June 20th: Ivrea to Aosta

 Despite getting up at 6:30am, we didn’t get going until 7:22am. It was already warm, with the cycling computer registering 80F at the start of the ride. The bike route wove along the villages of the Dora Baltea valley, switching sides to stay on roads with lighter traffic since there’s no bike path along the actual river. Since the route was biased along one side or the other we did spend a significant time in the shade, for which we were grateful, and since the route used mostly roads, we were spared from gratuitous climbing until Quincinetto, where we had to rejoin the main road onto the narrow opening at Pont-Saint-Martin.

All through the ride we would see signs of train line renovation, with poles and wires strung up so that the new electrified train cars could run 100% on electricity. This was why even though I had not enjoyed the ride to Aosta the last couple of times I was in the area, we were still riding it again this time! The previous two times I’d not even considered the train as an option, which was kinda dumb.

Fortunately, while there was a climb there, we were over-taken by what looked like a bike club outing, which forced the normally aggressive Italian drivers to dial down their aggression, since they had to pass a succession of cyclists split into small groups. The cycling club regrouped at a water fountain but since we had plenty of water we kept going and then the bike path descended on the main road before joining the river for a bit along a dedicated path. Being next to the river gave us a dose of natural AC, which was a morale booster.

Nevertheless, the temperature climbed as we rode, and near Aosta, we had to leave the bike path to climb to town, but not before traversing what looked like a newly built dedicated tunnel for the bike path. I was pretty cooked so by the time I got to the entrance to town, we’d lost Mark. I texted him to come back because I was not going to even attempt to start a climb of the Grand St Bernard in this heat.

Pulling out the phone, we searched for  hotels with air conditioning, and thought that Hotel Omama looked attractive. Rather than book on the phone, we did what we usually did when the hotel was within cycling distance, which was to ride to the hotel and negotiate with the receptionist for a better price than booking, knowing that by booking directly, the hotel could avoid paying the booking.com commission and might share the savings with us. The ride there was tricky, since neither Google nor Garmin wanted to take us there, but we eventually made it to the outside of the hotel.

Going in, we negotiated a rate and discovered that their parking spaces were taken up, but that the street parking was actually reasonable. We negotiated with the hotel but I don’t remember what the outcome was, though my suspicion was that once we experienced that AC we knew we weren’t going to keep riding in this weather if we could help it! Mark said that once I texted him to come back he realized that he wasn’t in thermal shape to climb Grand St Bernard either.

Boen had developed strong opinions about noodles in Europe. “The Europeans just don’t know how to make noodles. Even instant noodles are better than any Italian pasta!” I noticed that there was a Japanese Ramen place in old town Aosta, which was an easy walk away, so the 11 year old determined where the 4 of us were going to eat lunch. Xiaoqin and Bowen had gone to visit a lake to Ivrea, so after we’d accepted the hotel’s offer she started driving.

I’d never actually stayed in downtown Aosta before, and walking through the portal into the old town was new to me. It looked like quite a pretty and happening place. Donburi House’s waitresses were all non-Asian, but the menu looked good enough for us to order. Boen and I had Ramen. Xiaoqin wasn’t a big fan of Ramen, so when she arrived and parked the car at a charging station, just Bowen walked over. The waitresses immediately pulled out a chair and and sat Bowen at the end. “If a car comes just get out of the way.” It was such a typical Italian attitude!

By the time lunch was finished, shaved us sounded good. Xiaoqin joined us and we went on a quick walk around town before the hotel’s official checkin time of 2:00pm. It really was too hot to spend any more time outside when necessary, and besides the car had to finish charging as well. When the car was done charging, Arturo drove the car over to the hotel while the rest of us walked over. We moved in, took showers, did laundry, and got caught up with sharing pictures. We discussed where to go for dinner and ended up picking a tapas place. Arturo went exploring around town but the rest of us were too tired of the heat to do more.

The tapas place was surprisingly expensive and the food wasn’t remarkable, but we ate up and once we had finished dinner, the place had cooled down enough that we could walk around. Arturo’s explorations had paid off as he led us around the town and showed us what he had discovered. Aosta is a surprisingly pretty town—I’d avoided it on previous occasions but only because I was eager to get high and out of the heat, it was ironic that the heat was what caused me to stay here this time.

