July 14th: Schlanders to Valdidentro

From Tour of the Alps 2014

We'd spent some time the night before looking at things to do in Merano in case the weather turned sour, but woke up this morning to sunny skies! I figured that the worst case scenario was that we ended up getting stuck at Trafoi or Hotel Franzenshoehe for the night, so there was no way we wouldn't ride today. Rather than return to the bike path where we left it the evening before, we simply rode out of town following road signs until we once again saw the bike path signs, which took us into the Stelvio national park. The popularity of this tourist route became evident soon, as water fountains, park benches, and bike stands liberally dotted the route. The first fountain we stopped at, however, was infested by bees, and unfortunately Arturo threw away his water before discovering that. This was easily fixed at the next fountain.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

I was concerned about leaving the bike path at the right place, since on the map the bike path did not appear to intersect with the Stelvio route. However, the bike path dumped us right onto the foot of the Stelvio climbs with no confusion, and after a stop to purchase lunch to carry up the mountain, we soon found ourselves climbing the 48 numbered hairpins on the Stelvio.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

Despite having ridden the longest ride of his life the day before, Arturo was now in his element. Thanks to a genetic mutation which meant that he had fetal red blood cells as well as adult red blood cells, he had a hematocrit level that was just below the legal maximum in racing. That meant that at altitude, his performance barely suffered, while mine took a hit. Thus as the rode rose above 1500m, he steadily pulled away from me, until he was at least a minute ahead by the time we got to the 22nd hairpin and it was time for lunch.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

We ordered coffee for me and a hot chocolate for Arturo, and then broke out the lunch we'd bought down below without guilt. The day look decent, and it looked like we would be able to summit, as opposed to having to stay at the hotel tonight. Some clouds looked threatening, but it was a far cry from the continuous rain the forecast had trained us to expect. After lunched we made our way up to the summit, all the way being passed by unloaded cyclists, many of whom would not have caught us if we'd been fully loaded.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

At the summit, we were greeted by the circus show that was the Stelvio summit, with multiple support vans waiting, a bank, several stores selling various paraphernalia, and unfortunately, dark clouds that signaled impending rain. We put on everything we owned, and then I started the descent, forgetting to take a summit photo for Arturo. It started raining heavily until I got down to the Umbrail pass intersection. It was still cold, so I kept everything on until I got all the way to the Bormio intersection, where I waited for Arturo. It was his second time coming down the mountain, so he didn't stop for photos nearly as often as before, so he made it down a mere matter of minutes after I did.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

We looked at the map and decided that we'd try to make it up Val Di Dentro as far as we could before the rain came down the mountain and overtook us. Every meter we climbed today would be one meter we wouldn't need to climb the next. After about 6km, we started feeling raindrops, so we stopped at the visitor center. We ended up picking Hotel Miravalle, which was in the right direction towards the pass tomorrow. We arrived at the hotel just as the rain was coming down. Despite the lack of negotiating leverage, we checked for bed bugs before putting our bikes away in the very secure bike storage.
"You realized something?" said Arturo, "We completely rescued an entire day of the tour. We were expecting to have to spend the day exploring Merano by train, and instead we got a full day of riding today." Looking at the map, I was elated to discover that the ride to Livigno and past it back into Switzerland the next day would consist of passes entirely new to me. With a dinner with generous portions, we went to sleep knowing we'd done the Stelvio the hard way the day following a very long day in the saddle. Whatever else happened, we'd become acclimated to cycle touring.

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July 13th: Bruneck to Schlanders

At breakfast, we looked out and saw blue sky, mixed with some clouds. Arturo overhead the inn-keeper telling some guests that despite the weather forecast, it would be sunny all day. Given that he'd lived here all his life, he probably knew a lot more about the weather than the weather models, and so we elected to ride.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The Pusertal bike path rolled along nicely, and one of the first things we discovered was that the next town, San Lorenzo, looked almost as pretty as Bruneck did. No regrets though, since the Messner Mountain Museum was for both of us an interesting stop. Most bike paths meander around and add meaningless elevation to the ride, but the Puster bike path was so much fun and did a lot of descending in the direction we rolled in, so I didn't mind so much. As we approached Muhlbach, someone honked at us and Arturo stopped. I'd dropped my wind jacket from my pocket as I'd ridden, and a kind motorist had seen it, and then followed us to give it back to us! Taking the cue that clothing does not belong in pockets, I quickly stuffed it into one of my saddlebags' side pockets before continuing.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The Pusertal bike path ends in Muhlbach, where it connects with the bike path heading to Sterzing to the north, and Bolzano to the south. I was tempted to ride north to use Jaufenpass to get us over to Merano, but one look in that direction convinced me: it was definitely raining, and raining very hard in the mountains. Today, for better or worse, had to be a valley day. Looking south into Bolzano valley, we could see low clouds hanging on the hill sides and occasional rain, but nothing looked like it threatened the river-side, which is where we were headed.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

