June 27th: Merano to Vigo di Fassa

 Breakfast at Suite Seven lived up to the reviews, with excellent servings of bread, meat, and they even specially made Boen his soft-boiled eggs when he asked. The checkout was straightforward, but we were delayed when we discovered that Boen had lost his sunglasses. Fortunately, the bike shop was just next door and Boen's new sunglasses were a lot cheaper than the price Arturo had paid for his in Disentis.

Following the Garmin navigation directions out of Merano, we got onto the bike path to Bolzano and immediately met Thomas from Germany, who was out to climb Passo Mendola that day. After we introduced ourselves, he was more than happy to paceline us all the way to the Bolzano intersection, with us sitting behind his wheel. This time, Arturo showed up in short order, having found his own paceline to draft.

From there, we followed the bike path to the Steinegg intersection, where we turned on our lights and braved ourselves for the 4km tunnel, which was every bit as nerve-wracking and painful as I remembered. The tunnel climbs uphill, has no shoulders for bike paths, and cycling in a tunnel is easily one of the least pleasant ways to spend time on the bike.

After that first set of tunnels, we found the bike path that avoided tunnels for the rest of the ride to Nova Levante, though we had a longish stop at the first ice cream shop to sooth our nerves. The day had warmed up, and the grade increased as we got to the town center of Nova Levante, where I pulled into the primary bus stop at the bottom of a ski lift. I remembered that the exit from Nova Levanted was a stiff 20% grade. On a single this was manageable but on a tandem with a touring load I had my doubts as to whether it was doable even when we were fresh, especially given the heavy traffic.

I took apart the tandem and when the bus arrived the driver didn't even blink an eye as we loaded up the bus, with Arturo's bike hanging off the bike rack behind and me filling the stroller area on the bus. When Arturo tried to pay, the bus driver waved him off --- the credit card scanner was broken on the bus so our ride (which would have been cheap since we were only riding the bus for one stop) was free!

At the Karasee bus stop, we got off the bus and put together our tandem and Arturo had to mount is luggage. The lake was mirror-still as it usually was, unusual in the afternoon, and we parked our bikes and walked a little bit around the lake, capturing the reflections behind us. We then rode the now gentle grade up to Passo Costalunga. At Costalunga we felt rain drops, and pulling out the phone,we decided to book a hotel in Vigo di Fassa that offered a great deal for dinner breakfast and lodging.

Rain drops got a little more frequent  as we made the descent, but it never developed to even a light drizzle. The descent became smooth and fast, and the GPS guided us directlky to the hotel where before we could even check in, the receptionist told us that we should just take in the light snack that was being served at 4:00pm.

Not having had lunch we dug in! There was sandwiches, chocolate drizzle cakes, and other desserts. It turned out that this was a family focused hotel, and they served a light snack as dinner wasn't until 7pm!

We ate until we were satisfied and then checked in with the hotel, whereupon we were told where to park our bikes. We unloaded, showered, and did laundry and then walked over to the closest supermarket to buy emergency snacks the next day. Enough rain came down that we could take pictures of rainbows as we walked.

I looked at my plan for the trip and realized that we were an entire week behind schedule at this point, making our plan to ride to Slovenia in jeopardy unless there were ways to take a train back from Lake Bled to Switzerland.

There was a night train from Lake Bled to Zurich which would have been ideal but it did not take bikes! No other alternatives were available. In a single day we had gone from excited that we'd rescued a day by taking a bus to being dejected. I looked at the map and decided that we could ride to Arraba the next day instead, then make our way to Cortina and Misurina the day after that. From there, depending on the weather we could ride the Grossglockner, Timmelsjoch or Reschen pass and so could salvage the rest of the trip.

Dinner started at 7pm, but it began with a long introduction of the staff --- apparently most people stayed at the hotel for a week, and this was the last night for most of the families staying at the hotel. Service was incredibly slow and we weren't done with dinner until well after 9:30pm. The main entree was rabbit, which I'm not a particular fan of, but I was hungry at this point I just ate it like a starving man.

