Day 10: Col du Parpaillon

One of the highlights of the 2005 Tour was Col du Parpaillon, a gorgeous off-road pass that was isolated and pretty --- perfect for a Saturday ride when the asphalt would be full of weekend warriors. Since we had a car, we could drive all the way to near Embrun, get dropped off, and then ride back to Barcelonette without a load. The last time we did this, I had 25mm tires, and I expected the ride to be a snap with 28mm tires.

Well, the drive to Embrun took much longer than expected, so despite an 8am start we only got started around 10:00am. We started riding, took a wrong turn, and then came back and met a mountain biker on the road going up to Col du Parpaillon as well. His name was Arjan, and he worked at CERN as a physicist, and was traveling to see a friend elsewhere in France, stopping here and there to ride his mountain bike. He seemed a little disappointed to see that the trail was expected to be so non-technical that roadies on touring bikes were going to climb it.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

From Tour of the Alps 2011

The road eventually turned into dirt as expected and we found ourselves climbing in the shade for a kilometer or so before getting up into the sun with the expected clear views. "I was cursing your name for a bit down there," said Phil, "but the road is now a lot easier to ride."

From Tour of the Alps 2011

In a little bit, we encountered another cyclist coming down the road on a cycle cross bike. Unlike American cross bikes his bike had long-reach caliper brakes, a superior design. He warned us that the tunnel had ice that was a foot tall, and while he could normally ride it on his cross bike, this time he had to walk. I was pretty happy about that, since that meant there would be no cars on this ride.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

As we got higher, the views got prettier and we stopped for lunch at an empty hut. We felt blessed by the weather and the scenery.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Towards the top, almost all vegetation was gone as we approached the stream crossing. On 28mm tires we could just ride it without any concern whatsoever. The views took on characteristics of very high mountains, though unfortunately my happiness about traffic proved futile. Despite the tunnel being closed there were a lot of SUVs on the road, though many were forced to turn around at the tunnel.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At the tunnel were a pair of 70-year-old cyclists who had climbed it on their mountain bikes and were about to ride through. Arjan and I waited until Phil caught up, and then we proceeded into the tunnel.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

With powerful battery lights, this time I felt competent to tackle the tunnel. I rode the first 500 meters until I could barely see, and then I tried walking for a bit but at one point ran into water that just ran across the width of the tunnel, terminating in some ice. Since getting feet soaked was a guarantee with further walking, I got on the bike and rode to the ice, managing to hop onto the ice on foot without getting my feet more than just a bit splashed on by wheels. What was in front of me, however, was hilarious.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

A car driven two people had ignored the tunnel closed sign and driven in anyway. This car had gotten stuck inside the tunnel on the ice. This was no problem for a cyclist, since a cyclist could just walk past the car. However, the drivers had enlisted a bunch of motorcyclists who were wearing rubber riding boots to push their car along. With a lot of shouting, cursing, and screaming they finally pushed the car through. The two drivers were lucky, since as a cyclist wearing cleated shoes rather than rubber boots, I would not have been able to help even if I wanted to. To prove that stupidity belonged to all genders and nationalities, on the other side of the tunnel I noticed that the drivers looked French and were women.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Poor Phil got his socks wet inside the tunnel, and so had to wring out his socks. I spied saw that the motorcycles were about to get going, and I did not want to be stuck behind the two idiot drivers, so I followed the motorcyclists down. A bunch of ATVs were coming up the road as well, but fortunately for me, they slowed the car down far more than they slowed me down. Near the bottom I waited at the hut which was closed today and had no food, but Phil didn't show up for 10 minutes. I let the car past and then rode down to the intersection with asphalt and waited there.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

From Tour of the Alps 2011

I waited for half an hour but Phil finally showed up looking no worse for wear, though he said that I had reset his calibration for what a lot of off-road riding was. The ride back was uneventful, but I was more tired than expected given the lack of a load. The problem with getting older is that my days of daily riding 2000m and 100km seem to be over.
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Day 9: Cime de la Bonnette

We left the hotel bright and early, grabbing a couple of croissants at the local bakery which was open as early as 6:30am. We then filled up at the fountain in town, and then rode out into what appeared to be a rush hour of cyclists going in various directions: Barcelonette was at the hub of many of the climbs including Col de Vars, Col de la Cayolle, Col du Parpaillon, and of course, Col de la Bonette. Every one quickly parted ways, and we wound up cycling up Col de la Bonette with a bunch of cyclists that looked like they were in the same club.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

The road starts gently enough, with a bar/restaurant that wasn't open yet, because we were up so early.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

