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.