Sounds like the mythical Procrustean Bed, doesn’t it?  That bed was exactly the right size for everyone, after lopping off the edges of tall folks and stretching the shorties.

Touring in the Schengen Area is pretty much the same way - to make the most of your opportunities, you want to swell shorter tours to 90 days, or prune longer ones to fit.

So, going back to our original vision for this tour (5 months, from Venice to Lisbon), we have some significant pruning to do because we’re over the legal limit by two months.

Voila!

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Some notes on the revisions:

• We’re moving out our departure date by about two weeks, so that we will have been out of the zone for 90 days since returning from our upcoming tour of Greece.  Thanks go to Steve of the Grampies for input on how to think about this!
• Because we’re starting a bit later, it doesn’t work quite as well for crossing the French Alps - we wouldn’t get there until early October and that’s pushing the season a bit.  Instead, we’re going to get our mountain high in the Dolomites at the start of the tour, and cross into France along the sea rather than over the Alps.
• And, of course, the biggest amendment - we need to leave The Zone after 90 days, which will get us to Valencia.  That leaves us some winter time to come up with a plan for, but we’ll probably just head back home for a bit and then go south for a month or so - maybe take the bikes on an Amtrak tour of southern California and Arizona.

We both like this plan a lot.  There’s a lot of room for adjustments along the way, but it looks like the right box to play in for three months.  Now, back to that downsizing project.