June 23rd: Brig to Hospental

 We woke up early enough to visit the breakfast area when it opened at 7:30am. The food was unremarkable but we knew we had a long day to get to Hospental, so we ate up, packed, loaded up the car, and started riding at 8:16am. It was already warm, but we luckily got to Fiesch after about 90 minutes of steep climbing at 1000m up, which had a gas station with an attached convenience store where we could get ice cream. It was already clear that we were in a cycling area, as even then we started seeing groups of cyclists going up or coming down the road.

From Fiesch the rest of the climb up to Oberwald was no longer scary, and the temperatures moderated a bit as long as we were in the shade. Unfortunately, once we got to Coms that shade almost completely went away. In Oberwald, we stopped at a bike shop to buy more cycling food, and then took a turn to buy groceries before having lunch at the fountain right across the street from the bike shop.

From there, the serious climb starts, going between 6-8% grades until the 15-18% grades at the (now permanently closed) Hotel Belvedere. Fortunately, however, the first section was at least partially shaded, even in the afternoon, so while the rider was hard (mostly because we were riding on tired legs), it wasn’t insane. While this was my first time climbing Furka from this direction (as opposed to coming from Grimsel pass), I was very familiar with the area. Mark, on the other hand, later said that as he climbed and saw the twin climbs ahead of him (Grimsel on the left, and Furka on the right), he somehow got it into his head that he would have to climb both. To be honest, however, he was so much stronger than myself and Boen that he had no issue distancing us. We would end up riding with Arturo for most of the climb.

As we approached the intersection with Gletsch, our shade went away, but the views also dramatically improved. I was impressed by how hot it remained, despite Gletsch being at already 1700m. We would not cool down until after we got past the Hotel Belvedere. I looked for a water fountain past Gletsch but never saw it because construction hid it from my view. Regardless, we ended up having plenty of water so it never became an issue.

At the summit, we found Mark waiting for us, and waiting for Arturo didn’t take long. We took our time with pass photos before we went onto the next view point and then starting the descent. Furka at this point is largely a single lane road and in the middle of the day there was still plenty of traffic, so we minimized stopping for photos and just descended for speed whenever we were not blocked by motor traffic. I’d forgotten how much fun the descent was, since I hadn’t done it since 2016 or so. The road while not perfectly smooth had plenty of sweet corners.

Of course, at the bottom in Realp we once again faced a headwind. But on a descent, we were entirely capable of keeping pace with Mark, so we got down to the bottom, hunkered down, and just drafted Mark all the way to Hospental. Once there, however, we discovered that Google maps had no idea where our rental house was! We eventually just parked the bike while I walked back and forth reading house numbers until I discovered that the house was far from where Google thought it was, and much further down the hill near the center of town than Google had shown.

By the time I found the house, Arturo had caught up to Mark and we all rolled down the cobblestone to the house, opened it up, and parked the bikes in the garage. Xiaoqin and Bowen texted us to say that they had bought lift tickets in Fiesch and would therefore get to the hotel much closer to 6pm.

We got settled in, and then went out to dinner at the one place down the street after an attempt to take Uber to Andermatt completely failed. The place was actually quite good, and while we were there we round another group of British cyclists who’d come over for dinner as well. Turned out that they were on a series of fixed bases where they would do day rides with a van. One of them was a former school teacher and looked suspiciously at Boen, saying, “Why aren’t you in school?” The rest of his group teased him mercilessly when we told him that California schools had already let out for almost a month.

When Bowen and Xiaoqin arrived, we showed them where to park the car and sent them to the same restaurant down the street while the rest of us unloaded and took showers. Arturo tried to figure what to do tomorrow. I told him that the last pass in the area that was new to him was Nufenen, the highest pass with both sides within the Swiss border. “Louis told me I should see the devil’s bridge as well!” His plan was to ride down to Andermatt and Goschenen, stopping by the devil’s bridge and then take the train from Goschenen to Airolo to start Nufenen. Once over Nufenen into Oberwald he could easily catch a train back to Geneva with plenty of time to spare. Because Brig was a major hub, there were frequent trains and none of them required bike reservations. The devil’s bridge sounded like a good idea for a rest day hike as well, and we needed to know how to charge the car anyway, since the car’s charge map showed very few chargers available in Andermatt.