In the evening, just before bed-time, Arturo sent a disturbing text: “Grand St Bernard Pass is closed until June 22!” Experience had taught me that closed to cars doesn’t mean closed to bicycles and it was too late to do anything about it anyway, so I just went to bed and didn’t even bother responding.

June 19th: Isola 2000 to Ivrea

 Waking up, we ate our breakfast in Arturo and Mark’s apartment. We had instant noodles, cereal and lactose free milk, which was easily available everywhere we went on this trip. “In the alps, people are lactose intolerant, that’s why it’s so available.” That was completely counter-intuitive to me, because all through the alps, the sound of cowbells was the soundtrack that kept us company on our climbs!

Leaving Isola 2000, we climbed the last 300m to the pass with no problems, and in fact the scenery improved dramatically once we left the village. There was an annoying garbage truck driving up and down the pass, but other than that, with light traffic we had a very enjoyable arrival at the top where Xiaoqin and Bowen quickly joined us. We took a few pass photos and immediately started our descent. Once again, Mark and I leaped frog each other, getting action shots of each other on the descent.

The top of Col de la Lombarde was open, with multiple lakes that begged for good weather.  After that, the road turned into a one lane affair with multiple narrow switchbacks, diving into wooded areas with occasional wide open views that were breathtaking if not for the sheer concentration needed to keep tires on pavement and anticipate cornering angles and lean. This was an exhilarating pass for a skilled cyclist confident of his equipment and at this point in the tour we were all dialed in.

The road was headed down towards the Stura di Demonte, and whenever there was a clearing we could see clearly across the valley to the beautiful ghost town of Nerraisa Superior. At one point there was an intersection with another minor road where the GPS directed us to the right and from there it took on a different character, no longer steeply descending but still full of switchbacks, at one point bottlenecking on the road when a group of cows were being herded along. By and large, though we had the road to ourselves and where the road doubled back upon itself the views were spectacular. You almost wished you were going slowly so you had more time to enjoy it, but who am I kidding, the road put you in a continual state of flow, mind, body and machine acting as one, leaning, braking, turning. It’s as close as a human can get to flying like a superhero without leaving the ground.

 After a series of switchbacks where we rapidly lost altitude, at Pratolungo (893m), we turned away from SS21 (the Col de Larche highway) onto a series of delightful bike paths. While we were low and warm, the bike path was mostly shaded and while not fast, we still made good time as we still had altitude to lose. The bike path was undulating, but with Mark pacing us whenever there was a flat section we made very good time and arrived at the Cuneo train station at noon, having just missed the train. Since Arturo was a good 10 minutes behind, it was just as well. We bought train tickets from a human, showing him the tandem so he understood how to charge us and he gave us the direct train from Cuneo to Torino, where we would change for the train to Cuneo.

We found the track and discovered that the train was already at the gate, granting us plenty of time to board with the tandem. There wasn’t exactly a tandem parking spot, but I found an aisle where I could put the wheels of the tandem on top of a curb next to a handrail, and use my helmet’s strabs to lock the tandem to the handrails, ensuring that it wouldn’t move at all despite looking precarious. The outside of the train looked dismaying, full of graffiti, and with the windows fogged over, but inside the train looked in great condition, even with air conditioning which was very helpful in the heat.

We took turns walking to the vending machines to buy lunch and drinks and then proceeded to eat and plan what to do in Torino, where had a 2-3 hour layover. ChatGPT had told us there was a bicycle parking station at the train station, so we could actually explore and see the city and the famous arcades.

Xiaoqin and Bowen had arrived at Cuneo and were having lunch. We decided we could now commit to lodging in Ivrea. Using the booking app, we got 3 bedrooms at the Borgo Yporegia, a contactless apartment rental that most importantly had AC. We texted the details while I filled out the onerous visitor forms online. To their credit, their remote customer service people were quite responsive. When my phone’s browser choked on the insane form, they let me send passport photos via WhatsApp so I could avoid filling out the form. They charged us the tourist tax remotely as well. What I didn’t like was how they nickle and dimed us on everything. For instance, when Arturo wanted to use the bunk bed so he and Mark didn’t have to share a bed, they charged us an additional fee!

