Help!

It’s 20 days ’til the date I’ve told every­one I know (and plenty I don’t) that I’m going to leave on to cycle round the world — is this the part where the nerves are meant to kick in? I guess it would be weird if not, since the fur­thest end-to-end dis­tance I’ve ever cycled was 140 miles, and I’ve never been out­side the UK on a bike, or trav­elled to any coun­try fur­ther East than Austria.

Right now, I have occa­sional bouts of incred­ible excite­ment — for the exper­i­ence prom­ises to be noth­ing if not life-changing — inter­sec­ted with irra­tional bouts of ter­ror! If I camp in the Romanian moun­tains, will wolves be feast­ing upon my inert form by sun­rise? Will the fact that I haven’t got maps for 90% of the world, or in fact any real route other than a tent­at­ive list of coun­tries, really mat­ter? Will I have found everything on my list of ‘things I haven’t got’ by the 17th of June? Do I really need to take 5 chains? Will it rain on the day I leave?