June 22nd: Grand St Bernard Hospice to Brig

 Overnight, I checked the hotels with AC available in Brig, and discovered that they were far and few in between, even after expanding my search to the entire Sion valley. When people talk about climate denialists, they’re usually talking about the American right. But I would contend that Europeans who refuse to install AC in hotels and AirBnBs should also be categorized as climate denialists. The only reasonable hotel was the Good Night Inn in Brig, which had dubious reviews but a liberal (as in same day) cancellation policy, so I booked it and then told everyone else about it.

Breakfast looked dire when we showed up, as the buffet tables looked decimated, but we shouldn’t have worried. This being Switzerland, the staff almost immediately refilled the tables. We ate to our content and then proceeded to load everything into the car and check out.

Leaving the hotel, we took a few pictures in the gorgeous section before the road to the hospice intersected with the tunnel exit. Once on the main highway, however, it turned into a gallery with no views and very high speed, where the tandem essentially stayed at terminal velocity for minutes at a time. At one point we encountered construction and had to stop, but the traffic that was behind us were giant trucks and other slow moving vehicles and I wasn’t going to cede pole position. We were more than capable of staying ahead of the traffic until Sembrancher, where the road levelled off and we pulled off to give ourselves a breather.

From there it was an easy pedaling descent to Martigny where the bike path signs took us through downtown. It was already warm enough that we’d started to look for ice cream shops but at this early hour nothing was open. Past Martigny, the bike path followed along the Rhone river, with sufficient shade once in a while that the warm up wasn’t immediately overwhelming. Jobst often rode the Sion Valley in the late afternoon with a strong tailwind, but this early there wasn’t any wind whatsoever to help us. Mark caught us, and Arturo caught up to us as we approached the Sion airport.

Arturo had been to Sion before, and knew a good burger place, but when we rode there it was closed! We thought for a minute about eating at another restaurant, but realized that there was a COOP supermarket right there, so opted to buy a picnic and eat outside where there was a shaded area. There was a light breeze which fooled me into thinking that the Jobst tailwind was going to show up, so I pushed for us to ride on instead of just taking the train to Brig. “We should get at least a metric century out of this!” I declared.

Past Sion, the bike path stayed along the Rhone until Saint-Leonard, beyond which construction and main road riding started becoming intrusive. Along with the construction, the trees along the main road disappeared and we ended up riding on a big highway with giant trucks for a bit, along with the attendant dust. By the time we got to Varen, I saw that we had exceeded 100km and I asked Arturo where the nearest train station was. He looked as relieved as I was.

We rode towards the Varen train station, and saw a supermarket that was open just 100m away from the train station. I went in and bought a box of cola popsicles and we proceeded to demolish them with only one left. That one I just dropped into my water bottle to flavor and chill water and then we proceeded to the train station to buy train tickets.

The train was uncharacteristically late, and on top of that, once we got onto the train the story wasn’t over. The train actually suffered a breakdown just before getting to Visp, and actually had to go backwards to a place where a service train with a working locomotive could pass it and then take over. By the time all was said and done we were about half an hour late.

In the mean time, Xiaoqin and Bowen had finished their hike and started driving towards the hotel. When we got off the train station at Brig it was broiling hot, but since the ride to the hotel was barely 1km, it was not a big deal and while we had to wait to check in, we got to wait in an air conditioning lobby. It turned out that Arturo knew about the Good Night Inn—it was a series of motels much like Super8 or Motel6, but more upscale than the American equivalents. Indeed, when we checked in we could see that the lobby had lots of model railroads, something you’d never see in Super8 or Motel6. Mark immediately got off his bike and started replacing the brake pads on his disc brake bike. I looked at his pads and to my eyes, he had much more than 2mm of material. “If you were to ask me, you’re just throwing away money,” I said. “Well, it’s more than halfway through the tour, and around the same time last year was when I needed to replace it. I’m not worried about the few cents I’m throwing away."

