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Cynthia and Kekoa realized that they were far faster than the tandem uphill, and in the morning decided that they were going to do a loop into Italy and then meet us at Klausen pass. Phil was feeling better, but not so much so that he thought he could keep up with the others, so he elected to stay with me and Lisa.
From Pian S. Giacomo, the road climbed a series of hairpins steeply up the grade to San Bernardino, where it loses a few hundred meters to meet the freeway tunnel. Cyclists have to use the road over the old summit, but since it was a beautiful day for it, nobody paid any mind. Past the extremely touristy town of San Bernardino, the road changes character again, going over roadside streams and quickly losing most of its vegetation. The long views of the surrounding mountains and the gentle grade makes San Bernardino a beautiful pass to visit, and I was almost sorry when we hit the summit in an anti-climatic roll to the summit lake.
We were still feeling the lingering effects of our illness, and at the top ordered some tea and ate our snacks before braving the descent. The descent on a busy Sunday went down a series of hairpins which did not let me get any speed whatsoever. It would have been far worse, however, had not a wonderful German driver decided to just pace us down the hill so that we would have protection from passing motor vehicles. He waved to us and took off when the road flattened out at Hinterrhein. We waited there to make sure Phil did not get lost, and then took the fast descent down to Splurgen, where we saw Cynthia and Kekoa again after they had just had lunch.
Lunch at Splurgen was unsatisfying, and I did not like the look of the town, so proposed that we did more descending. Cynthia had complained that the bike route to Splurgen was the toughest bike route she had ever done, but looking at the terrain I was confident that it wouldn't be hard from Splurgen. But first, when I spotted a shaded spot, Lisa decided she wanted to take a nap. Phil and I took a short walk that didn't go anywhere interesting during her nap, and after the nap, I discovered to my delight that the path went on the other side of the Sufnersee from the main road on an unpaved track.
Past Sufers, the descent began again in earnest as the road floated high above the gorge of the Hinterrhein and then began a steep dive towards in! The descent was fast, smooth, and exciting, and as close to flying as anyone could wish for.
At the Roflaschlucht, we decided to do the touristy thing and visit the gorge, but it turned out to be a tourist trap, not as impressive as any of the gorges I had seen in prior trips. We rolled down to Andeer around 4:30pm, and after checking out and failing to find anything really cheap, settled at the Hotel Post.
At dinner, we asked about the mineral baths in town, and it turned out that the hotel provided a minor discount for the baths. We headed over to the mineral baths after dinner, and discovered that it was unfortunately only heated to about 32C, which still felt a little cold. Lisa, however, claimed that it helped her skin quite a bit, and would spend the rest of the trip searching for more mineral baths.
Phil slept nearly 12 hours the previous night, courtesy of some of Cynthia's drugs, and Lisa's ear acupuncture. He said he felt quite a bit better this morning, so we proceeded to head up San Bernardino pass, which was a pass that I had not seen before. It was a long climb, and a Saturday to boot, so I didn't want a long day as lodging could be hard to find on weekends.
Leaving the city streets behind, we quickly found ourselves heading on a mostly level road headed towards the mountains. The day was cool as we started around 7:30am, but by 8:30am it had warmed up dramatically. Since the tandem can't possibly keep up with singles on the hills, I told the others that if we got separated, they should just wait at all the water fountains. Soon, an unloaded racing cyclist road past us and Cynthia and Kekoa immediately jumped on his wheel. They disappeared into the horizon quickly.
The road finally steepened at Soazza, where there were road side rest rooms as well as views of a church high in the hills. At Mesocco, we stopped at a grocery store for lunch as well as to load up on groceries and ice cream. There were several fountains between Soazza and Mesocco, but somehow Cynthia and Kekoa had managed to not see any of them. After lunch, we rode up the cobblestone road and saw the road develop significant grades of 10% or more as we climbed one switchback after another.
Finally, the grade eased up and we were in Pian S. Giacomo. The OCD guide had said that there was a hotel in Pian Giacomo, but it was nowhere in sight. When we asked a restaurant as to whether there was a hotel in town, they said no, you'd have to go to San Bernardino for that. Then they changed their mind and said there's a hotel in town after all. We went back but rode past the hotel a second time before stopping at what looked like a restaurant to find that yes, they had an apartment they rented out.