 

Review: Slow Productivity

 I usually enjoy Cal Newport's books, even when I disagree with them. Slow Productivity is no exception. I learned a lot. For instance, despite Virginia's Woolf's depiction of Jane Austen writing in her sitting room in between visitors, Newport reveals that her literary output during that time was next to nothing. She only got a chance to write her great novels when her family came into money and deliberately went into social seclusion so she could write!

Effectively, individuals in creative fields (scientists, writers, artists) should take the long view of their work. For instance, he mentions that Madam Curie immediately after her insight that the radioactive potash she was studying likely contained a new element, went for a summer break of hiking and other outdoor activities with her family. (Instantly, this debunks the famous linkedin/social media meme that the ideal vacation is only a week long and anything more is wasted)

Now, one issue with the book is that so many of the case studies and examples are from people who were already effectively independently wealthy. (Not surprisingly, most great scientists in the 16th to 19th centuries were effectively independently wealthy because only the independently wealthy could spend their time studying something with no immediate payback!) Da Vinci might not have been independently wealthy but he also had many wealthy patrons that bankrolled him or commissioned work that did not have to be delivered for years.

One modern example is Andrew Wiles, who as a tenured professor had the luxury of minimizing his teaching load and was already working on related work when he realized that he might be the person most suited to proving Fermat's Last Theorem. I enjoyed the example but the rarity of Wiles' position as a tenured professor would make your heart sink.

Another example was the musician Jewel Kilcher, who deliberately negotiated her million dollar advance down so that her record label wouldn't lose patience with her if her first album wasn't an immediate breakout success. That's great, but it's just a reminder of how much less patient the commercial music business has been since the days of Fleetwood Mac, whose first 17 albums failed to make any impression before they produced Rumors.

Finally, the book is largely directed at individual contributors (so for instance there's no mention of Fleetwood Mac). That's as it should be, since Newport as a Professor has probably never had to manage an industrial sized project to completion. I suspect that one big facet of industrial creativity in output has to be secrecy. It's much easier to fail fast and fail frequently if your failures are private rather than public, and to do so as part of a large enterprise you cannot expose all your bets to the public. On the other hand, many have observed that most of Google's experimental projects have completely failed with nothing to show for it and no institutional learning, so it's quite clear that it's not simply having unlimited resources will help you achieve big, long term success.

I learned quite a bit from this book. I think you should read it. But if there's one lesson I had to distill from this book is that you should be patient with yourself. It takes many years for even the smartest most successful people to achieve their careers. Don't expect to be an overnight success.

June 26th: Livigno to Merano

 In the morning we ate a quick but thorough breakfast before riding out towards the Livigno tunnel. Boen discovered to his surprise as he tried to roll the tandem out of the garage without panniers that he could not even make it up the little ramp from the garage back to the road!

As anticipated, right at the lake, a fast paceline caught us and Boen and I immediately jumped into the middle of the group and got towed along at 20-25mph, with the paceline occasionallky pogoing as we went in and out of galleries, around traffic islands, or tackled a gentle turn. Both Boen and I were pedaling much too hard to even consider taking pictures, but we knew this was much faster and easier than riding on our own.

Arriving at the tunnel, we were quite a bit ahead of the designated 9:45am start time for the crossing. The van with its trailer for bikes were there, and so was the driver. He looked at our tandem and commented that he'd have to stow it inside the van. Arturo showed up about 15 minutes later. "I was taking a photo and by the time I got my phone back in my pocket it was too late to catch the paceline!" 2 more cyclists showed up.

At the designated time, the driver loaded up all the bikes onto the trailer and proceeded to charge us 6 Euros each for driving a bike through the tunnel, with the tandem counting as one bike.

Once on the other side, we once again had to climb Ofenpass but this time in weather that wasn't as rainy. At the top of Ofenpass we took another quick picture and then quickly rode down the other side, past Santa Maria and then onto Mustair, whether tbe border was. In the past, I've ridden onto the dirt bike path immediately on the Italian side, but this time I told Arturo that in the interest of time, we should stay on the road until the bike path turned into pavement.

Once at Laudes we followed the instructions onto a short climb before intersecting with the bike path the Merano and proceeded quicky down the bike path towards Glorenza. At Glorenza we saw the hot dog stand but unfortunately it was closed! I'd hope to stop there for lunch, but this was not to be. Instead we kept rolling down the bike path, stopping at a lake with ducks where we ate the food we had bought the previous day, with Boen feeding the leftover bread to the ducks.

