Preparing for an adventure; ah, I love this part.

Let me use my current trip to lay out a template.

My wife Brittany and I are preparing to take our six kids on a bike trip through Europe. Brittany and I have ridden about 4,000 miles together on tours, only 300 of those miles were without kids.

Here’s how we go about planning our trips:

Our first bike adventure was to Yellowstone, except it wasn’t. Instead of riding 300+ miles to Yellowstone we only made it 80 miles to a small town north of SLC called Logan Utah. We arrived there broken, dejected and actually spent the night in a strangers' spare bedroom in a trailer park, but that’s a story for another time.

I share this, because I think it’s important to start from where you are. Step up your adventures as your ability to adventure increases, slow and steady. Our first trip was to Logan, but after that we learned some lessons and our next trip was from Seattle to California, 750 miles. From there we continued to do different tours that were a bit more adventurous each time.

We try to do something new to make our adventure unique. A few years ago we took our kids to Europe, and relied wholly on public transport. Each of our kids had a backpack, and we walked out our door and walked the mile and a half to the train station, then to the airport. From there we took a train from Paris to Portugal with a stop by the ocean on the way.

Next summer we’re taking a cruise boat across the pacific to start a bike tour once we arrive. We try to mix things up.