It was only 2 in the afternoon, but on a Saturday, and with all of us coughing, I thought it was prudent to stop now and finish the climb in the morning.
Phil looked considerably worse this morning than he did yesterday, and everyone except Lisa had developed a slight cough. I ran off in the morning to find a shop with torx wrenches to take apart my CPAP machine. They had a torx wrench, and we took apart the box only to discover that the electric motor inside the unit was protected by even smaller torx screws which even the shop I went did not have. I shook everything but nothing worked, so there was nothing to do but to package up all the CPAP gear, put it in a box, and ship it back to myself in Munich. The cost was high (around $50), but the mask itself would be $100 new, so it was worth doing.
By the time I got back to the hotel, everyone was packed. The other groups of cyclists on tour were outside, and Cynthia told me that they were a 3 day supported tour. "But they have custom jerseys! That's what's wrong with your tour, Piaw. Where are the custom jerseys?"
With Phil feeling quite ill, I decided we should just try to make it to Bellinzona, which would make this a downhill only day. I recall Lisa and I doing that ride in 2003 and not only getting to Bellinzona, but making it all the way to the Italian lakes as well, so I figured this should be an easy goal.
Indeed, the first 20 miles or so were quite straight forward, following the road straight down. Once it got down to within a few hundred meters of Bellinzona's elevation, however, the bike path started going up and down. This was fine, but the weather was very warm (we were in Italian speaking Switzerland, right at the Italian border), and by the time we got to within 5 miles of Bellinzona a headwind had kicked up!
At that point, I abandoned the bike path and headed directly on the main roads to Bellinzona. Once we rolled into Bellinzona, I rode right past a bike shop without realizing it until Cynthia and Kekoa told me about it at an intersection. Fortunately, there was a park at the intersection, so everyone could wait in the shade while we went to the shop. I was looking for a replacement front tire for the bike and more inner tubes to replace the popped inner tubes.
The shop sold the correct sized tires, Wilderness Trail Bikes 28mm and 32mm tires. The employees proudly told me that these were great tires, because they had a kevlar belt to prevent punctures. The irony of it was that Switzerland, Germany, Austria and France have the cleanest roads I have ever ridden on outside of Japan. I did not know it then, but I had already had all the flats I would have on the trip yesterday, and none of them were attributable to European roads. I bought the tire and tubes, and gave one back to Kekoa who had loaned me a tube yesterday.
We then rode downtown to Bellinzona and found a hotel at a reasonable price near town center. We took showers, and then split up: Cynthia and Kekoa to have a couple night's out, and Phil, Lisa and I to dine together. We bought some pizza and then fruits and more pizza at a supermarket, and then Phil went back to the hotel to sleep his illness off while Lisa and I explored the big castle in the center of town.
The place was huge, including walls, battlements, murder holes under the walls, and even exits that extended well beyond the castle entrance. By the time we were done, we'd found ourselves quite a way from where we started. We did not even consider trying to explore the other two medieval structures in the city, as it was hot and humid, and I too wanted a chance to sleep off my minor illness.
I woke up in the middle of the night and wondered why it happened. Looking over, I realized that my CPAP machine had stopped working. I took my mask off and went back to sleep, hoping that the machine would fix itself in the morning.
By breakfast time, we were all as hungry but there was quite a bit of coughing amongst the party. I was not feeling so good myself, but it could easily have been the interrupted CPAP. Kekoa blamed the coughing on the extremely dry air. I thought it was more likely that we had contracted a virus.
Nevertheless, the view outside was nothing short of gorgeous, and I eagerly anticipated the descent on Grimsel pass, which was a series of hairpin turns that were fun and fast. I remember overtaking a motor-home on this stretch in 2003, and it was a good place for cyclists who were comfortable with their bikes.
Lisa and I hopped onto the tandem and zipped down the pass. Hairpin after hairpin zipped past, and then we were at the bottom, in Gletsch. As we rolled to the stop sign I heard a sound like a gunshot, and looked down and sure enough it was my front tire. I checked the rim and it was barely warm to touch. Examining the temperature labelsPardo had installed on the rim indicated that the temperature did not exceed 71C. I chalked it up to a mis-seated tire, and went ahead and replaced the tube. In retrospect, I should have been more suspicious.