Arriving at Torino, we discovered that the bike parking facility was closed to tourists—their customer service/point of sale system was down, and they didn’t have the means to check anyone who wasn’t already registered into the system. Mark didn’t want to visit Torino anyway, so he declared he would guard our bikes while Boen, Arturo, and I went to town. Once out of the air conditioned train we could tell that the heat was quite something. We walked past the arcades which were necessary shielding from the hot Piedmont sun and found an ice cream shop. I spotted another supermarket  that sold (quite bad) sushi for an additional supplement lunch. Arturo wanted to see the palace so Boen and I started walking back to the train station. We stopped by the Decathlon shop but couldn’t find the cycling food section in a reasonable time so abandoned that to join Mark and eat the rest of our lunch.

When the gate for the train was announced we used our paper tickets and showed them to the train police and they let us through the gate as the automated gates would shut on the tandem if we had tried to go through them. To our delight, the Ivrea train line had very modern rolling stock, with no problem accommodating the tandem. Whenever they finished the electrification of this train line, this train was going to allow 200+ miles of skipping the piedmont plains in air conditioned comfort.

Arriving in Ivrea, it was a mere 10 minute ride to Borgo Yporegia, where the car was already parked with sufficient charge to make it to Aosta the next day, so we didn’t have to move it from its paid parking spot. There were several gelato shops within walking distance, as was the spar, so once we got showered and enjoyed the AC for a few minutes we took advantage of that. While the booking app told us there was no breakfast, the apartment actually came with a significant amount of packaged breakfast food free of charge! Ok, so they didn’t nickle and dime us for everything.

Arturo found and made reservations at La Cantinetta, which was all the way on the other side of town because he had use the WhatsApp contact to find restaurants rather than the booking info I’d sent to the group. That meant it was an entire 15 minute walk to the restaurant along the Dora Baltea river. When we arrived it was outdoor seating with no AC, but at least it was in the shade and they served coupious amounts of cold water.

They asked us if we’d like the sample package, which was a little of everything. In a fit of hunger and ambition we said yes. The food came, we ate it all, and then the empty plates went away and more plates came. It repeated multiple times, and each time it got a little harder to finish all the food. By the time the pasta dishes came we were well and full and stuffed. But it was a good stuffing, and since we didn’t finish our pasta I put my foot down and said “No dessert!” I wanted to try the gelato place Xiaoqin had pointed out and I feared we had been running up a bill at the place.

We did get gelato, and it was cheap and it was good. We’d plotted a route to Aosta from Ivrea, and we knew we wanted as early a start as possible, but booked no lodging because we wanted the option to partially go up Grand St Bernard if the conditions allowed and we felt good.

Review: Absolute Superman Vol 1 & 2

 I missed all the hoopla when DC announced the new absolute universe, so I only picked up Last Dust of Krypton when I finished Die and the Hoopla recommendation engine told me to check this one out. The cover art looked absolutely gorgeous, so I borrowed it and read it. And then checked out Son of the Demon right after that.

This is an alternate Superman, where Kal-El comes to Earth not as a baby but instead as a young boy. It reimagines the meaning of the S symbol, and this Earth is a hellscape that's evocative of what billionaires on this planet are turning the Earth into. (Krypton is no different, and two books give you plenty of glimpses of what Krypton was like)

The villain that this Superman faces is also different from the traditional Lex Luthor (though Brainiac does show up). It's also fun seeing a different Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. The Superman cape also literally now has a mind of its own.

The core of the character remains the same, though he's got a lot less power and obviously the science is still missing --- Superman was always a fantasy story, not science fiction. When I think about it, I still think Miracleman is still by far the best Superman-style story ever told, but this version of Superman is at least different enough that I'm curious to see where the writers go with it. At the very least the art was consistently good. Recommended.

June 18th: Saint-Etienne-de-Tinee to Isola 2000

 Waking up in time for the breakfast to be served, we were relieved to discover that breakfast wasn’t entirely devoted to kids. At the very least, their coffee machines worked. The adult guardians of the kids at the field trips would fill giant pitchers of juice from the juice machines, but it was clear they weren’t going to feed their kids coffee.