"It feels strange to roll past the Prato Allo Stelvio exit and not ride it!" I declaimed to Arturo.  As we kept going past Prato Allo Stelvio, the bike path would alternate between dirt and pavement. Arturo wasn't as confident as we were on the dirt so we soon left him behind, only for him to catch back up to us when we finally stopped for ice cream at the road side stand.

We debated to ride on to Bolzano or stay in Merano but as we rode into Merano the weather started to turn. I'd spotted SuiteSeven on Booking.com as having a nice air conditioned apartment at a good price. I pushed for us to just show up and ask, but when the directions got us to the location we discovered that the location had no reception. Everything was done virtually. Well, I'd paid for a month of Skype unlimited for good reason so I called the number. The virtual receptionist told us that they had to call and see if staff was available to make up the room and asked for a number for callback. We gave her Boen's Italian sim card phone number and she called us back 5 minutes later with the affirmative, even remotely unlocking the lock box for us so we could retrieve the key!

Fascinatingly, the bike storage was the common bathroom on the second floor, which was guaded by the card key we were given, so we left our bikes in there and moved in. We turned on the AC, took showers and did laundry and the staff showed up to deliver a 3rd bed. We then went out to have an early dinner at the Tapas place around the corner and ice cream next door to it. The price was good and the food very good. We could also find open supermarkets easily and buy fruits and additional snacks. At the supermarket we tried to find sugar-free/caffeine free coke but couldn't --- instead we found this odd drink called Chinotto, which had neither sugar nor caffeine. We would try it and it would taste like chinese medicine. The funny thing was that as awful as it tasted we still kept drinking it until the bottle was empty by morning.

Walking around Merano in between rain storms I was impressed by how nice it was. I realized that it was a mistake on previous trips to just head on to Bolazno directly instead of staying at Merano.

June 25th: Bormio to Livigno via Laghi Cancano

 

We woke up early, got our bikes and panniers out, and rode out of Bormio with our new lights flashing on our bikes. It was cloudy and ominous, but the forecast said that it wouldn't really start raining until 2:00pm. I had laid out a route on Garmin Connect the night before, but instructed Arturo to just stay on the main road and follow signs for Laghi Cancano so as to avoid whatever hijinks Garmin Connect chose for us.

Sure enough, we ended up ignoring the Garmin generated route all the way until the signs for Laghi Cancano, but there was a sign announcing a road closure. Fortunately, the road closure only applied to direct route to Degola and Pedenosso, and the official route stayed higher. There was not much traffic in the morning, though we saw signs that someone had camped out on the road the night before --- their tent was still present.

We hit the switchbacks and rain drops started to be felt.  We kept going, however, and sure enough at the tunnel, the sky turned blue and we had an outstanding view of the switchbacks from whence we had come. Past the tunnel, the road flattened out and we got gorgeous views of the first lake. It turned out that there were 3 lakes, with two of them being part of the power generation system and the third was just a pond and not often mentioned or even remembered.

At the first of the major lakes the road turned into gravel but the scenery got better! As we rode on the dam at the end of the second lake we were treated to glorious views of the surrounding mountains. At the far end of these was a Refugio and a bus stop. From here on out there would be no way to bail out. We saw a waterfall coming out of a culvert followed by an abandoned village with a church that looked like it was in good condition.

Following Sean's directions we found a sign for Passo Di Valle Alpisella. From here on the road got steeper and more rugged until we had to get off and push the bike! Or rather, I pushed the bike while Boen entertained us. The lakes were at 1950m and the pass was at 2292m, which meant that we had to climb more than 300m. I estimate that we spent at least 45 minutes intermittently riding and walking the bikes. Each time we saw a lake we would be hopeful that we would reach the summit, only to have our hopes dashed when the road relentlessly marched upwards. We saw a number of mountain bikers but nearly all of them had electric motors mounted. Two SUVs passed us.