Near Schabs, I noticed that the bike path noted 12km to Brixen, but the main road was only 6km. My intuition told me that when there's a huge discrepancy like that, the road's a much better bet, so we pulled off the bike path and followed the road. The road traffic was still very light on a Sunday morning, and we were almost immediately rewarded by a straight-shot terminal velocity descent into Brixen, where we had no problems picking up the bike path again. Bicycle touring really does require all of your faculties to be involved: you can't just blindly follow bike paths, GPS tracks, or road signs. You constantly have to be alert and observant to choose the best route. Your body has to ride the route your mind has chosen, and even your digestive system has to work to convert all that food into motive power. There's no other activity that combines all this into one package and I love it.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The ride along the bike path back into Bolzano took us past familiar territory, leaving us time to muse and ponder the imponderables. For instance, why was it that adventure cycling is dying out? We thought it ironic that it's 2 forty-somethings doing an adventure tour here, while the younger people we'd met or knew over the years weren't the adventurous types we'd met when we were younger. Then I realized that for Arturo and I, the younger people we'd met in recent years were all self-selected: these were the people who'd actively chosen a big established company as a safe, secure place to work. Doing that when you're in your 30s and have a family to support might be a responsible decision. Doing that when you're in your 20s, during the years when you're most able to take risks indicates that adventure and uncertainty frightens you. So if we wanted to meet young, adventurous people, we'd have to find different venues to meet them other than a big established company that's well-known as a "safe choice" to have on your resume. By contrast, Arturo and I were both first generation immigrants with experience in startups. Touring didn't bring any kind of uncertainty more severe than what we'd each chosen for ourselves years and years ago.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

We rolled into Bolzano too early to stop for lunch, and elected to ride out of Bolzano. I found another short cut using a secondary road that was none too traffic'd and we cut another 6km off the bike route before finding the bike path towards Merano. At Terlan, we took a short break from the bike path to try to find lunch, but ended up only at an ice cream shop which served paninis that came out of a sealed bag and had to be heated. Back on the bike path, I finally realized that we had perfect conditions to teach Arturo the basics of pacelining, and I gave him instructions on how to draft, and how to behave when drafting, including some now little used etiquette bits, such as shouting "On your wheel" when you first latch onto another rider's wheel. With that little bit of minor instruction the miles flew by and we were soon in Merano. From Merano, the bike path wasn't very well marked, so we ended up using our GPSes set for Lagundo. That road finally joined up with the official bike path at the Dam near Toll:
We admired the dam for a while under what had turned into a hot sunny day with 80 degree temperatures. The contrast was pretty incredible, as we could clearly see rain on the mountain sides. After a bit of time on the bike path, we realized that this was part of a long-distance bike path from Landeck to Trento and beyond. Tourists of all types were coming the other way, in the downhill direction, and Arturo would later remarked that we saw more bike tourists on this one day than we saw on all the previous days of the tour. The Adige bike path was well marked, and attractions in each town were advertised on signs throughout the route. We also saw the train running in both directions, so clearly the strike did not affect this route. Not that we needed the train that day: the riding had been easy, and the weather was holding.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

I had hoped to make it all the way to the foot of the Stelvio today, but at Schlanders, Arturo's foot started hurting. Cycling is a repetitive activity on the foot joints as well as the knees, so at the first sign of injury you have to stop. Otherwise, the injury will exacerbate quickly and you'll lose the rest of the tour. Schlanders was the first place TripAdvisor failed us, since it told us about a hotel that was more than 20 minutes away in the wrong direction, and we wasted time looking for it. Fortunately, a local told us about a local B&B that was more than acceptable in both price and quality of food. The B&B's staff ooh'd and aah'd appropriately when told that we'd come from Bruneck, and then when we said we were headed to the Stelvio the next day, they carefully explained to us that it was going to rain tomorrow, but the day after would be ok.
Come what may, we had gone nearly 100 miles that day (my GPS registered much less because of a problem with the wheel sensor magnet), and ate appropriately off the fixed menu.

