All Systems Fail.

My thirteenth hiking trip with dad trough the Alps is ongoing. The Karwendelgebirge is on the menu this year. A perfect opportunity to take deep breaths and to recover from an insanely packed September. Which is what I am doing right here, right now.

My Tour de France is done and over. I rushed through the last three stages. Beautiful, just beautiful. My legs are still screaming, but this only reminds me of those precious memories.

Friday thirteenth. Dad’s birthday. The apartment at 27 rue Jacquart is ours. And I’m on the train to Annecy, to finish off my Tour de France project. With little sleep, thanks to early Effi, and warmer clothes than ever (it‘s never been this late during my decade long three-day cycling sessions). I fixed the tour only last week, and due to early automn-ness plus severe busy-ness it’s been the last possible moment anyway to get this done. Three rather standard stages of some 200+ kilometers each with not too much vertical meters. The only unknown is the weather, although the forecast is rather encouraging. Started in 2015, I am very excited to close my loop through France within a decade (it’s year ten, with three years where I couldn’t make it: 2017, 2019, 2020).

Summer is gone, and administration tasks keep hassling me. I feel pretty close to being burned out due to those endless requests, dysfunctional services and headache-loaded paperwork. We were supposed to sign our new apartment today, but random requests from notaries that only started on the very last-minute first jeopardized and then postponed the signature. Luckily this is not the only challenge I’m facing, my N26 account is now finally French and requires to be changed everywhere, which allows me to finally get rid of my SG account, a bank I’m not willing to do business with anymore. And then there are several public services where only few processes function as expected, like the impossibility to change my freelance home address since I’m not a French citizen. Headaches all over, I’m very much looking forward to my final Tour de France weekend next week, where this decade-long loop cycling loop through France is looking forward to be closed.