Over breakfast, we could hear the adults saying to the kids, “Are we ready to have a good time?” The kids would cheer. “So, today, here’s the plan, and we’re going to go hiking!” At which point the kids would go silent. Clearly, they were not fans of hiking!

Departing St Etienne, we headed back up to the main road and climbed a little hill before the road descended furiously towards Isola. Looking on my right side, I could see the bike path, but with light traffic in the morning the road is always faster than the bike path, and what traffic there was behaved well.

Reaching Isola, we stopped to take off our jackets and then started the climb. There was an LED display, but we ignored that. Arturo would text later saying, “The sign at the bottom said there was construction until 12:00pm and the road was blocked until then.” I’ve learned from experience that these closures are more often than not soft—much of the time, there are workarounds or bypasses for cyclists, and the rational thing is to always climb the pass until somebody actually stops you.

The climb goes up steeply, winding its way around a series of waterfalls which were probably engineered if not artificially routed in such a way so that the river wouldn’t flood the road. I enjoyed the coolness of the shaded climb. Sure enough, we saw cars driving up and minutes later saw the same car driving back down. One of the drivers even stopped to make sure we knew that the road was closed. With unshakeable faith, we kept riding until the construction zone. From there, we were asked to stop and wait. The construction worker we talked to didn’t know when we would be allowed through. Well, I wasn’t going to descend and come back up again, so we chose to wait, eating a little bit and drinking. Mark and Arturo rode up. Arturo went to talk to the construction worker assigned to block the road. A police car came up. “He sounded irritated when I told him I was with you guys.”

Sure enough, our wait didn’t even last 20 minutes when the construction workers waved us through, telling Arturo that they were on a smoke break. The work ethic of the European worker had saved us once more! Xiaoqin and Bowen didn’t make this round, but we told them via text message that whenever they were ready, they should just camp out and queue at the blockage for the next smoke break.

The construction block was minor, a short 300m stretch that looked like it was already finished pavement with nary a gravel pebble in sight! The nice thing about this was that after we crossed and they re-closed the construction zone behind us, we now had the road to ourselves with really light traffic. Occasionally there’d be a car that had parked somewhere for hiking or some other activity but those were nicely spread out. With the road being so quiet, we even saw an elk on the way to Isola 2000. Once we cleared the tree line, the sun once again beat down on us, but we saw the EX30 drive past us on the way to the apartment we had rented.

As we approached the ski resort, the signs of commercial life started hitting us over the head. I remembered that in 2011 when I came down the opposite way, all the advertising for Isola 2000 convinced me to stay away from it! Mark had already reached the apartment and got in touch with the owner. “They’re nowhere ready to let us check-in, but we can go get lunch at the supermarket before coming back to check in. They’re letting us park our bikes outside while they get the apartment ready.” We got out of our cycling shoes and walked over to the supermarket. It was a tiny market and about to close. We grabbed whatever sandwiches were available and then went ate outside the supermarket.

The day was still too early to check-in when we were done, so we decided to go for a hike. At 2000m, the weather was cool, and we walked out towards the ski lift. On the way there, we saw the restaurant Le Gavouts. Arturo walked in and asked if they served dinner and when they replied in the affirmative, made a reservation for 7pm.

We then walked up the mountain, following the signs for Col de la Lombarde and came upon a huge picnic after encountering a huge herd of cows wandering about. When asked what this was about, they replied that they’d been walking the cows over from the Italian border for the past 3 days. There were probably inns or villages in between, as I did not see any camping gear that they were carrying, though apparently, they had a number of support vehicles that could conceivably carry tents. This was the end of their journey and they were celebrating.

Further up the trail, we came across a hotel with the UAE minivan parked outside it. We would later confirm that we’d found the Isola 2000 base camp where Tadej Pocagar would do his altitude training after finishing the Tour de Suisse, which was happening right now. Walking further up, we found signs to various other hiking features in the area, which were quite extensive. Boen got fed up of hiking and decided to walk back down on their own while we walked up until we could see further and spot the pass. We found an alternative way back to the village and told Boen to head down to where the UAE van was.