We started the Furka pass climb. While Furka pass (2436m) is taller than Grimsel (2165m), Gletsch (1762m) is also much higher than Innertkirchen (625m), so the climb up Furka pass was easier than yesterday's climb up Grimsel. We stopped at the Hotel Belvedere to get the classic shot of Grimsel pass from Furka's vantage point. The stop was also necessary because the climb up to Belvedere is the steepest part of the climb, after which the rest of the ride is comparatively gentle.
At the summit, there was a bunch of expensive cars on a car rally, and women who were obviously trophy beauties of some sort were busy posing themselves for pictures with the cars at the summit, as though getting to these places by car was some sort of achievement. Fortunately, we also met other touring cyclists: Kyle Williams and Roger England:
Roger, in particular was riding a custom folding bike of his own design, and told me that he returned to the alps every year for a week to ride a few more passes. Since he lived in England, such short trips were not prohibitive in either time or money. Kyle was touring for the long haul, as he had a seasonal job that did not require him for a good part of the year.
We then descended Furka pass. It is very difficult to be fast on Furka pass, as not only is there a strong head-wind that turns into a side wind at times, the grade is mostly gentle when the road is straight, and steep only where there are several hairpin turns. Lisa shot a video of the descent, so I won't say much about it:
We did suffer a blowout on the descent, as I pulled over to let an oncoming bus past. At that point, I decided that it was a bad tire (since once again the rim wasn't even warm), and replaced it with the Rivendell Rolly Poly I kept for these situations. While the Rolly Poly has a kevlar bead, since heat was not the factor in blowing off the Avocet 32, my guess was that it would hold. At this point, however, I was out of spare inner tubes.
Lunch at the Hotel Des Alpes was surprisingly good, but after lunch I discovered that my new tire was flat. The tube I had put into the new tire had a defective patch. I was out of gumption to patch the flat, so borrowed a spare tube from Kekoa. The dreaded headwind into Hospental was particularly strong that day, so we had a hard time getting to the start of the climb. We filled our water bottles at the corner (the restaurant charged us to do so), and then proceeded up the hill with a tail wind. Unfortunately, while the tandem doesn't feel the headwind as much, it also doesn't get as much assist from a tailwind as one might wish. The climb was slow but again, with Hospental at 1493m, it was only a relatively short climb up to the St. Gotthard summit (2106m). The last time Lisa and I climbed this road in 2003, it was shrouded in fog. This time, it was sunny and pretty. We eschewed the steeper and exposed old cobblestone road in favor of the shaded (by a slide-protection gallery) and gentler new road, from which we had plenty of time to see the old road and its environment.
At the top, we saw the summit lake for the first time, but at 5pm, it was too late to visit the museum. The St. Gotthard descent, however, is fast, and almost now braking is required:
With the circumstances so changed from my memories of this descent I had a great time, swooping down from the heights and letting the tandem roll. With the new tire, I had confidence that I would not have to minimize braking.
After a gallery that terminated in a flying hairpin, I spied the sign that indicated that the rest of the main road was a freeway, and pulled over. We waited for others to catch up to us, but Cynthia rode right past us without seeing us. I felt like an idiot for not telling people that a blue sign with a car in it was indicative that the road was only for cars, not for bikes. Kekoa then did the same thing, but heard us scream at him as he pulled past, and when we told him what happened he gave chase to Cynthia, hoping to track her down. Phil was the only person to see us, and after that we descended the bicycle route.
That turned out to be a mistake, for the road was not as well designed as the main road. In the future I will simply ignore the freeway sign and take the main road all the way down to Airolo. Not only is it cobblestoned and bumpy, there were a lot of corners where you had to brake corner to corner, which made the road uncomfortable to ride and no fun whatsoever. Whatever the Swiss were thinking when they designated this the bike route, they were not thinking of bicyclists capable of 50+mph descents.
By the time we got down to the bottom, it was 6:00pm. We did see everyone at the train station, though Cynthia was mad as hell. I made my apologies and we ended up taking a room at a hotel right across the street, where we saw that other bicyclists were also staying. The grocery store was open, so lots of shopping was done. I tried to find torx wrenches with which to open up my CPAP machine, but to no avail.