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July 12th: Cortina d'Ampezzo to Bruneck

Hina texted us a message during breakfast that she'd been discharged and was on the bus to Cortina. We gave her directions from the bus station, but then realized that we had plenty of time to finish our breakfast, get our bikes ready, pay for the hotel, and then meet her at the bus stop. Indeed, we did all that, walked to the bus stop, and found her there buying the 11:00am bus tickets. We greeted her, and walked her back to the hotel where she found her bike with a front wheel that could still roll but couldn't really be ridden. We said farewell to her, forgetting to ask her for her remaining electrolyte tablets, an oversight that would haunt us later.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The day was gorgeous, and we rapidly gained altitude as we left Cortina and headed to Tre Croci. The signs by the road side advertised 12% grades, but looking at my altimeter, we never detected any grades above 9%, so it was just an example of Italy's cavalier attitude towards accuracy in signs. The climb was easy and filled with cyclists, many of whom were headed to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo climb, which we would decline to do as we were carrying loads and it was an out and back climb that didn't lead anywhere.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

Past Tre Croci, the road descends 200m and then resumes a climb to Misurina, which had a gorgeous lake which combined with the weather we had this morning, was nothing short of stunning. Lots of tourists abound, and we managed to get someone to take a picture of us.

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We stopped to use the public restrooms, buy lunch, and refill our water bottles and then eschewing the side-trip to Tre Cime di Laverado, descended to rejoin the main road which had lots of heavy traffic.

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The main road had tons of traffic, it being a Saturday morning, but most of the traffic was heading into the mountains, not away from them. Nevertheless, having become used to traffic-free travel, my nerves started fraying and I switched to the dirt bike path along the road which hadn't seen any signs of improvements despite my 7 years between visits. After a while, Arturo joined me at a lake side where there was a park bench and we had our picnic lunch, our first in several days.

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Past the picnic area, I remained on the bike path while Arturo took the road, but to my surprised I was quickly routed onto the bike path between Sterzing and Innichen! Realizing what had happened I called Arturo, figured out where he was, and waited until he got to where I was. It's rare that the bike path is faster than the road but this was one of those cases.

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This part of Italy has amazing bike paths, almost the equal of Austria's for the simple reason that culturally, it's still a part of Austria despite having been separated from it for almost a century. We noticed cyclists wearing tags and numbers going the other way, and soon found ourselves riding into a rad-marathon, which is the European term for a century or other organized events. Unlike club centuries in America, rad-marathons are huge events with sponsors, giveaway bags, stores, huge music stands. Unlike a Fondo, however, they're not timed bicycle events, so don't have some of the crazy baggage associated with those. We saw lots of folks on mountain bikes, and while some people were obviously going for speed, many were just casual riders who were just out to have a good time on a bike.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

We walked through the rad-marathon start/finish area, and stayed on the road until Bruneck, which looked like a nice town that Arturo wanted to stay there. It was still early in the day, and I would have been ready to roll on, but at the information center while looking for lodging only 4 places turned up with availability. Arturo reminded me that the day before in Cortina, Hotel Montana had filled up by 4pm, and that convinced me to stop early. None of the hotels in Bruneck had availability, but across the bridge in Stegen was Hotel Zum Hirschen, which had excellent reviews on TripAdvisor for the food. It never takes me long to agree to a hotel if it had good food, so we went there and found that they did have just a few rooms left. They weren't willing to give us a half-pension for just a one night stay, but they were willing to lock up the bikes in their cellar.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

We walked to the Messner Mountain Museum at the big Castle in Bruneck, and found that it was very well done, with not just exhibits of Messner's expeditions, but replicas of actual mountain huts and living conditions in various mountain ranges all over the world. There were even declarations of Messner's philosophy on the Alps:

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The view from the top of the castle was also outstanding, and I was glad that Arturo made me stop.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

On the way home, we stopped by the train station. The next day was supposed to be raining, and we wanted to check our options in case we needed to take the train somewhere. There were huge signs, however, declaring a train strike starting 6:00pm today, and going on through the rest of the weekend. That eliminated our excuse for laziness. It was nearly 100 miles to the foot of the Stelvio, so we would have to gird ourselves for a ride that long.
Dinner that evening was huge, as we ordered the sampler plate. Nevertheless, our light lunch and all that walking around made us hungry. Thinking that we'd have to ride 100 miles the next day, we demolished the huge plate, leaving but a half inch chunk of pork un-eaten.