It was a long road though, and pretty soon the road turned steeply uphill and we were in our low gears as it snaked along the hill sides, with an occasional pause at a plateau or valley.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At 2715m, Col de la Bonette's pretty high, but hardly the highest pass in the Alps. However, to garner the title "highest through road in the Alps," the builders added a little loop around the top going to 2860m, making it taller than anything else regularly climbed in the Tour de France. The surrounding peaks are bare, but the hint and promise of other mountains in the area does give it a look unlike other areas.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At the top, there's a hiking trail to the top, where we took pictures of ourselves.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

From Tour of the Alps 2011

The descent was fast, and we made it back to Barcelonette by 2:00pm, where we had time to eat ice cream, do laundry at the laundromat (the hotel had signs prohibiting doing laundry in the room, but it was also nice to get away from handwashing), shopping at the supermarket, and dinner. XiaoQin said, "In the morning I saw the hotel staff wash the streets 3 times in front of the hotel! No wonder the place is so clean!"

From Tour of the Alps 2011

I walked past the shop that sold SIM card and was surprised to find it open! I immediately bought a French SIM card for 15 EUR, but when Phil and XiaoQin came by to buy one he had run out! "Come back tomorrow!" he declared with confidence.

We had dinner in town that night, but I failed to find any Duck Confit. I promised XiaoQin that we would have some Duck Confit before we left France.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

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Day 8: Vinadio to Barcelonnette

A short ride from Vinadio led us to an intersection. Here, we had a choice between Col de la Maddelena or Col de la Lombarde to get into France. While Col de la Maddelena looked like a main road, I remember Michael Khaw of Agile Compass Tours telling me that Col de la Lombarde was isolated and pretty. Looking at the map, it would drop us off in Isola, which would necessitate a hard ride over to Barcelonette. On an unsupported tour this would be a problem, but since we had a car, we made the snap decision to ride over and use the car to get us over Col de la Bonnette.

The road turned off gently but after just a kilometer turned into a winding road with lots of hairpins climbing steeply along the mountains. The views were as spectacular as promised and the lack of traffic even better. As a bonus, the climb was shaded for the first 700m of climbing, which made it a very cool climb. As soon as we climbed out of the shade it became obvious how much the shade had helped us as it was quite baking in the sun.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

As we got above the tree line what's left of the shade disappeared as the road became a one lane road. The climb wound around scree-covered slopes giving me a feeling of being in the middle of nowhere, despite the occasional car and road-side lakes. The asphalt was hot and radiated heat in pulsing waves making me zip down my jersey.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At the top where XiaoQin was waiting for us we had lunch and took summit pictures. There were many hiking trails radiating away from the summit. Entering France, we found the road conditions largely unchanged, but the road descended steeply and quickly into Isola 2000, a ski resort that looked abandoned in the summer. Past that I saw a few galleries and then the road descended right along a river before entering the village of Isola.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

It was warm in Isola but there was a group of touring cyclists about to climb Col de la Lambarde anyway. I waited until Phil and XiaoQin showed up, and then we drove together to Col de la Bonette.

The climb from the South of Col de la Bonette had a tailwind assist (and a pretty strong one on the day we were there), but it looked like any cyclists going that direction would need it (we didn't see a single cyclist in this direction): road construction was in full force on the road, and on more than one occasion there would be giant asphalt trucks or steam rollers operating, leaving the road only one car wide.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Phil managed to get a few good pictures of the Col, but we agreed that we wouldn't have wanted to climb it from this direction.
The descent into the Ubaye valley, however, looked very pretty, and the road was clearly newly repaved. Phil asked if we would do the climb and I said, "Well, we're on vacation, so we do whatever we want!" Hence we got to Barcelonette deciding that we would spend 3 nights there. This would allow us to do Col de la Bonette and Col du Parpaillon, and let XiaoQin get a day off from driving.

Compared to trying to park in town, finding the tourist information center was no problem. They gave us a list of available lodging, and surprisingly enough the first place we found wasn't just available, they were cheap, at 20 euro/person/night, not including breakfast. It was right downtown, the room looked old but the bed checked out free of bed bugs, and we got an entire suite to ourselves, with 2 rooms and a bathroom, and plenty of room to park the bicycles.

After moving everything into our home for the next three days, we tried to find a place to buy French SIM cards, but had no luck whatsoever, the only place in town being closed for an unknown amount of time, and the next place being 60 miles away. We ate ice cream, took showers, and had dinner.

That night was some anniversary of the hotel/bar we stayed at, so things were noisy downstairs, but with the windows closed we found it easy to get to sleep. We were going to do a long climb the next day and planned to start early to beat the heat.