The morning greeted us with beautiful sunshine and calm wind. It was still cool, but that was OK, because we were to climb Grimsel pass today, making for a very long day. But first, the approach. The road rose gently at first, and then dropped rapidly down along the Brienzersee's South side. The official bike route goes around the North side of the Brienzersee, but Jobst had always gone around the South side, and this was my chance to see why: the road while lacking bike lanes, is quiet, and unlike the North side which is frequently cluttered with vegetation and trees, granted us clear views across the lake towards the high mountains. In the cool morning air with calm winds, the lake took on a highly reflective surface, looking like a magic mirror as we rode by, fast, quiet, and smooth.
Past Brienz, the road dropped us onto the Hauptstrasse main road towards Meiringen, but just before the entrance to the road I spied a sign for the bike path pointing in the opposite direction. I turned around and found the entrance for the Meiringen bike path. It took a lot of convincing but I eventually got the others to follow. "Who builds these bike paths?" asked Cynthia. "They're farm roads that serve a dual purpose."
The bike path was quiet and beautiful, winding around little streams, under the shelter of trees, and occasionally granting us a peek across the valley at Unterbach. At Brunigen, the bike path eventually dumped us onto Brunigstrasse, which dropped us towards Meiringen. Not wanting to ride through Meiringen again, I opted to route around the town and head once again over Kirchet pass. We got there just before 11:00am, and the Lammi restaurant had just opened. We had barely sat down, however, when the owner came out and told us that the kitchen was only open at noon. Until then they were strictly drinks only! That bummed us out so we headed on down towards Innerkirchen, which then led us up to Grimsel pass. There was no way the tandem could keep up with the singles, so I told everyone to wait for us at the grocery store at Gutanen. As everyone else pulled away into the distance, Lisa and I stopped, took off our helmets, and replaced them with cycling caps. For an entire day of climbing, helmets would have been painful and unnecessary.
Grimsel pass is the least pretty of the major Swiss passes. What that means is that it's far better looking than any of the roads in the Sierras, and probably in the continental US. In the lower regions, it winds along bucolic farms and pretty houses (no MacMansions here!), alongside a running stream and river. In the middle section, it runs along waterfalls, gorges, and places where Canyoning is allowed. Nearly every tunnel has a bikeable bypass, including one which is almost a kilometer long with hand-laid cobbles (I know it was hand-laid because when Lisa and I last came by in 2003 we saw workers hand-laying them!). In the upper section it has no less than 3 reservoirs, each cascading into the other, generating clean power for the region. This accounts for the unsightly power-lines and pylons which you see all the way up the road.
When we got to Guttanen, we found the others waiting outside the closed grocery store. I had forgotten that the stores close for lunch! "If we had known we would have rushed here to buy food before it closed, since we were taking it very easy up the hill," said Cynthia. "Oh well. There are restaurants open. But let's fill up our water bottles first." "Where?" "At the water fountain across the street, of course!" "Wow. OK, I've got to get better at spotting these things."
After lunch, we made the slow, laborious climb up Handegg, and then up Grimsel. I always forget how painful it is to climb on the tandem, but Grimsel delivers reminders in the form of steep sections and a climb that seems to go on forever. By the way we arrived at the top it was 5pm, but I could see that there was ice on the summit lake --- I had never done the climb in weather this cold before. Cynthia and Kekoa had taken a room at the summit hotel, and after a much needed shower, it was time for dinner. We packed away so much food that the restaurant waiter just laughed and laughed as he brought out dish after dish.
At bed time, sleep came swiftly and was well deserved.
We had a hurried breakfast, then set off up the road towards Rosenlaui. The fog that looked to be lifting earlier settled in at a high altitude instead, giving us an overcast day.
We quickly rode up to Kalterbrunnen and then into Rosenlaui valley, where we saw gorgeous views of the surrounds, but unfortunately Rosenlaui Glacier was shrouded by fog. At Hotel Rosenlaui where I wasn't planning to stop, I spied Andreas Kerhli, the owner, and shouted out his name. I stopped the tandem, hopped off, and we shook hands. I'd been to Hotel Rosenlaui in 2003, 2007, and 2008, each time bringing more and more people with us. Our reservations were for July 4th and 5th, and I asked if we could get them for tonight instead, and Andreas shook his head sadly. "We are so busy this summer! Hey, can I offer you tea or coffee?" "We could use some tea. It's cold!" "Yes, but the weather will change soon. It's coming. Hang on a minute." He soon brought out some tea but refused to accept payment for it.