Nevertheless, after the first couple of lakes we became able to ride on a more consistent basis and sure enough we were soon at the summit. There we took pictures and put on our jackets. The sign said 2km to Livigno. "Those must be Italian kilometers. That's 400m of descent!" I was wrong about the distance the road descended steeply, with occasional culverts and diversionary reinforcement on the road so that it wouldn't get washed out by the next rain. It was steep enough that I was hanging on to my brakes the whole time going at walking speed. That's safe because at walking speed you're not building up enough heat to blow out the tandem's tires.

Past the first kilometer the road (some might call it a hiking trail, but it was much wider than a single-track) flattened out a bit and I could now take the road at a decently fast speed. The culverts got deeper and deeper, however, until we clipped a pedal and would have crashed if I hadn't had so much practice doing crazy things on a tandem.

Arriving safely at the bottom we felt rain drops and started riding to the hotel but only made it to the hiking trail's parking lot when it started coming down hard. We sheltered under a closed hotel until it stopped raining. We booked a hotel and when the rain let up we rode on wet roads.  I was pretty exhausted at this point, and as we went under an underpass I suggested walking our bikes up the steep grade on the other side. "No way!" declared Boen. Sure enough, he pushed hard on the pedals and we got up the grade and made it to our hotel.

It took a while to find a receptionist to check us in. But as we moved in, did laundry, and walked out to dinner we considered it a very satisfying day. We'd achieved our goals, defied the odds, and showed ourselves to be great bike handlers.

Review: Rene Herse Stampede Pass Tires

 I was going to execute the 2024 Bike Tour using the Vittoria Corsa NEXT 34mm tires. But after just 2000 miles on the front I noticed that the rubber was already getting thin, which didn't bode well for a tour where I'd be carrying luggage. I'd had enough Continental GP5000 sidewall failures that I didn't want to use it if I could help it.

I'd bought through second hand sources a number of Rene Herse Stampede Pass tires. All of their tires are the same except that they choose to use names instead of numbers to designate tire width. The extralight editions run about $100/tire and are too rich for my blood but when you buy them second hand you can usually get a substantial discount. In my case that's 50% off which makes the tires palatable.

My previous experience with Panaracer tires were iffy. The Fairweather by Traveler tires (also 700x32) didn't last 1000 miles on the tandem (unloaded). But we mounted the tires and took them up Bohlman Road and they didn't come back with appreciable wear, so I thought they would survive the tour. I gave Arturo the Vittoria Corsa NEXT 34mm to carry as a spare just in case, figuring that if we got 500 miles out of the tire the Vittoria would survive long enough to finish.

I was a little disappointed when after 4 days of touring in the alps the tread pattern was gone. In retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised. The tread pattern was always a thin layer and there just for marketing purposes (there are claims about interlocking with the road, but when it wears out after 4 days you might as well start the tire off slick).

What did impress Arturo about these tires was that my tandem stopped faster than his single on all the descents! Basically, tires a big part of the braking system --- the brake pads don't really stop you. It's the traction of the tire on the road that does, and despite our heavier load these tires stopped. By the time we finished the tour the tires were clearly worn (they wouldn't have survived another 3 weeks of touring), but they held up and didn't flat.

Would I pay full price ($96) for these tires? Probably not. At that price I'll put up with the Vittoria or the GP5000. But if money is no object and you're riding these (or maybe you're not on a tandem so the tires will last forever), then I can recommend these tires. They have good traction, last long enough, and despite their reputation don't seem to flat more often than other similar tires.

June 24th: Motirolo

 The reason to stay at Bormio 3 nights was so that we could do the much feared Motirolo with unloaded bikes. To my dismay in the morning as we went to prep the bikes I discovered that my Sofirn headlight had water intrusion and failed! What was strange was that it hadn't rained on us since the Albula pass, so my guess was that the water intrusion had happened earlier but just took time to corrode enough electronics to kill the light. It had rained the day before, but the roads looked beautiful and sunny today, and the Garmin route I had laid out brought us onto what looked like freshly paved bike paths. 

Soon, we ended up pacelining with a bunch of South Americans (Argentinians maybe?) who were intending to do the Motirolo Gavia loop. With the fast pace Arturo was dropped, and to add insult to injury his Bryton radar had fallen off his bike and he couldn't find it!