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Day 7: Brig Reid to Vinadio

Eager to escape the heat, we departed Brig Reid as early as possible, climbing out on the old Simplon highway to avoid the traffic on the main road. The road was surprisingly pretty, but before too long rejoined the main highway just before the bridge.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Past the bridge, the road goes pass several towns, and while the scenery was OK, it was nothing to write home about. As we neared the summit with a series of galleries, I spied a ramp leading on top of the gallery and decided to chance it in case it led somewhere fun or bypassed riding through the gallery altogether. On top of the gallery (which was kind of cool because I could barely hear the traffic below me), I hopped a fence and then rode it until it peter'd out along a cliff as the gallery turned into a tunnel. That forced me to turn around and re-enter the gallery.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

There was a ton of construction inside the gallery and tunnels, so the riding wasn't much fun, though there were a few escapes available only to cyclists, when in the tunnel itself, any traffic would echo off the walls and make the place loud. I somehow bypassed the traffic lights constraining the uni-directional traffic and had to take shelter behind some walls when I saw giant trucks coming my way.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Once out of the tunnel we were just a stone's throw from the summit with its eagle statue as a monument to a brigade that served during World War 2. The views were pretty, but I was rather disappointed. "I don't think I'd recommend climbing Simplon pass again." I said to Phil.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Well, the climb might be no great shakes but the descent on Simplon was nothing short of fantastic. The road swooped and zipped along, diving into tunnels and galleries where we were as fast as traffic or faster (a truck had ran out of gas or had an engine failure in one of the galleries causing traffic to be backed up behind it) while all around us the mountains of the alps rose up and then dropped off next to the road in sheer cliffs. The road went along the river along most of the way, granting us good views.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

I thought that we should meet near Domodossola, but the road flattened out and then split into two, one clearly marked not allowable for cyclists. I would learn later that there's a bypass for that road that went over the tunnel, but I wasn't going to chance either XiaoQin or Phil getting lost, so I waited until everyone got there and we pulled off, stuck the bikes into the car, and headed off for lunch.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Serious storm clouds gathered and I could see rain as we ate lunch, but we were driving all the way to Southern Italy today anyway, so felt quite smug about being in a car. The drive took well over 4 hours, and by the time we got to Vinadio with a few stops for gas, tolls, groceries, and Euros, it was near 6pm.

Vinadio looked like a nice town, and the first hotel we picked was reasonably priced at 40EUR for a half pension, so we took the rooms. XiaoQin was impressed by the price and the furnishings. "Why do you complain about Italy so much? This is pretty nice!" After the tasty dinner, however, she tried to take a shower and discovered that there was no hot water. I went down to the manager and complained, to which the reply was, "The boiler is broken. Give us 10 minutes to fix it." Of course, the boiler was broken all night and XiaoQin never got to take a shower. She settled for a sponge bath instead. "We'll be in France tomorrow, where this sort of thing doesn't happen," I said to her.

This being Italy, I triple-checked for bed-bugs instead of the usual double-check, but having found none, we slept quite well.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

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Day 6: All'Acqua to Brig-Reid

We woke up to another day of beautiful weather. It was in the 70s as we left the hotel, and we climbed at exactly the right pace so that the temperature didn't rise or drop as we approached the summit. This was my first climb of Nufenen pass from the East, and it's definitely the easier direction.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

While not a spectacular road, the view from the pass was pretty, with white peaks all around us. The descent was also characteristic of Swiss roads: smooth grades, easy corners, and polite traffic.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Having had trouble the last few times sync'ing up, I decided that we shouldn't risk meeting in the big town (Brig), but opted for Fiesch, which looked small enough that we wouldn't have trouble finding each other.

At Ulrichen, things warmed up as I made the left turn s Brig along the main road. While there were bike paths, I figured that since the road descended towards Brig I could keep up with traffic. I was wrong. The climb out of Ulrichen valley wasn't long, but it was a gentle grade which meant that I was going slow enough to be annoyed by traffic longer than I expected. Once past the first set of rolling hills, however, I could zip along at speed enjoying the views.

I started seeing ads for various sights and things to do in the area, indicating that this was at least tourist/ski resort area, rather than built up towns. At Fiesch, we found each other with no problem, put the bikes on the car, and drove down towards Brig, discovering that the descent from Fiesch to Brig was anything but boring, and indeed quite pretty and worth riding the next time we were in the area.

Brig itself was smoking hot, but fortunately the train station had the tourist information center in it, and was itself quite cool. We arrived too early for the tourist information center, but found the supermarket and bought ourselves a supermarket lunch. Once the tourist information center opened, we found that a suitable place to stay would be Brig Ried. We drove the car to the center of town, got out the bikes, and rode up the hill in 100F temperatures. By the time we got to Brig Ried I was quite ready to stop, provided the hotel rooms were cool.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We found a non-descript hotel and XiaoQin and I spent the afternoon at the swimming pool that I'd spied while riding up the hill while Phil stayed and read. When the weather had cooled down enough to contemplate dinner, we drove down the hill and had dinner in the middle of town. I was very impressed by the A180 at this point: it had taken us until now before we needed to gas it up!