Kekoa rolled up with Phil, and Cynthia said, "We're having tea here because Piaw knows everyone." All warmed up from the tea, we rolled up the road, hitting the super steep section and only getting off the road whenever the post bus came by. The peaks around us were shrouded behind clouds, and with the cold temperature we would not hear the sound of ice falls that day. At the summit, we stopped for obligatory photos and then descended into Grindelwald.
In Grindelwald, we stopped at the supermarket for a grocery store lunch, and Cynthia went into the Montbell shop to buy more clothing since she was still cold from the descent. After lunch, we descended to the junction and then headed over to Lauterbrunnen on the bike path, which was mostly rideable dirt, but was a change from the road I had used in the 2007 tour. In Lauterbrunnen we tried to get lodging but everything was full except for 2 places, one of which looked unacceptably bad, and the other had the owner telling us that it was too noisy for us to want to stay there. Neither Cynthia nor Kekoa was interested in seeing the falls, so we turned around and headed down into Interlaken, where the tourist information got us lodging at Goldswil, since I didn't want to be in town.
We got to our lodging at 5:00pm, but everyone was happy since this was the first full day of riding. Tomorrow would be a hard day, since we would ride Grimsel pass!
The next morning saw us leaving the hotel bright and early to hop onto the train to Zurich. Unlike previous years where we managed to snag a direct train, this took us no less than 4 transfers, some of which required carrying the bike down and up a flight of stairs on 3 minute connections, which was somewhat stressful but nevertheless doable. On the leg from Sargans to Zurich, inspectors boarded the train and informed us that the tandem counted as 2 bikes in Switzerland, but they made the mistake of asking Cynthia, who shrugged her shoulders and pretended that she didn't understand either English or German, so they let us without attempting to fine us. We shouldn't have been fined anyway, since we had bought the tickets in Austria for the entire leg to Switzerland.
At the Zurich train station, we bought train tickets to Meiringen. I asked about buying the half tax card then, but the ticket counter service person was not being very helpful, saying that I'd have to have bought the half tax cards the day before. I would later find out that there's a special tourist half-tax card for 99CHF which lasted only for a month, but did not need any of the extensive paper work needed for the regular half tax card. This is one of those cases where a more rural train station with a friendly ticket counter agent would have saved us a lot of money over the course of the trip, but we had no idea how many more train transfers we would later have.
Upon arrival in Meiringen, as we rode out of the train station, I spotted an informational "I" sign and rode over to it. Upon discovering that was a map of the train station, the last few days of frustration led me to say (quite loudly), "What the f*k is this totally useless information sign?!" A woman nearby replied to me in English, "It's a map of the train station. What do you need?" Everyone around me laughed at my embarrassment as I turned a bright red. In Switzerland, you definitely shouldn't curse in English. She turned out to be a local, and pointed us at the tourist information center, and then told me to watch my language.
We went to the tourist information center, and it took quite a long time to manage all the things that had piled up over the last few days, buying SIM cards for the phones, activating them, and then getting lodging turned out to be a problem. My hope was that it being a Monday, Rosenlaui would be available, but upon calling them it turned out that they were full up until Thursday! After searching in vain in town for lodging, I realized that Hotel Zwirgi might be available. I checked out other alternatives, and it turned out that not only was the B&B behind Restaurant Lammi not free, but restaurant itself was also closed on Mondays. The last time I checked, Hotel Zwirgi was priced too high for me, but the information center told us that they were 59CHF/person/night, and had availability.
We rode up the Grosse Scheidegg road from the Lammi restaurant, and while the ride was short it was somewhat steep, though much less steep than I remembered. Upon arrival, we were informed that the tourist information person had transposed the numbers on our quote, and it was 95CHF/person/night. After some wrangling, we settled for what would normally be a 4 person family room by putting an extra bed (which would be at a cheaper price of 70CHF) in it. We then explored Reichenbach falls, and had a nice dinner, hoping that the weather tomorrow would be more conducive to riding.