We got our rooms and figured out where their bike locker was. We moved in and in a little bit Xiaoqin arrived and we figured out how to park the car as well. After showering, I started looking for places to stay in Andermatt. My original preference had been the Hotel Tiefenbach just after the Furka pass so we wouldn’t have to put up with the headwind, but they were mysteriously all booked up the next day despite it being the middle of the week! Arturo only had 2 days of touring left. I found a number of AirBnBs in Andermatt, even though they weren’t as cheap as I would like, but Mark didn’t like any of them. He searched and came up with some options in Hospental, One of the options looked good so I went ahead and booked 5 nights in Hospental, using up all our days prior to the pre-booked Meiringen and Rosenlaui visits.

Arturo and I then went and got the EV charged up. We were actually surprised the Switzerland had much worse EV charging infrastructure than either France or Italy. We would discover later that despite our having rented the EV in Geneva, Switzerland, the car didn’t know about many charging stations that were available—we ended up having to ask locals about them!

Dinner was at a Thai restaurant Xiaoqin found that ended up being very good. We ate well. By the time we got back to the hotel in the evening after some expensive gelato,  the hotel was full—it was a bus tourist kinda place, and a tour bus full of hikers had arrived. Fortunately, they didn’t disrupt our sleep much.

Review: Fist of the North Star Vols 1-10

 I had fond memories of Fist of the North Star from teenage years. It's got a stoic hero who mostly lets his fists do the talking (in the 1980s anime version, he could talk without moving his chin too!), it's got this post-apocalyptic look reminiscent of Mad Max (lots of leather and chains, lots of spikes on the leather), and over the top campy dialogue. (The guy says: "You are already dead," so many times that we parodied that) The first 10 volumes of the series covers the original story arc, and if you read that and stop, the story resolves itself. It's clear that most of the series' writing was improvised, with the author saying that he expected to be able to take a break after the first series and was instead told to deliver more within a month!

To my surprise, the library has the entire collection, which I never read, so I checked it out one book at a time. This is really campy stuff, so you can't really binge the whole series at once because it gets really silly. What surprised me was that unlike modern comics where the origin story and the resolution of the initial impetus of the plot takes multiple volumes to deal with (I'm looking at Frieren, where the author and artist couldn't even be bothered to finish the story, despite having multiple years off), Fist of the North Star finishes its entire arc within the first volume. It's not even a bad finish, with surprising twists.

The art is incredibly dynamic, though sometimes quite silly. The premise is that Kenshiro is the inheritor of a secret assassination technique called "Hokuto Shinken". This technique allows him to hit various channeling points in the human body that causes insane effects. Heads explode, bodies come apart, and sometimes he can even achieve programmatic effect like causing you to die 3 minutes from when he hit you. Of course, his opponents also always have their own secret martial arts techniques, and just like in Pokemon (I'm pretty sure this series predated Pokemon), everyone has a penchant for yelling out their secret technique's name and even explaining it in combat. It's all very hokey. One example was when Kenshiro faces a sumo wrestler of some sort who has so much fat on his body that he couldn't get to the channeling points. Well, Kenshiro is no dummy, so he uses a rapid series of kicks to shift the fat away from a channeling point and when the channeling point is revealed he strikes it and wins the day.

The problem with having a hero/protagonist with such power is that the escalation gets crazy. Each opponent he faces has to have even more super powers or secret techniques, and by the 8th book you're pretty far along (turns out that there are multiple inheritors of the secret techniques, and then he gets to fight all of them). 

That's probably not the worst thing. The worst thing is that it's a 1980s adolescent boys' comic. The women in the books are there for decoration or for rescuing. Even when they supposedly have martial arts abilities they are easily captured and then used as bait for Kenshiro to show up and look heroic. Much more recent comics probably do not have this problem.