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Day 5: Realp to All'Acqua

We woke up to sunny skies and another clear day. The place we stayed at didn't serve breakfast, but due to my reduced appetite the day before, we had plenty of left over food, so we ate that and then rolled out towards Hospental. Unlike the day before, the road towards Hospental was calm and rolled along smoothly. I felt much better than the day before and the climb on St. Gotthard went easily enough, with no wind or traffic.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At the summit, I stopped at the museum to see if how much the entry cost, and it wasn't enough given my poor German to be worth going. It had warmed up considerably but the descent from St. Gotthard pass first went through a kilometer long tunnel. Once past the tunnel there were great views where XiaoQin stopped to take a beautiful photo of Airolo and the road below, but being on a bicycle I was having too much fun to slow down. We agreed to meet at the train station in Airolo before hand.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Once past the flying hairpin the road splits into the highway as well as the local road, with the highway presumably off-limits to bikes. Given that the local road is filled with cobbles and extremely unfriendly corners, we took the highway and zipped down to Airolo quickly and with no ado.

At the train station, we spoke to the tourist information folks and were told that we would either climb Nufenen that day or stay at All'Acqua, the last hotel in the valley at about 1600m, giving us a head start on the next day's climb. Given that it was already 80F at the train station, the prospect of climbing in the hot afternoon sun didn't appeal to us, so we had the tourist information center call All'Acqua and make a reservation.

XiaoQin had trouble finding the train station, but after a bit she got herself corrected and found us. The tourist information center provided her with directions and we headed up the road. The climb wasn't very long but amazingly enough, as we gained in altitude the temperature of the road rose! By the time we got to All'Acqua the temperature was 94F and rising. The decision to stop there looked better and better, and by the time I stopped, I had sweat all over my face and bike, and Phil looked a little cooked and maybe even sunburned.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

All'Acqua had a restaurant, so we asked for some ice cream but got some lemon sorbet with some alcohol in it. It was yummy but with a bitter after taste. We later found out what it was called but I'd forgotten it again, having decided not to ever have one again.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We took showers, rested inside, and then XiaoQin and I went out for a walk in the hiking trails. I didn't know it at that time, but it's actually possible to hike all the way into Italy from All'Acqua, even while carrying a bike. Jobst Brandt and Jeanie Barnett did that in 2003. In the hot weather, even hiking in the shade would caused me to sweat, and after wandering around watching hikers do the hike in various states of undress we went back to the hotel to cool off.

The restaurant menu for dinner didn't look especially appealing, but since we had a car, we got into it and drove down to Airolo where there were plenty of restaurants. We picked a pizza place that served good spaghetti and had a good meal. By the time we got back it was plenty cool and we enjoyed the mountain air before going to bed.

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Day 4: Rosenlaui to Realp

We awoke to beautiful clear skies. That made waiting for the train something enjoyable, with glorious views around us, and the sun finally lighting up the valley with sights of the peaks around us!

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We drove back to Rosenlaui eager to get going on the bicycles again, and found to our delight the classic views leading to Rosenlaui waiting for us.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Since XiaoQin had the car today, she could afford to walk around and enjoy the scenery while we got onto our bikes and rode down the mountain and headed towards Grimsel pass, agreeing to meet at Guttannen where the grocery store might be closed by the time we got there. We rode up the pass quickly, and upon reaching Guttannen discovered that the grocery store was open, so we got ice cream and waited. After a bit I called XiaoQin and she had turned off onto Sustens pass instead. I told her not to worry since Phil and I had plenty of food, so we'd see her at the top of Grimsel after she had lunch. She drove back to Lammi and had lunch there instead.

The ride up to Grimsel was great, done under beautiful skies, but at the Grimsel parking lot I didn't quite feel like myself, having lost quite a bit of appetite. I chalked it up to a lack of salt and started downing salt pills, as well as eating the meat that XiaoQin had brought in the car. (She arrived just a couple of minutes after we summit-ted) Only much later did I realize that I probably had altitude sickness, which was strange since the hike up to a higher location the day before, done at high intensity, did not affect me at all.

