way out of the city.

Second, this tour is a Fitness Tour, designed for intermediate and better skaters. Some participants will be on racing skates but most will be just regular skaters who like to go long and steadily. If you have never skated in a peloton skating pack but would like to try, this is your opportunity.

Finally, we are working hard to get Canadian skating legend Barry Publow on the trip as a guest guide. Barry was originally signed up to join us but had to cancel last fall. In the interim, I made other plans and we now have two great Zephyr guides on this trip, one Dutch (Irene) and one American (Andrea). After hearing from Barry just this week he is now available again, I agreed with him he will be our third guide on the trip if we hit 17 participants. We are at nine now and I hope with Barry’s planned participation we will hit 17 or more.

Barry skated for the Canadian national team and runs a speed skating website, www.breakawayskate.com. More importantly, he is known as one of the best technicians in the skating world. If you want to learn how to double push, Barry is your guy. You’ll have that opportunity on our Netherlands tour as Barry teaches formal clinics in the morning and gives you tips during the days of skating.

Come join us on our 25th skate tour in The Netherlands, June 21 through June 27.