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Jully 11th: Pescul to Cortina d'Ampezzo

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The day started steeply, as Passo di Giau is a 12% grade. But with blue skies and rapidly warming weather, things shaped up very well, and it was quite clear that Passo di Giau was more more scenic than Passo Falzerago would have been. Climbing the little used road, all the problems I encountered were a fogged up camera lens (easily taken care of with a wipe) and the antique Mercedes Benz club driving 24 antique cars down the road behind 2 lucky cyclists. Those antique cars were not capable of taking corners faster than a skilled cyclist, and served the function of blocking the road so faster traffic couldn't harrass them.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The descent from Giau was fun until I got stuck behind a bus. I stopped to let the bus go ahead as the road wasn't conducive to over-taking, but I was still too fast and caught the bus again twice. On the descent, I saw cyclists starting the climb, indicating that we were getting close to Cortina.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

At the intersection with the main highway to Cortina, I stopped and took off most of the excessively warm clothing I had, and waited for the others. After they joined me, I told them that I wouldn't be making any stops on the descent but would wait for them at the bottom of the hill. I then took off down the rest of the road, noting in satisfaction that I had gotten ahead of a platoon of cars led by a tour bus. I was feeling fast that day, and felt comfortable staying ahead of the bus. At the bottom of the hill, I removed all warm clothing and waited for them. A bee got into my helmet and stung me, which caused me to tap my feet impatiently as the tourist bus I'd worked so hard to stay ahead of came into town and took off. Then I got a text message from Arturo saying that Hina had crashed. It wasn't a trivial one as her helmet had cracked and there was an apparent head injury, which caused an ambulance to be called. Hina's tour was over, like it or not, though I would not realize that until much later.

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After Hina got taken away to the hospital, Arturo was stuck with an extra bike. I hitch-hiked with my bike up the mountain to discover that she'd crashed only 3km from town. Fortunately, by the time I arrived, the police were already there, and they agreed to take the bike down to Cortina for us. My initial thought was to have the police take the bike and have Hina pick it up from them later, but Arturo said to me, "Look: they don't want to hang on to the bike for whatever reason, so we should just do as they say and meet them at the center of town in an hour." So we rode down to Cortina d'Ampezzo and found a hotel downtown with good TripAdvisor reviews, called the Hotel Montana. The receptionist was very sympathetic, and gave us an adjoining room with a shared bathroom.

Later on, we would pierce together the details of the crash as follows: Hina was stuck following the bus, while Arturo didn't enjoy the traffic and so stopped and let the traffic past until he had a clear view of the road. Unfortunately, Hina paid so much attention to the traffic that she missed the potholes in the road and hence crashed. By the time Arturo got there, she was already on the ground. Fortunately, while Arturo was administering first aid, a motorcyclist who was a doctor stopped and took over. The Italian paramedics who showed up by ambulance within 10 minutes were both competent and spoke good English. All in all, while it was undoubtedly a harrowing experience for Hina, both the outcome and the handling of the situation was well done by the Italian authorities.
 

From Tour of the Alps 2014

Well, this blew my carefully made plans out of the water, so we looked at the forecast again. The next day was going to be good, but the days after that looked pretty crappy, especially for the Grossglockner highway, which were forecasted to have fog on days when it was not pouring rain. We pondered riding to Slovenia to check out a new country and then riding back to Lienz to start Grossglockner, but none of them were realistic, and it was impossible to buy good maps in Cortina!

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Searching further afield, I found that Stelvio was slated for a run of good weather after Sunday, and Arturo wanted to do it anyway, so we decided to head back in that direction. While waiting for news from Hina, we decided to take full advantage of our location and take the cable car up to one of the ski locations to check things out. By the time we arrived, the weather had turned iffy, though there was still sun in the valley. We hiked around a bit amidst sprinkles, but it was uninspiring. Coming back down, we checked the bus schedule for Hina was unlikely to be able to ride the next day. It turned out that there was a bus to Dobbacio, where a train would take her to Fortezza, where a train would get her into the Austrian train system at Innsbruck from whence Munich would be a snap. The bus would even take bikes.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