The sky had darkened and it was about to start raining but we still couldn’t find Boen. He’d missed the UAE van and walked all the way back to where the cow party was. Xiaoqin and I eventually found him, but it started raining in earnest. Fortunately, we spotted a woman get into her car just then and start driving down the road. We stuck out our thumbs and she stopped, unlocked her doors and gave us a ride back to the hotel, where Mark had managed to get the bikes into the bike shelter. We quickly moved all our luggage inside while Arturo and Bowen ran into the apartment building all wet. We always made the comment that Boen is always lucky, and this is one illustration of it. By getting lost he’d gotten a car ride and avoided the rain!

The place was quite cozy for 4 people, but it was well equipped. We had to pay for sheets, but the place came with coffee. We knew we had to shop for breakfast the next morning, but we first took showers and waited for the rain to abate before Arturo and I headed to the supermarket to buy breakfast. The supermarket was clearly not prepared for an onslaught of 6 people shopping for breakfast because we grabbed all the bread they had left! Arturo would tell us later that they baked the bread onsite.

We got back to the apartment and started charging the car, noting that it needed enough charge to get not just to Cuneo the next day, but all the way to Ivrea where the train connection from Cuneo would take the cyclists. We also had to account for the regenerative braking from the top of Col de la Lombarde, since an EV with a full battery would give less braking since the battery would be too full to absorb energy from the descent! Clearly, driving an EV brought all sorts of addition thought processes you needed, but between the 6 of us we have 8 or so computer science degrees, so it was well within our capabilities.

The storm had almost completely dried up by the time it was time to make our dinner reservations, so we abandoned emergency plans to buy dinner as well and just walked over to the restaurant, which turned out to be quite good, so much so that Mark and I both ordered additional dishes.

The downside of the rain was that our stuff wasn’t going to dry overnight, but it would at least grant us a cool morning climb the next day. We looked at various options in Ivrea to verify that there was plenty of lodging availability but deliberately did not book any lodging. We wanted to be on the train and be assured that we would make it all the way to Ivrea before committing ourselves to anything.

Review: Rise of the Dungeon Master

 Rise of the Dungeon Master is a recounting of the history of D&D, told in comic book format. It is short and easy to read, something you can finish in less than an hour. The art is crude but effective, and one of the most interesting properties about the narrative is that it alludes to D&D but speaking to you in the second person, occasionally giving you choices.

The story provides very minor biographical details about Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and does a good job of avoiding siding with either side when their relationship turned acrimonious, mostly because Gygax left Arneson out of the company he started. It's clear that as a businessman, Gygax was way out of his depth (the guy was a high school dropout, and had lots of other things on his mind), and lost control of his company despite his success because he didn't keep a handle on the CEOs he brought in to help run the company.

Don't expect great detail about the various editions of D&D or even the business battles that went on behind the scenes, many of which were covered by NDA anyway. But for a short quick read that doesn't waste your time I can recommend it.

June 17th: Jausiers to Saint-Etienne-de-Tinee

 We woke up and had breakfast, fried eggs, yogurt, a mix of bread and meat and granola. This was going to be the highest pass of the entire trip, with an additional side trip up the Cime for what is referred to as the highest paved road in the Alps. There’s a higher paved road in Spain, but that’s not in the Alps, and Arturo explained that the Spanish road wasn’t open to private cars, only buses (and obviously, bicycles).

We got onto the road at 8:42am and started the climb immediately—the warm up flat section was at most 500m, and the climb was a steady profile with very few grade changes that I could remember. While it was already warm, we knew that if we climbed at our standard 300m per hour of vertical ascent pace, we would be out of the heat zone in by 11:00am. What really helped were the shaded spots on the road. Once out of the direct sun we could climb with vim, and climb we did.

At the promised 12km mark, I spotted a sign that said “Water 500m ahead”, and that sign was very much needed since a descent started and we would have been tempted to zoom past our last water fountain if we had not been suitably forewarned.

One enemy that we had been facing since we started were flies. While houseflies were just annoying, occasionally I would feel a bite and it would be a horsefly taking its lump of meat off me. This annoyance did not go away until we hit 2200m or so, whereupon we felt a breeze and suddenly they disappeared.