From Grimsel Pass, you get a nice view of Furka pass, which is 200m taller, but comes with quite a bit of descent! Since I wasn't feeling all that well, I decided to take it easy on the climb.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At the Hotel Belvedere I started feeling like my deraileur was stuck. Since I was tired I didn't stop to diagnose the problem but after the steep part I tried to shift and the deraileur locked up. A forced stop made me look at the problem and I found that the chain had gone off the pulley wheels. This wasn't hard to fix. All I had to do was to remove the rear derailleur, pull the chain back around the pulley wheels, and then replace the deraileur and ride up to the top.

With that delay, I made it to the summit ten minutes after Phil, and then after that we started the descent into Realp. Our original goal was Hospental. Since a massive headwind was expected, we agreed to all regroup in Realp and then we could put the bikes onto the car and drive into Hospental.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

As we rode through Realp, however, I spied a sign for lodging at 35CHF a night! That was too cheap to pass up, and when we inspected the lodging, we decided that it was more than acceptable and so stayed in Realp. I was really worn out and tired, and felt a strange lack of appetite. I forced myself to eat dinner anyway, and hoped that I would feel better the next morning.

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Day 3: A Hike to Kleine Scheidegg

The plan for the day was for Phil and I to hike up to Mannlichen, where XiaoQin would join us via cable car. Then hopefully, we'd do the mountain view walk together to Kleine Scheidegg and maybe back to Wengen, depending on how much walking we were willing to do. After a short quarter mile walk through Wengen, the trail led steeply up along the hillside. One look up the mountain and it was obvious why---the trail went alongside what was practically a cliff! It didn't take us long before we got to the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy memorial. I suspected but didn't know that he was the Mendelssohn, so I took a picture and moved on.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Going higher up, the views opened up but because of overcast skies, we could not see far. We had been warned that this hike would be harder than usual because of constructions on the avalanche protection near the top, but were not prepared for signs like this:

From Tour of the Alps 2011

In the USA, these signs would be cause for a lawsuit were anyone to be injured by rock fall, and hence the entire trail would be closed, despite the fact that I did not see any possibility of rock fall.

Once we got higher, we saw some wildflowers and the pace slowed a little bit. I wasn't happy about the overcast, though, as it promised that our views of the mountains would be occluded.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Sure enough, the panorama trail granted us only views of the base of the Eiger, the Jungfrau, and the Monch, and the best view of the mountains we got was further down, past the Kleine Scheidegg train station.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We finished the hike one station down, got onto the train and then had a pizza dinner, hoping for some nice weather tomorrow before the serious riding began.

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Day 2: Rosenlaui to Wengen

We woke up in the morning without any jet-lag, and to dry roads but overcast skies. I had previously booked Hotel Bernerhof in Wengen, the one part of Lauterbrunnen valley that I had not explored. With permission from Andreas, we left our bikes in Rosenlaui: there was no point carting the bikes around to Wengen where we would have no need for them.

The first stop of the day, however, was Reichenbach Falls, just above Meiringen. The falls is well known amongst Sherlock Holmes fans for being the site of "His Last Bow", where he struggled with Moriarty and fell to his "death." Holmes, of course, was far too popular with his readers for Doyle to keep him dead for long, and returned by popular demand.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We drove over to Lauterbrunnen Valley for a good look at the Staubbach Falls. This is the fall that greets you upon entering Lauterbrunnen Valley, and it has a hiking trail that goes up behind the fall. Due to strong wind that day, however, the falls were pulled away from behind the hiking trails so we got a view of Lauterbrunnen instead.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

From Tour of the Alps 2011

This being XiaoQin's first time in Lauterbrunnen, we had to see the Trummelbach falls, so after buying a picnic lunch at the supermarket, we drove to the Trummelbach parking lot and ate. Phil chose to stay with the car and read while we paid the admission fees to look inside the mountain at the falls, which included a ride up the Funicular railway.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We then parked the car at the parking structure in Lauterbrunnen and hopped onto the next train up to Wengen. Even though it was overcast, the view down the valley with all its attendant waterfalls put Yosemite valley to shame.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Arriving at Wengen, we followed the arrows towards Hotel Bernerhof. After a few minutes of walking we came to an intersection where there were pointers to other hotels, but not to Bernerhof. A look around and we realized that we were standing right in front of it!

By the time we were settled, it was around 4pm, which wasn't much time for a long walk, but the visitor's center helpfully pointed us at the St. Mary's Cafe walk, which granted us nice views of the valley from where Wengen was at 4000 feet.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We had dinner at a nearby restaurant and prepared ourselves for a more intense hike the next day.

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Startup Engineering Management Beta Program Closed

Next up: Pre-orders! Watch this space for more details.

Reflections on Social Networks and How People Use Them

People keep asking me about my opinion on Google plus (G+). In the days since launching, I've accumulated well over 700 followers on plus, far more than my meager 400 odd followers on Buzz. The service has signed up 20 million users, which is remarkable for a social network. So has Google proven Paul Buchheit wrong? Will it indeed beat Facebook before it lands on the moon?

