June 20th: Bohjinska Bela to Untervellach

We'd coordinated the night before to meet at the Spar supermarket in Bled so we could do a luggage drop. The ride to Bled was easy, with a downhill through a tunnel along the lakeside, but the traffic was nasty. When we got to the supermarket Stephan was shopping, and it was warm enough that we started to put electrolytes into water bottles. Buying chocolate to stock up was out of the question, but we bought some bananas. The problem with having had a good breakfast in the morning is when you shop for a snack you can't imagine eating all that much the rest of the day, which is a mistake. Because it was a Friday, I'd booked a hotel at Untervellach. It was 60 miles away, but since the Gail valley had a train I figured the worst case scenario was that we would end up taking the train.

Leaving the Spar, the annoying traffic was mitigated by a bike path, and once we got into Spodnje Gorje thwe worst of the traffic died away as we entered the Radovna valley, which was a part of the Triglav National Park. The park was gorgeous, following a river along a singletrack road for a while. Traffic became practically non existent while we saw plenty of cyclists and occasional groups of hikers.

When the road left the river I knew we were going to start a climb over into the Sava valley. The climb was steep, with markings for a 18% grade, but it was short and the descent into Mojstrana where we found a supermarket and had a picnic lunch at a local park. It was warm, but the park had taps for water and shade for eating the Burek/Borek, Slovenian meat pies.

After that, we quickly found the bike path which took us through gorgeous vistas including markings for many places to go hiking, or to go visit a waterfall. I made a note to stay in the area if I ever passed through the next time for more hiking, but with 60 miles to go today we had to limit our stops. In Kranjska Gora we found what looked like a ski resort town, very fancy, and we had an ice cream as well as the Slovenian Cream Cake, fortifying ourselves for the 18% grade of the Wurzenpass separating Slovenia from Austria.

The traffic on the Wurzenpass was annoying, coupled with the exposure to the hot sun and the grade. Rather than stay together we just all rode at our own pace until we got to the border which was actually a few hundred meters away from the pass where we waited. There, we met Ben Kochie, an ex-Googler who was invited by Mark Brody. He was originally planning to meet us at Lake Bled but we were ahead of schedule so he redirected his efforts to joining us here. He told us that the road was steeper (and longer) on the Austrian side. Ben rode a custom Seven touring bike with both front and rear panniers.

When we were all together we rode down the Wurzenpass into the Gail valley where to our delight we found a tailwind that just swept us along at speed! The magic of following a Jobst route is that you know he'd had many years to perfect his routes and knew where the tailwinds were. We rode along the bike path until a descent caught us up and we took the main road instead to take full advantage of our gathered potential energy. The pace was incredible.

Stephan was told by his dad where the campervan was and we followed him to the camper van in Presseggen where we picked up the rest of the luggage before riding to Marienhof, the hotel in Untervellach. When we got to the Marienhof the folks at the hotel were nonplussed that we were a family of 4 and a group of 2. "We set up 2 3-bedroom rooms!" "Do you have a 4 bedroom room?" "No!" Well, we had no choice. Xiaoqin would have to share an apartment with both Bowen and Boen while I'd sleep with Mark and Arturo in their room. Luckily Mark and Arturo had sufficient room in their chargers so both Mark and I could plug in our CPAP machines.

Fortunately, the hotel had dinner even though it didn't have a half pension, and we filled our stomachs, especially Bowen for whom this was his longest ride. The next day was a Saturday and I had intended to stay at Oberdrauberg, which was where Jobst had previously stopped but discovered to my dismay that all hotels there were full, according to booking.com. The village one stop over, Nikolsdorf, however, had a hotel with rooms. A check on their website indicated that booking directly through the hotel was cheaper than through booking.com, so we booked the hotel through their website.

At dinner, Ben asked, "Is there a designated laundry day?" "No. We just do laundry every day, that's how we've been traveling so light!" We'd arrived late but with the wind even a little bit of rain wouldn't stop our clothing from drying overnight.