We separated from the Argentinians and proceeded to the town of Mazzo di Valtellina where the official pass started. (There's also an option to start at Grosio, but all my research indicated that you wanted Mazzo for the full experience) We found a rest stop with a water fountain and proceeded to snack and refill while waiting for Arturo to catch up.

 Once the pass started it went up steeply. I saw 10-14% grades and several times I saw 15% grades, but nothing worse than that. Nevertheless, because the pass starts low it was quite hot, and we almost ran out of water a few times. I had my jersey unzipped and were grateful that we found water fountains at appropriately spaced intervals.  We saw our Argentinian friends descending to Mazzo, so apparently they had decided not to do the full Gavia loop.

To my surprise, we discovered that my route laid out was wrong --- I'd neglected to include the climb to the summit but had routed to a loop with the highway coming up from Grosio. We had come so far and it would be silly not to do the summit so we went up to the summit. This last section was a lot less steep and also quite a bit prettier, if windier, being much more like other alpine passes we had ridden. At the top we took pictures but clouds were gathering and so we started down.

"Aren't you cold?" "No?" "I'm freezing." Arturo said to me as we returned to the intersection with the Grosio highway. "You're low on blood sugar. Quick. You need to eat something right away!" "Wow, you're being nice to your friend," a voice came from up the road. I saw two women with Crust bikes! They turned out to be the CEO of Crust bicycles out for a day ride to the top of Motirolo. They identified them selves after I noted aloud to Arturo and Boen how serious those bikes were --- generator hubs and steel frames. Having heard Arturo's plight they fed us with nuts and chocolate before we went back down to the valley.

The descent was great, granting us lovely views of the valley below us, and though steep without a load whenever we stopped to check rim temperatures they were never scary. At the bottom we started getting hungry once again and stopped at Sondalo for a quick meal. It was an odd looking pasta (the waiter called it the local specialty) and the service was fast.

After that the ride into Bormio was easy, despite the occasional raindrops. Once in Bormio, we stopped by Stelvio experience to buy a new headlight for me and a new taillight for Arturo. We asked about our planned route to Livigno the next day but the bike shop staff was negative about attempting it on road bikes. I noted that Europeans don't believe in under-biking, and decided we would do it anyway!

We did a full load of laundry and set it all out to dry so we could depart Bormio early the next day. The forecast was for rain in the afternoon and we wanted to not be riding on dirt (which would turn into mud) when it happened. I texted Sean Kendall and got directions on how to get to Passo di Valle Alpisella, and with those encouragements we went to bed and rested.

Review: The Language of the Night

 The Language of the Night is Ursula Le Guin's essays on writing --- collected from fairly early on to the I want to say around the 1990s. These essays were not written all at once, and over time, you could see her evolution of views on various topics as she grew and matured. For instance, her stance on pronouns changed dramatically over time and she goes back and adds footnotes to her own essays rather than changing the text of her essays to reflect her views at the time of editing.

She is critical of modern society and its aversion to fantasy or science fiction. She connects science fiction and fantasy as being aesthetic, complexity and remoteness. (Kindle loc 464) Her view of how the typical b businessman views fiction is great:

To read War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings plainly is not “work”—you do it for pleasure. And if it cannot be justified as “educational” or as “self-improvement,” then, in the Puritan value system, it can only be self-indulgence or escapism. For pleasure is not a value to the Puritan; on the contrary, it is a sin. Equally, in the businessman’s value system, if an act does not bring in an immediate, tangible profit, it has no justification at all. Thus the only person who has an excuse to read Tolstoy or Tolkien is the English teacher, who gets paid for it. But our businessman might allow himself to read a bestseller now and then: not because it is a good book, but because it is a bestseller—it is a success, it has made money. To the strangely mystical mind of the money changer, this justifies its existence; and by reading it he may participate, a little, in the power and mana of its success.  (kindle loc 642)

More than her evolution on gender, pronouns and her approach to her work, I loved her interpretation of Frodo, Gollum, and Sam in Lord of the Rings:

Frodo and Gollum are not only both hobbits; they are the same person—and Frodo knows it. Frodo and Sam are the bright side, Smeagol-Gollum the shadow side. In the end Sam and Smeagol, the lesser figures, drop away, and all that is left is Frodo and Gollum, at the end of the long quest. And it is Frodo the good who fails, who at the last moment claims the Ring of Power for himself; and it is Gollum the evil who achieves the quest, destroying the Ring, and himself with it. The Ring, the archetype of the Integrative Function, the creative-destructive, returns to the volcano, the eternal source of creation and destruction, the primal fire. When you look at it that way, can you call it a simple story? I suppose so. Oedipus Rex is a fairly simple story, too. But it is not simplistic. It is the kind of story that can be told only by one who has turned and faced his shadow and looked into the dark. (kindle loc 1065)

Her point is that you can only write great fiction when you come to terms with both your shadow side and your bright side. And of course, that's the entire theme of A Wizard of Earthsea. And obviously nobody who has tried to adapt that novel into visual medium has succeeded.

In terms of weakness, the problem with this book is that there are way too many introductions. There's an introduction by someone who's not Ursula Le Guin, then Ursula Le Guin's introduction, and her addendum years after for the latest edition, and this is repeated for nearly every essay and each section in the book. I felt like the text had more introductions than actual material. Essays, like short stories, should be left to speak for themselves with the author's footnotes addended, not introduced to death.

Nevertheless, it was worth reading. Recommended.

June 23rd: Zero Day in Bormio

 We clearly needed a rest day, and visited the Bormio Therme Swimming pool. This pool was mostly indoors, and had but one water slide, but since we got in fairly early, we managed to get it to ourselves for about half an hour before the rest of the crowd showed up. The pool was relatively expensive, but had multiple pools and a Sauna Wellness region.

It even had hammocks in a pesudo-outdoor area where you could lie down and read.

By the time we were done with the pool, it was in the afternoon and I suggested we go to the Bormio civic museum. The place proved to be difficult to find, but we eventually figure out the non-obvious entrance and went in, where there were exhibits of historic stage-coaches that were used to go up the Stelvio, old muskets, and various artifcats from World War 1.

Boen made really good friends with the owner's dog, and we ate dinner with Bolognese sauce out of a glass jar which proved to be incredibly good.

June 22nd: Santa Maria to Bormio

 Uncharacteristically, I'd missed an announcement that breakfast was at 7:30am, and we came a bit late to breakfast after a party of motorcyclists had come. Nevertheless, Boen got his soft-boiled egg and enjoyed his breakfast. We got the bikes out and started riding up the Umbrail pass into glorious sunshine. The climb is a stiff 10-12% grade switchbacking up the mountain with a smooth surface that only the Swiss can perform.

It was not too hot in the lower area as the mountain itself shielded us from the sun. Past the hotel Alpenrose, the grade eases up a bit as the vistas began to appear, corner after corner, with the road winding along the contours bridging over streams. We would soon get a view of the Stelvio summit. The scenery in all directions were nothing short of superlative on a perfect day with just a small hint of clouds in the air.

At the Umbrail pass sign, there was a snowbank where Boen happily threw snowballs at the rest of us. There was a huge amount of traffic and we were to later find out that this was the first day the Stelvio was open. Nobody felt like climbing up to the Stelvio summit, and we started quickly down the descent towards Bormio.

The descent to Bormio always feels like a video game, with twists, turns, and sudden drops, along with tunnels with waterfalls in them. It being early and us having no more mountains to climb that day we took our descent in stages, stopping at every view point for photos and to just enjoy the beautiful day. The traffic was incessant, and other cyclists whom we spoke to told us that they had adjusted their schedule to do the ride today because the forecast for tomorrow was awful.

We dropped into Bormio where I almost missed a turn with Arturo yelling at me to stop. We found our apartment, which was run by a lady who lived upstairs so we got the basement. It being a Sunday we were worried that the supermarket would be closed but Bormio was a big enough town that there was one that was open. We walked there, passing the bike shop Stelvio Experience along the way, and bought enough breakfast for 3 days and a bunch of pasta, caffeine free coca-cola, and other snacks, anticipating a lot of rain the next day. We also stopped at a SIM card shop to get Boen a new sim card, his old one having been worn out by too many photo uploads.

Our plan was to take a zero day and visit the Bormio Therme Swimming Pool/Spa, which advertised having a waterslide!