You can see Cime de la Bonnette (the bonus climb) far away, and it’s intimidating since it’s a 9% grade and obviously steeper than the col climb.  There’s obviously a short cut since the Col itself is significantly shorter, but once you’d made it there you were going to do the Cime. Boen and I had a quick stop at the Col for pictures and then proceeded to climb hard up the Cime. We passed a couple of ebikes that were obviously throttling so that they wouldn’t use up precious battery on the excursion. (Ebikes do not have regenerative braking so the descent wouldn’t give them any power back)

At the official Cime summit we stopped where Mark had been waiting for some time. We got the requisite pictures, and then proceeded to hike the Cime proper. The scenery was amazing, since we were well above the treeline, and hence could see for miles around. We could see the ribbon of the road we had climbed up link up with the ribbon of road we would have to descend, and the descent would be pretty long, since St Etienne was at 1100m!

Once we were done with the hike, we ate some food and started the descent together. It didn’t take long before Arturo had fallen out of sight, since he didn’t have the mass to keep up with the tandem. Mark and I leap-frogged each other, taking turns taking photos of each other descent through this amazing scenery, which led us through abandoned World War 2 fortifications. While traffic was light, we soon caught up to a slow RV which was driven by a driver who was willing to pull over to let bicycles and motorcycles pass.  With him behind us, we could take the entire road with confidence since cars would have to negotiate around him and motorcyclists were usually competent enough to give us plenty of room, but that limited our photo stops, since every time we stopped for photos, he would catch up and we would have to get going again so that we wouldn’t have to do the work of overtaking him again!

On the way down the pass, we passed a single refuge with tables and serving lunch, but the descent was too fun to stop, and we kept going until at the Cascade de Vens parking lot we spotted the Volvo EX30. Clearly Xiaoqin and Bowen had gone for a hike. We kept going down to St Etienne until we found La Rabouns, but the hotel’s reception wasn’t manned. There was a phone number, but it wasn’t answering. A janitor walked by and told me it wasn’t open until 3:00pm. A check of the booking app told us that they would charge us for earlier check-in, but I got no response even after replying in the affirmative. Well, it was still lunch time, so Boen, Mark and I went back downtown to Restaurant de la Poste, which served a strange version of duck confit, a burger with black buns, and most importantly to Boen, a fantastic Crème Brulee.  After that, we waited half an hour at La Rabouns before the receptionist showed up. A bunch of kids obviously on some sort of school field trip also showed up, but apparently their adult guardians weren’t organized, so they checked us in first, putting our bikes in some sort of auditorium.

The rooms were similarly sort of like kids’ summer camp lodging, with lots of beds, and an integrated shower/toilet. The whole thing was strange. I would have thought that I hadn’t read the booking description of the building carefully enough, but later at dinner I could tell that other “hotel guests” were similarly nonplussed.

Xiaoqin and Bowen showed up, and we did laundry and got showered. Xiaoqin asked if this place was an orphanage after seeing all the unsupervised kids running around!

Dinner was similarly weird. We basically got served the same meals the kids got, with only minor adjustments to make sure that we got adult portions. The meals were really unappealing, unlike all the hype you got about French school meals if you read media in the USA. There was a piece of pizza, some salad thingy, and then pasta, and unsatisfying dessert. No wonder it was “such a deal!”

We ate as quickly as we could to escape the choruses of little kids. Walking around town, we discovered that unlike booking had said, there were other hotels, mostly at the edge of the town, near the entrance we had used, though they looked pretty busy. There were also signs pointing to rooms available for rent. In the future, I think the answer is to be brave and show up and visit the tourist office or check at the hotels, rather than booking.com.

We found the first zipline playground of the trip. However, the kids did a couple of runs and it was clear that even for the kids the zipline kind of sagged onto the ground with their weight.

We decided that Isola 2000 was a suitable goal for the next day after today’s effort, booking apartments at the ski town. Google maps showed that there was a supermarket open, but it had only started operating the week before, so we understood that we were getting the “pre-summer ski town” experience. Nevertheless, it looked like there would be food, and worse came to worse, we would have the car and could drive down to Isola village proper for more groceries at the cost of an hour or so. Staying at 2000m up would give us cooler climate before the run across the border into the lowlands of Italy, which we were dreading in this unprecedented European heatwave.

We went to bed, noting the breakfast time.