Google has placed privacy front-and-center on G+. To many, especially the early adopters that have populated G+, this is the holy grail, being able to segregate your friends into tiny tiny groups, including some groups of one. It serves as filtering, grouping, and no doubt some other features I haven't thought about all at once.

In practice, however, Circles are clumsy. You make a decision every time you add a person into one of your circles. I can't even keep the default "Friends" and "Following" straight. And maybe I want to think that people who are in my "Family" should also get to see everything that "Friends" see. Talking to a few people I know, the reaction seems to be: "In practice, most people can only cope with one or two groups." Great, but the default is 4: "Friends," "Following", "Family", and "Acquaintances." The result is sometimes I find myself wanting to add someone but faced with the Paradox of Choice, I end up not adding that person. This seems to be a fairly small matter, a mere resetting of defaults should fix it, right?

The reality is, that's not where the value of social networks lie. Let's take the typical use case. You meet someone while traveling, and wanting to stay in touch, she says, "Add me on Facebook." You say, "No, add me to G+ instead!" She dutifully visits G+ and adds you. But wait, not only does she add you, she adds you to the "Smucks I met while traveling" circle. Now you only get her public posts + anything that she remembers to add to the circle while posting, which is never. The purpose of staying in touch with someone you just met randomly just went poof. Even worse, when she went to add you on G+, she was reminded that she barely knows you, rather than you being that guy who was interesting enough that she wanted to use one of her precious 5,000 slots on Facebook on. I don't see the travel crowd being eager to switch to G+ for that reason any time soon. "Friend me on Facebook" has a very specific meaning, while "Add me to one of your many circles on G+" will forever leave the two of you guessing whether one of you slotted the other into an irrelevant circle, never to be heard from again.

You might think that this is of no consequence, but my argument is that these casual contacts are probably your most valuable ones on social networking sites! When I was single and dating, the act of changing my relationship status on Facebook announced to all my friends and casual acquaintances that I was single. On G+, you would default to announcing this to just your friends (or more likely, not announcing it at all). Now, on Facebook, there's apparently a way to make such changes not so public, but since few people know how to do that, nobody does, so the norm is that relationship statuses change publicly, and everyone makes these announcements. By making such announcements private by default on G+, anyone on G+ who actually does say, "Hi, I'm single now." is actually saying, "Hi, I'm single and desperate." No one's going to actually signal that. As a result of my relationship status, people started to set me up with dates. The thing is, these set-ups did not come from my closest friends! They came from the periphery of my social networks, in some cases from people I had completely forgotten adding to my social network! The book Connected explains why this happens. Basically, your friends who are close are usually exposed to all the opportunities that you already have, so you rarely find new opportunities from your close friends. It's your casual acquaintances that provide you with new opportunities. So by forcing all your friends into one "Circle", Facebook will actually provide you with more utility, which in my opinion is why even though Facebook long had groups, nobody actually used it --- you actually lose value when you segregate your contacts in this fashion. By placing it front and center, G+ is making a mistake and doing its users a disservice.

What about the digital detritus that people love to complain about, such as baby pictures that clearly no one cares about to even click "like" on them? Well, those are most useful to your loose contacts! Someone calling you up or sending you e-mail to catch up (either socially or for business reasons) but who isn't close to you would find the fact that you just got married or just had kids or just celebrated their birthdays very useful, whereas your close friends/family already know this stuff.

I think blindly implementing what users say they want in the context of social networks without considering how defaults are setup and how users tend to use social networks makes the resulting network less useful to its users. To a large extent I don't even think Facebook fully understands what it is about their current setup that makes them so successful (though at least one ex-Facebooker has it right). Ultimately, while G+ might prove to be useful (as a substitute for say, Friendfeed/Buzz/Twitter when RSS input is finally implemented), I consider it no threat to Facebook in terms of overall effectiveness and usefulness as long as G+ chooses to put Circles front and center.

Day 1: Sarnen to Rosenlaui

We installed our chintzy $60 bike rack on the A180 with no problems whatsoever. Not only did it fit well, the bikes did not stick out far enough to block our exit from the tiny garage entrance. Prior to the trip, we had calculated that the savings from train tickets would justify carrying the bike rack onto the plane.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

I was not surprised that the drive out to Sarnen along the freeway was faster than taking the train, but was surprised to discover how much faster it was! The drive was an hour while the train (including transfers but not including waiting for the first train) was more than 2 hours long! That meant that we could wake up later (not that we would be able to do so given our jet-lag), and still get to Sarnen with plenty of time. The cloudy skies looked like they would bring rain at higher elevations and block out any views we could get on the Melchsee-Frutt adventure, so we opted for a traverse over the Brunig to the Lammi restaurant. After setting XiaoQin's Phone to navigate to the Lammi, Phil and I got our bikes out, and began the ride after synchronizing our cameras to the GPS unit.