With that settled, we had dinner at a luxury prosciutto restaurant the hotel had a deal with where we would get a substantial discount. We didn't think thinly sliced pieces of ham could fill us up, but four plates of this in combination with the very light riding that we had done today proved to be sufficient. We heard from Hina: they did a brain scan, then sent her to another hospital for another brain scan, and then they brought her back and were ready to discharge her when she threw up, which apparently meant that she had to stay overnight for observation. "Usually in these cases it's either straight to surgery or they release you," said Arturo. Well, we could do nothing, having already booked two rooms, but one way or another it appeared that Hina would be discharged the next day. No matter what, though her tour was over. It was a pretty nasty way to end a tour, and it's the first time anyone had crashed out on any of my tours, in more than 20 years of touring, but unfortunately there's a first time for everything.

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July 10th: Vigo di Fassa to Pescul

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The morning greeted us with blue sky mixed in with clouds, which gave me hope that we might be able to make Cortina D'Ampezzo today. Regardless, the first step was to traverse the Fasso valley to get to Canazei. The last time I did this the traffic was pretty bad, but this time, we spotted a bike path under construction and decided to beta-test the pavement, which held out very well until we got near Canazei, where the pavement turned into construction. Exiting the bike path 2km from Canazei, however, I discovered that my bike wasn't shifting into the lowest two gears. A quick stop and the diagnosis was that the anchor bolt was not tightened properly by the mechanic (namely me!) before leaving California. Fortunately, this was an easy fix, and retensioning the cable took very little time. I took care to cinch down the bolt properly, and up we climbed, headed for Fedaia pass.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

At just over 2000m, Fedaia pass was an easy 600m from Canazei, but filled with cyclists who used it as a prelude to the Sella group, and even cross-country skiiers on training blades. After a series of galleries, we emerged at the summit lake, where once again a few raindrops sprinkled on us here and there. The climb to Fedaia is so easy that day riders ride up the road to the war museum but as tourists we didn't feel the need to do so.

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Instead, we prepared for what Jobst calls the fastest highway in the Alps. Unfortunately, we encountered some slow going traffic that day and I did not exceed 50mph, though we certainly each got a taste as to how fast you could go if you just let your brakes go down a 13% grade.

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At Savina di Laste, I made a wrong turn and went up the tunnel road towards Selva rather than the white road towards Passo di Giau. This turned out to be a good choice, because there was more rain on the other route which could see while we were climbing. The other route looked prettier, however. I'd skipped Passo di Giau in 2007 because my knee was hurting, but this time, we were stopped at Selva because it looked like there was rain up ahead. I wanted to push on, so I called the hotel at the top of the pass to see if they had room for us, and while they said they had room, they also said they didn't have dinner! That was such a strange response that we wondered if I misunderstood, but the remainder of the climb was said to be quite hard so we turned back to the tourist information center. There turned out to be no lodging in Selva (despite the information center being located there), but there was lodging the next 2 towns over. After perusing the options, Arturo got excited by the TripAdvisor reviews of a B&B in Pescul, so we picked the place and went there. They didn't serve dinner, but the walk to the hotel restaurant in town did give us excellent views.

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The forecast was food good weather the next day, and we needed to get Hina to Munich by the 13th via train, so the plan was to have a long day the next day to Cortina d'Ampezzo and then Lienz, and then climb over the Grossglockner in Austria the day after where she could catch a train at Zell Am See bound for Munich. The weather forecasts supported this endeavor, and I was optimistic that I'd finally be able to climb Grossglockner on my single, as well as attempt Passo di Giau.

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July 9th: Bolzano to Vigo di Passa

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We woke up to another good breakfast. Arturo had warned us to expect anemic breakfasts in Italy, but so far every breakfast has been pretty substantial. "I'm coming to the conclusion that Northern Italy has lousy churches but great breakfasts. Which is a good trade-off for this tour," he said. We then discovered that his bike had a flat on the front tire. The flat turned out to be from a valve stem that peeled off from wear, rather than a road debris puncture. It would be our only flat tire for the entire trip. Arturo had left the spare tubes in Amsterdam, but fortunately, he could make do with ones borrowed from Hina. I pointed out that we should just buy tubes while we're in a big city. Sportler was just around the corner, but when we got there it wasn't opened. No problem, just visit the Coop supermarket for bananas and chocolate, and come back to the store and wait for 5 minutes. We spotted an inner tube vending machine, but by the time we got together the change needed the store had opened.

