Welcome to the May 2007 ExperiencePlus! Rambler E-Mail Newsletter

• Dear Folks, A letter from the owners
• More About Us
• Tours in Alpine Europe
• Europe's Magical Mountains
• Rides of March Winners
• From Our Customers: Monte & Pat Peterson
• Clear Waters Rising
• Goode's World Atlas
• From Paola's Kitchen - Keftethakia (Greek Meatballs)

Dear Folks,

After "enjoying" the coldest winter in our twenty-four years in Colorado, summer seems to have come on with record breaking temperatures (85 degrees) yesterday. Who knows what August will bring? A sixty mile "spring warm up" bike ride with the Fort Collins Cycling Club and the local bike fair and bike swap over the weekend brought everyone out. ExperiencePlus! marked the route for the Spring Warm Up ride with our popular chalk dust arrows. People seem to appreciate them.

The accompanying photo is all about bicycling, too. That's Dan Grunig, Executive Director of Bicycle Colorado, on the left, then Colorado Governor Bill Ritter in the center, and that's me on the right. Dan, Bill and I were gathered at the annual Bicycle Colorado gala fundraiser talking about bicycle advocacy issues in the region. Do you support your local bicycle advocacy group? Find your local or state organization at the Thunderhead Alliance. Or, start your own with the help of the League of American Bicyclists.

If our ExpeditionPlus! rides in South America and Eastern Europe interest you, you might like to take a look at the newsletter we just sent out to ExpeditionPlus! subscribers. And if you've ever wondered what makes the folks who do these rides tick, you can finally get some answers reading our interviews with returning ExpeditionPlus! cyclists John Datsko and Chantal Lefevre. Both completed the South America Coast-to-Coast edition in January, and will return to ride St. Petersburg to Istanbul this summer.

Rick leaves Wednesday for Italy, then Turkey, then Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad, (the Russian exclave) and Poland. Paola comes to Italy May 10 and will spend time with family before we head to Tuscany to do some exploring in June. We are both back in Colorado in July since Paola has new administrative duties as Department Head of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Colorado State University.

ExperiencePlus! staffers in Fort Collins are packing for their summer trips as well. Diane Vella heads to Croatia this month, Julie Horton rides Venice to Pisa, and Rich Young is working on his Italian for a trip to Umbria in June. We try to get our staff out on tour at least once a year so they can better answer your questions.

Planning for September? The September 16th departures of Venice to Florence and Pisa are sold out, so we've added a new trip Sept. 23rd. Join us for some grape picking at the farm on that trip! Speaking of fall tours, we still have space on the Amalfi Coast hike October 5th and the Cinque Terre trip October 6th. Fall in Italy is pretty spectacular!

Whatever your plans for the summer, we hope you enjoy yourself. And if you are staying home instead of traveling, our book reviews are designed to help you dream. Pick up your Goode's World Atlas and see if you can suggest a new destination for our next ExpeditionPlus! Or read my review of Nicholas Crane's Clear Waters Rising and see if it inspires you to walk (or bike) across a continent. Safe travels.

Sincerely,

Rick and Paola Price

Mountain landscapes are undeniably beautiful, a fact not lost on us here in Colorado. A quick poll at the office showed that many of our favorite tours are set in the foothills and mountains of Alpine Europe. But why do cyclists seek out terrain that's so challenging to ride? While we suspect a different set of reasons lies beneath each helmet, all of us here agree there's no feeling like looking down proudly at a pleasantly challenging climb you've just completed.

Of course, there's less agreement on what "pleasantly challenging" entails, so our tours in Alpine Europe offer terrain to suit many tastes:

• Spain & France: Pamplona and the Pyrenees
• Spain: Cycling Andalucia
• Italy: Cycling the Piedmont or Piedmont Plus! the Lakes District
• Poland, Slovakia & Hungary: Krakow to Budapest

Give us a call if you need help choosing: 1-800-685-4565.

A lunchtime discussion here at the office about the unique ecological niches found in high mountains got Rick musing on the tendency of mountains to create cultural enclaves as well:

The mountainous areas of Europe harbor cultural traditions that go back centuries, if not millennia. Here traditions date to Greek and Roman times, including language remnants and cultural groups left from two thousand years ago.

Read more of Rick's thoughts on Alpine Europe here.

ExperiencePlus! recently gave away a free Cannondale bicycle, tour discounts, and several of our snazzy bike jerseys in our Rides of March Sweepstakes. Julie Horton caught up with the winners and has this report:

Rides of March grand-prize winner Katharine Swan is certainly one of the luckiest people I've had the pleasure to speak with, especially when ExperiencePlus! is involved. Her good fortune with ExperiencePlus! began in 2006 when she won our Send A Teacher Traveling award.

Read more about our Rides of March bike giveaway winners here.

Our Fort Collins "neighbors" Monte and Pat Peterson provide this month's interview. Thanks, Monte and Pat!

Describe your perfect day outdoors: That would be a Colorado fall day in the moutains either hiking or golfing - with beautiful fall colors, sunshine, and no wind!

Read the rest of Monte and Pat's interview here.

This book, first reviewed in November 2002, is such a great treatment of alpine Europe that we decided to publish it here once again.

British geographer Nicholas Crane decided, at age forty, to walk from Cape Finisterre on the coast of Galicia in northwest Spain to Istanbul. His intent was to undertake this walk along the ridgeline - the "watershed" - of Alpine Europe.

Read Rick's full review of Clear Waters Rising here.

Anyone passionate about a certain kind of work will have their favorite tools, whether they be whisks or wrenches, cameras or pens. For example, Rick (a Ph.D. geographer) has a favorite atlas:

I own something on the order of forty atlases. Of those at least fifteen are around my desk so I can reach most of them without getting out of my chair. The one that sits next to my American Heritage Dictionary, though, is my Goode's World Atlas.

Read Rick's full review of Goode's World Atlas here.

Most of us think of Italy when we think of meatballs. But they're a big part of Greek cuisine, too, and this recipe met with the seal of approval from veteran Greek tour leader Yorgos Paraskevopolis.

Meatballs are popular in all of Greece: the small ones are used as appetizers and the bigger ones as main dish. They can be made of beef (preferably) or lamb, as long as the meat is lean and chopped very finely.

Click here to read the rest of Paola's Keftethakia (Greek Meatball) recipe.

If you would like additional recipes, visit our online recipe archive. You'll find recipes for European and Latin American specialties like Panzanella: a Tuscan Salad, Tapenade, Gallo Pinto, and more.

Happy Walking and Cycling until next month!

E-mail us at tours@ExperiencePlus.com with comments and questions. Or give us a call at 800-685-4565.

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