To my surprise, my GPS unit routed us around the Sarnensee on the West side rather than the East side that I was familiar with. I didn't complain much, because it gave us nice beautiful views of the Sarnensee as we approached Giswil. After the intersection with Highway 4, we found a bike path signed for the Brunig with a 12% grade. That sounded like fun, so we immediately rode up it to get beautiful views of the area.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

The bike path flattened out and turned into dirt soon enough, as bike paths are wont to do, and then dropped us off into Lugern where a steep climb took us along the railroad tracks on a dirt path. The climbing got fairly hefty as the train tracks went into a tunnel and the bike path went over the tunnel, but we soon got high enough for some decent views at Chappeli.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

From there, it was a hop skip and a jump over to Brunig pass, where we abandoned the bike path in favor of a fast road descent into Meiringen. The consequence of going fast when it starts raining is that rain drops at 55kph hurt! Nonetheless, we soon arrived at Meiringen and rode up the Kirchet pass to the Lammi restaurant, where XiaoQin had been waiting. The rain had turned into just occasional drops, so we opted to eat lunch outside under the umbrella. Lammi produces what I consider to be the platonic ideal for sausages, and this time was no exception. The onion sauce is a must have.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

After lunch, XiaoQin drove off after I gave her the very simple directions to Rosenlaui followed by instructions to pull aside for the post bus. The climb started dry, but by the time we got to Zwirgi it had started raining and was getting heavier. I abandoned taking pictures, put on my jacket and just hammered at the pedals trying to get to the hotel.

I arrived at the Hotel in due time to find that XiaoQin had already checked in and was taking pictures. Christine, assessing her condition, had immediately gotten someone to help her with the luggage and so we were all moved in! I parked the bike at the usual place and then XiaoQin and I took a walk after I gave Christine a copy of the touring book so they could see the picture of Andreas and I on one of the early pages.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Rosenlaui in the fog is no less pretty than in the sun, and while the rain was annoying, it's still a magical place. Upon returning, Andreas greeted us and said he really loved the book, asking if I had plans to get it translated into German. "There are plenty of cycling books in German," I said. "Ah, but no how-to books. They're all region guides!" I haven't the faintest idea as to how to crack the German book market, but if that's true I'd be willing to sell my German rights.

Dinner was the usual four course meal: soup, a salad, lamb, and panna cotta, all cooked to their usual high standards. Andreas said that the weather was due to change by the weekend, so we hoped for less rain for the next two days.

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Prologue: June 21st-22nd

For the first time, we used AirBerlin to fly from San Francisco to Dusseldorf, then a quick transfer to Zurich. I was warned against them previously by friends in Munich who said they were a small airline that nobody used. However, their bike policy was more than reasonable: pay an annual fee of 79EUR for the topbonus service card, and you get to bring your bike of up to 32kg for no charge. I was struck by the general competence of the customer service agent. We needed a ticket change for XiaoQin because she needed to return to work unexpectedly early, and he would get on the phone to Frankfurt and get information for us. Unfortunately, we had ordered the ticket using Orbitz, and Orbitz's customer service was much worse. Given the price difference ($50), we would have been better off ordering the tickets directly from AirBerlin.

The checkin process went smoothly and the flight transfer went with typical German efficiency. We were through the customs and transfer process within 20 minutes, and what I thought was a ridiculously short transfer time turned out to be enough. Arriving at the airport, we quickly found the airport shuttle for Hotel Flyaway, but it was too small to carry two giant bike cases, our carry on, and additional checked baggage. No problem, the shuttle drive negotiated with another shuttle bus driver who had a trailer attached to his bus and he drove us to our hotel immediately and with no hassle, even delivering our luggage for us.

While XiaoQin took a nap, Phil and I started putting together the bikes under the awning of the hotel restaurant while it rained ominously. If it kept going like this, our first day's plan would be wrecked. The bikes came together quickly enough, and soon we had empty bike cases and fully assembled bikes. While we were putting together the bikes, Phil observed that there was a bike shop across the street from the hotel, so even if we had any missing parts we were conveniently located as far as replacements were concerned!