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I also asked the Sportler folks where to get to the bike path headed for Costalunga, and his directions were spot-on. Once on the bike path, the difficult part was figuring out where to turnoff. We had a chat with a fellow cycle tourist who was kind enough to ride with us until the turn off at Prato Isarco. The gentlemen was from Gerona, and he was headed off to Munich to visit his girlfriend by bicycle. A former motorcyclist, he said he was getting too old to handle a motorcycle safely, and the bicycle was as close as he could get to that experience.

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Even overcast, the climb up to the eggental valley was beautiful. It was a long, unrelenting climb since Bolzano was at 300m, and Passo Costalunga was closer to 1800m. At Nova Levante we missed the supermarket closing by 15 minutes, and so ended up eating lunch at a restaurant. It occured to me that ever since Hina voiced her distaste of supermarket lunches, we had never successfully eaten a supermarket lunch again. I hoped she never voiced any distaste of my tires staying on the ground.

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Past Nova Levante, the climb brought us to Karrersee. The last time I came by this way it was pouring rain, and I never so much as got a glance at the lake as we were stuck underneath some shelters waiting for the rain to let up so we could sprint for some lodging. This time, it was overcast but not raining, so we had time to slow down, take pictures, and admire the scenery. After getting a photo at the lake, 3 Italian seniors walked up to us and started talking rapidly. Arturo's Spanish enabled him to translate for us. The older gentleman turned to the two ladies and said, "See? I told you it was a lady on a bicycle!" The two ladies ooh'd and ahh'd and said, "Wow, we've never seen a woman cycling up here before." It seemed that Hina had acquired a fan club!

From Tour of the Alps 2014

Past Karrersee, we rode over Passo Costalunga, passing by the lodging we stayed in 2007. At the pass, I explained that our goal was Canazei, but I was forced to eat my words as the descent led us right into the midst of heavy rain. I therefore called for a stop at Vigo di Fassa, where we found a hotel willing to put us up and the bikes for a reasonable price. The dinner was impressively good and contained lots of food. That night, I hoped that we wouldn't repeat the pattern from 2007 and get stuck in Canazei for 2 nights.

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July 8th: Fondo to Bolzano

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The morning greeted us with an early start but just mere droplets of rain prior to the start. The climb up to Passo Mendola was easy as I remembered so many years ago. But the descent from the pass was much rainier than I previously experienced, which detracted a bit from the views, though when the clouds parted enough for us to see the views, they were pretty good.

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We were soaked through at the bottom of the pass, but fortunately, had to travel the extremely busy main road for but one block before I spotted the entrance to the bike path to Bolzano. This is where having been to the place once before helped, because the traffic would have been daunting otherwise. The rain was much less at the bottom of the pass than up high, but even so, while we were in the tourist information at the center of Bolzano trying to get lodging it absolutely poured. Fortunately, it let up enough for us to get to the hotel, get registered, unpack and showered.

The first order of  business was to replace my torn up Capris. Paying European prices for clothing is not on my list of favorite things to do, but the good part was the Cloudveil Capris I had bought were no longer in production for men, while men's Capris were common and fairly easy to find in Europe. Capris are the most practical casual clothing for occasional cycling. Nevertheless, I ended up at the huge Sportler shop and found only one acceptable pair of pants that were a decent fit, provided I didn't gain any more weight.

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After that, we had lunch at a good pizza place, and then went to stand in line for the Oetzi museum. It was a small muesum but very well done, and we easily spent 2 hours in it before leaving to walk around town and admire various features like the locks on the bridge and the town square.

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Dinner was at an Asian/Italian restaurant with high prices but insufficient quantity or quality of food. We did manage to our laundry done. Arturo and Hina were worried about the weather, at one point musing about the possibility of hopping onto the train to Vienna where the weather was warm and sunny. A detailed examination of the weather forecast, however, showed that while the forecast called for rain, it was in relatively small quantities of less than a millimeter, so going forward with the tour was definitely feasible. We declared the "neero day" a success as a result.

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July 7th: Santa Caterina to Fondo

One of my goals today was to make it to Hotel Gran Baita on the Mendola pass so we could have an easy ride to Bolzano the next day. One look at my past trip report from 2007, however, made me realize that I'd made a mistake. In 2007, we'd started from Ponte di Legno (otherwise known as bed-bug town) rather than Santa Caterina. This group wasn't nearly as strong as the 2007 group, so we had very little chance of making it. Looking at my 2011 trip report, it looked like Phil and I made it to Fondo that year from Santa Caterina, so I made Fondo a more realistic goal. The value of having taken good notes in the past was made clear with this simple observation.