Nevertheless, this is the kind of stuff where if you're exhausted after a long day it does not require much intellectual brainpower to process the comic, and the art is still dynamic and exciting after all these years.

June 21st: Aosta to Grand St Bernard Hospice

 In the morning, there was more clarity. The pass was set to open on June 22^nd at 12:00pm. However, today was a Sunday! I was more than certain that the road was ready, and that the barrier if any, was solely because somebody had to sign off on the work and that person didn’t work on weekends. I have a lot of confidence in the Italian/European work ethic. At breakfast, Arturo said that a mutual friend of ours, Louis Perrochon, was very negative about the idea. “What’s the difference between tomorrow and today? No cars today!” I declared. We were going to ride, but Xiaoqin and Bowen would probably go hiking and then we’d text them when we got lodging at the Grand StBernard hospice, which was confirmed to be open and taking reservations. While I’d ridden the pass a couple of times before, I’d never stayed at the hospice, nor had I even visited the St Bernard museum, and given the heat expected in the Sion valley I was not in a hurry to experience it.

After an excellent breakfast, we rolled the bikes out of the garage and started riding out towards the mountain. The Garmin route I’d laid out took us on the Eastern edge of the ridgeline, which was ideal for staying shaded on the climb. Not for the last time on this trip was I grateful for the new improved popularity heatmaps routing.

The nice thing about the steep first sections was that we gained altitude rapidly, so the effort was paying off in cooling temperatures. As we climbed we ran into a local cyclist. I checked with if the pass was open and he said it was. Arturo followed up and got a bunch of directions that later turned out to make no sense. It could very well be that our route did extra climbing in order to stay in the shade longer, so he was trying to route us to somewhere with less climbing, but we were already pretty happy with the route!

After about 2 hours of climbing, the road finally descended and dumped us out into the intersection with the state highway. There was a water fountain at the intersection, so we stopped to refill our water bottles. Boen spotted a couple with what looked like a very chill and mellow dog, which turned out to be a St Bernard! He spent a few minutes happily petting the dog.

At this point, we started seeing other cyclists coming up the main road. One of them stopped at the water fountain and we asked her if the Grand St Bernard road was open to cyclists, and she replied in the affirmative, no hedging. “That was a lot more helpful than the last guy we talked to.” Replied Arturo.

The main road was busy and had lots of cars. We were thus very happy when we turned off it just 20 minutes later onto the pass highway as the rest of the motor traffic went through the toll tunnel (which was open, but as always, denied for cyclists).  The traffic didn’t drop to zero, however, since the road was opened to the barrier and was still an attractive destination for hiking. Nevertheless, it was no longer a hellish continuous stream of fast moving traffic, and being at above 1800m, it was as lot cooler!

Xiaoqin and Bowen had parked at one of the parking spots and got some nice pictures of us as we climbed. As we got further up, the views improved and the traffic diminished until we came along row after row of parked cars just before the barrier, which was basically a pole across the road surrounded by plastic lane protectors. There were signs saying “Road Interrupted”, and that pedestrians and cyclists were not to use the road, but this being Italy, nobody actually respected the sign when it was easy to roll your bike under the pole! Hikers and cyclists clearly were on the road.

After taking a few pictures, Arturo, Boen, and I crossed under the barriers and began riding. This final segment was above the treeline so we were in full sun, but it was also so high that it got the pass breeze and the cooling.  We rode in perfect silence, interrupted only occasionally by the sound of an e-bike motor working furiously.

The galleries, which were normally noisy, echoing with the sound of noisy cars and motorcycles, were a place of solace from the sun. I even felt relaxed enough to take a video from inside one of the galleries.

We stopped a couple of times, once to refill our water bottles and once to eat. This was by far the biggest single climb on the trip—even though Cime de la Bonnette was taller, Aosta was much lower in elevation than Jausiers, so the climb ended up being longer. When we crested the last rise and saw the barrier, we celebrated and saw the summit lake. Mark had ridden all the way to the hospice but we called him back so we could have lunch at the lake. The lake restaurant was very busy, but the lake itself had several picnic benches, and the waitress told us that we could take our trays out to the picnic benches if we didn’t want to wait for a table, so that’s what we did.