We spent the next two days in Innsbruck. Cynthia had to do more bike gear shopping, and we had to figure out how to get over the pass without the train. We could bike, but the prospect of biking in the rain over either Silvretta or Arlberg pass did not appeal to either of the women. Looking at the weather forecast, we saw that the Interlaken area was projected to get dry weather on Monday. We were going to ride in that general direction, but starting there and doing the tour backwards would work as well.
With the trains out of service, we had to explore car rental options. The one way rental option with a drop off in Switzerland proved to be extremely expensive. However, since we were looking for rental during the weekend, we found the local Avis had a mini van rental which had a special weekend rate. Kekoa (who was the only regular stick shift driver amongst us) and I (since I could read German I figured it would be useful to have me in the navigator's seat) would drive the bikes over to Bludenz on Sunday, drop the bikes off at a hotel, and then shuttle back and we could all take the train together. Then on Monday we could take the train into Zurich, and then from there hop onto a train to Meiringen. It was an expensive transfer, costing us nearly 3 days, and more money than I wanted to think about, but since it was raining anyway, those days would have been spent riding in the rain, we thought the investment would pay off in better riding weather in Switzerland.
We picked up the car on Saturday, and spent the afternoon exploring Schloss Ambras, which was a good way to spend a rainy day. The castle featured lots of armor, old baths, and lots and lots of portraits. It was time well spent.
Lisa found a restaurant that was famous for serving Tirolian food, but the service was abysmal. Phil ordered tea and got beer, and Lisa got the wrong dish. When we pointed that out to the waiter, she got all in a huff and refused to speak to us any further, pointing out that macaroni was similar to the dish Lisa ordered! I wanted to ask her if she thought that beer was the same as tea.
The next day, we loaded up the bikes into the van and drove over to Bludenz, where near the train station we found lodging at a reasonable price. They were willing to let us leave our bikes in a covered parking area. By the time Kekoa and I drove back to Innsbruck it was 12:00pm, and we got to the train station in time to catch the 1:50 train which would dump us into Bludenz at 3:30pm.
In Bludenz, I bought train tickets the next day for Zurich. It turned out that there was an early 8:05 train which would drop us into Zurich around 10:00am, meaning that we had a good chance of getting to Meiringen by Noon. With that in place, I bought the train tickets.
After an unusually hearty breakfast for such a reasonably priced B&B, we left at around 9:00am. As Cynthia expressed surprise at the low cost of the accomodations, I told her that this was what happened once you got out of touristy areas, even in expensive countries like Germany. A drizzle set in as we rode out of Kreuth, forcing us to stop to put on rain gear. The map marked a 12% grade riding over Achenpass, but it turned out that the 12% grade was really on the descent, since we did not encounter any significant steep grades on the climb.
The ride towards Achensee was non-descript, though I did find a few bike paths. Cynthia was still leery of dirt paths, and after I found a particularly steep one rebelled and everyone pretty much forced me to stay on paved roads thereafter.
At Achensee, the main road rolls right into the tunnel, but a bike path brought you down to the water, where we got to inspect and admire the lake up close and personal. The rain had seeped into everyone's waterproof clothing by that point, so as soon as we rolled past the lake I was glad to find a cafe that served Goulash soup and gave us a chance to dry off.
After lunch, the weather magically cleared up, and we descended into Jenbach via a 12% grade on dry roads. The road was very busy, but since we were descending the bicycles weren't the cause of any road blocks. We turned right towards Innsbruck along some backroads which invited quite a bit of climbing but had very little traffic. Once we hit the actual valley floor, however, there was a headwind which just blew against us and only seemed to get stronger as we approached Innsbruck.
It didn't take 10km of riding before the whining started, so by the time we got to Terfens I was talked into hopping onto a train for the last run into Innsbruck. At the train station, we found a hotel, and to my horror discovered that the train line from Landeck to Bludenz was completely blocked due to a broken rail line that still had not been repaired for a week! Rail passengers were being shuttled over the Arlberg pass by bus, but the bus did not take even single bicycles, let alone a tandem.
The forecast looked miserable for the next couple of days. Alan would later explain to me that the line between Landeck and Bludenz had always been a nightmare, and with the heavy rains the rail bed could actually get washed off. Austria's rail-lines had regular inspections so there were no fatalities because of this, but apparently a few weeks later the same thing happened between Bolzano and Merano in Italy, and with Italians, the lines don't get inspected as often and people died.