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I'd never had a good-weather climb over the Gavia, and though it looked like this would change as we set off that morning under blue skies, things soon reverted to form as the road rose above 2000m in elevation. Storm clouds emerged, and soon I felt rain drops on my skin, though they were occasional and not too frequent. I stopped to put on clothing and more clothing as I approached the summit. One interesting event was that the Vespa touring club had somehow decided to climb the Gavia on the same day. Vespas are severely under-powered, and some were even carrying 2. The small engines made distressing noises as they were subject to stresses not designed for. They moved so slowly that I could even capture footage of them as they passed me!

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Arturo would later tell me that one of them stalled out in front of me and they had to descend in order to get the engine restarted. Gavia from the north eases up from the 8% grade to a very very manageable 3-4% near the summit. But unfortunately, so did the rain. I got caught in one rain shower but could see that the weather eased up at the summit so made a maximal effort and found myself on the summit proper where after putting on everything I owned, I ate a Banana, some chocolate, and walked into the Rifugio Bonetta, which featured poster sized photos of Andy Hampsten winning the Giro on the Stelvio/Gavia, as well as Jobst Brandt climbing the Gavia back in the 1960s when it was unpaved. (The Gavia was unpaved until 1996)

From Tour of the Alps 2014

It took my companions a while to get to the summit, which surprised me until I realized that for the first time during this tour I felt well-fed, so I was no longer functioning on a nutrition-led penalty! When they did arrive, they mocked a sprint for the finish and then immediately headed into the Rifugio for a hot chocolate. While talking to them, I realized that the weather was about to take a turn for the worst, so I told Arturo and Hina that "I had a bad feeling and was going to start the descent right away." Indeed, apparently right after I left a fog rolled in, trapping Hina and Arturo for almost half an hour.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

The Gavia descent on the North side starts off easy, but then quickly degenerates into several steep grades, a long tunnel, and then approaches 16% as you get near the bottom. I got to the bottom, found a park with a kiosk serving pizza, got bored waiting for my companions and bought a Pizza and ate it before either Hina and Arturo showed up, complaining that I didn't wait at any of the "obvious" intersections. They too, had a pizza lunch, and then we wasted no time climbing to Passo Tonale, easiest the ugliest and least scenic of the passes in Italy, dominated mostly by a ski resort with no redeeming values other than a cable car that would offer a tired cyclist a free ride to the top.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

At the summit, Arturo paid a quick visit to the mausoleum of the war heroes, and complained that he didn't think we could make even Fondo that day. I pointed out that the route was mostly downhill past Tonale, and the short climb to Fondo was less than 300m. Tonale's easy descent gave us terminal velocity almost throughout the descent, interrupted only by the occasional annoying Italian motorist, and one stop for water.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

At the town of Piano, I spotted the bike path sign and pulled off the main road to join the bike path through the valley which was made for easy traffic free riding which I had enjoyed 3 and 7 years ago. It appears that I'd missed that sign on the prior journey or the path had gotten extended as the bike path went on forever until just past the town of Male where I got nervous and got us back onto the main road towards Cles.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

We were now in the apple-growing part of Italy, with signs telling us what sort of apple was growing in the area. The air was filled with the scent of apples, and the sun appeared, occasionally mixed with rain. Both Arturo and Hina were flagging, but an appropriate dosing of chocolate and ice cream soon had them starting the climb to Fondo, where we arrived at the information center and discovered that the hotel in town couldn't take 3 more guests.

From Tour of the Alps 2014

I recalled a B&B that Phil and I stayed at in 2011, and so asked for that B&B and confirmed that yes they did have room for the 3 of us. The price was good, we just had to walk to town for dinner. Since Arturo knew Spanish, which was sort of related to Italian, he did the bulk of discussions with the B&B hostess as to where to go for dinner, but it all turned out to be moot. It rained while we were going to the "good pizzeria in town", so we ended up defaulting to the hotel, where the service was uncommonly quick --- until we realized that they'd probably made a half-pension dinner for the huge group in the room next door, and we were getting the left-overs. It was pretty good left overs, so we were still satisfied and went to bed hoping that it wouldn't rain until we got to Bolzano the next day for our rest day.

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