The food was satisfying, and the view magnificent. We ate our lunch relatively quickly and then noticed there was a hotel on the Italianside. “The Italian side is usually cheaper than the Swiss side,” remarked Arturo,” Maybe we should get a quote from them!” Mark pointed out that there was another barrier between this Italian hotel and where the car parking lot was, but it wasn’t too far a walk for the roller baggage.

When we got a quote from the hotel, however, it wasn’t cheaper than the hospice internet pricing, so we demurred, pushed our bikes around the Swiss border barrier, and went to the Swiss hospice. It turned out they had 2 different types of rooms, and once we saw both, we picked the modern rooms which had internet, and similar pricing. Xiaoqin and Bowen drove over, but since the rooms weren’t ready yet, we had time to visit the St Bernard museum. Xiaoqin would grab a quick snack, get out her bike, and ride both sides of the pass, exploring both the closed side and the side she had driven up from the tunnel.

The St Bernard museum had actual live St Bernard dogs we could meet with, take photos of, as well as displays of the history of the dogs. Sad to say, they are no longer used as rescue dogs for which they were originally bred and trained for, because the new style of alpine rescue depends heavily on helicopters and St Bernards are simply too big to fit in helicopters!

After the museum visit, the rooms were ready. When we were all showered and rested, Arturo and I walked back to the Italian side past the barriers and shot more pictures. It’s hard to overstate how accomplished we felt—we had accomplished everything I had planned to do as part of the tour, despite unexpected road closures, train line outages, and had just gotten to ride one of the tallest passes of the trip unencumbered by motorized traffic.

Dinner was decent, if unimaginative because we simply took the half pension option and all ordered pretty much the same thing. The after dinner walk consisted of walking back to the pass along the hiking trail rather than the road, and enjoying the peace we found there, as well as discovering all the hiking trails that were available. Xiaoqin and Bowen would get to hike those trails tomorrow while the cyclists braved the heat to make it to Brig.

Review: Absolute Wonder Woman Vol 1-2

 I was so impressed with Absolute Superman that I decided to check out Absolute Wonder Woman. The first two books in this ongoing series are The Last Amazon and As My Mothers Made Me.I've been told that the Absolute books are all set in the same universe, but that doesn't matter to either the Superman or Wonder Woman books so far. There's no interaction between the characters, and to be honest, the Wonder Woman's version of this book is a lot less grim. It's almost like the California in the Wonder Woman books don't belong to the same country as the Kansas in the Superman books.

This version of Wonder Woman is both visually and from a background point of view very different from the traditional Wonder Woman. In addition to her magic bracelets and lasso, she carries a giant sword like you may have seen in some Japanese video game RPGs. Her background is also very different. Rather than coming from Paradise Island, she's literally from Hell, having been given to Circe when she was a baby. Instead of the Invisible Jet, she rides her undead horse, Pegasus.

The two books out so far mostly deal with mythical threats as well as providing the background as to who Diana is. Yes, there's still a Steve Trevor, and yes, he's still a good guy. This version of Wonder Woman still has a supporting cast, and nothing bad seems to happen to them, so it's definitely not as Grim Dark as Absolute Superman. You get a very strong dose of Greek mythology, though some of these monsters never existed as part of the Greek myths, so you have to be careful when reading.

The art is not to my taste. That doesn't mean it's bad, it's just that sometimes it doesn't look to me like it's drawn by a professional comics artis who put serious elbow grease into the work. It's almost as though there's a team of artists on the book and not all of them are getting paid enough to bother.

The DC superheroes in the past have never been as interesting as the most popular Marvel characters (e.g. Spider-man). This is still true. Superman is still a boy scout. Wonder Woman is still a symbol for feminist women. But these new twists on those characters are a nice change!

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.