We had a quick dinner, we took the airport shuttle to the airport for to acquire Swisscom SIM cards for our phones. Phil and Xiaoqin had N1s, which meant they could use the Easy BeFree plan with 4CHF per day of surfing, and unlimited calls for 3CHF. My blackberry, however, was not supported by Easy BeFree, so I ended up with the easy liberty uno. In retrospect, we weren't making too many phone calls with the phones, and we should have put everyone on the easy liberty uno plan, since one phone call a day cost 3CHF on the Easy BeFree plan, which was usually all the phone calls we would make that day on one phone.

We shopped for some groceries, including breakfast, because the Hotel Flyaway's breakfast was priced for Kings. Then we went to pick up the car. We had booked a Ford Focus, but Hertz was out of them so we ended up with a Mercedes A180, a small that that felt like an upscale version of my Honda Fit. XiaoQin was freaked out by how small the roads and parking spaces were, but we managed to get the car into Hotel FlyAway's garage.

Because of XiaoQin's flight plan changes, we had to rebook our return to Hotel Flyaway and change the return date of the car, all of which was accomplished with only minor hassles. We slept well that night, hoping for the rain to stop.
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Tour of the Alps 2011

In June and July, XiaoQin, Phil Sung, and I visited Europe to do a cycling and hiking tour of the Alps. The cycling portion of the trip went over 862 miles with 94,957 feet of climb. The hiking portion was 27.9 miles with 7,963' of climb. We had one flat tire, one derailleur mechanical, and a strange dust cap melt-down. We had several days of rain, but only a couple of days where rain stopped us or forced us to cut a ride short.

This is the index page for the trip report, and collects all the photos.

My photo collection:

Tour of the Alps 2011

Phil's photos
Phil's Highlights
Phil's Trip Report

Trip Report

• Prologue
  
• June 23rd, Sarnen to Rosenlaui
  
• June 24th, Rosenlaui to Wengen
  
• June 25th, Wengen
  
• June 26th, Rosenlaui to Realp
  
• June 27th, Realp to All'Acqua
  
• June 28th, All'Acqua to Brig-Reid
  
• June 29th, Brig-Reid to Vinadio
  
• June 30th, Vinadio to Barcelonnette
  
• July 1st, Cime de la Bonette
  
• July 2nd, Col du Parpaillon
  
• July 3rd, Barcelonette to Briancon
  
• July 4th, Briancon to St. Michel Maurienne
  
• July 5th, Saint Michel Maurienne to Beaufort
  
• July 6th, Beaufort to Carouge
  
• July 7th, Carouge to Zurich
  
• July 8th, Zurich to St. Moritz Bad
  
• July 9th, Engadin Hike
  
• July 10th, Corvatsch
  
• July 11th, St Moritz Bad to Glorenza
  
• July 12th, Glorenza to Bormio
  
• July 13th, Bormio to St. Caterina
  
• July 14th, St. Caterina to Fondo
  
• July 15th, Fondo to Moos
  
• July 16th, Moos to Mils
  
• July 17th, Mils to Bludenz
  
• July 18th, Bludenz to Rorschach
  
• July 19th, Rorschach to Munich
  
• July 20th, Rest Day in Munich
  
• July 21st, Munich to Neuhausen
  
• July 22nd, Neuhausen to Kloten
  
• July 23rd, 24th, Epilogue
  

Appendices

• Conclusion and Thoughts
  
• Review: Olympus EPL-1
  
• Long Term Review: Garmin Edge 800
  
• Review: Air Berlin
  

Review: Queen of Arlin

Queen of Arlin is TC Southwell's novel about a post-apocalyptic world that initially looks like a fantasy novel. The story revolves around the Queen of Arlin, who would be forced into marriage by her suitors if she did not go to war and die. Since she didn't like any of her suitors she went to war hoping to die a warrior queen. But part of her inheritance was a super-soldier, a cyborg illegally imported into her planet, and he rescues her.

The premise is initially interesting but the main character is willfully ignorant, and worse, does not try to actually learn what she does not understand. The resulting interaction is repetitious, predictable, and one reads it hoping the queen gets an ugly and untimely death. Imagine my sadness and annoyance that instead this is the first novel of a long series.

If you're stuck in a hotel room in the rain this is barely readable. Not recommended.

Review: Throne of Jade

It would have been easy for the follow up to His Majesty's Dragon to be another conventional story about the Napoleonic Wars with Dragons with tactical set-pieces, but Novik cleverly declines and takes us into a completely different direction. We visit the China of that region, but of course, a China completely infused with dragons and with dragons as part of the society.

Throne of Jade starts of with what seems to be a really contrived plot, with the Chinese demanding one of the stars of the first book to return to China. For all sorts of political reasons, our protagonists are bundled onto a boat and shipped off to China. There are some minor adventures on the way, but what's great is upon arrival, we get a view of a society that's completely integrated another sentient species into its society, as opposed to our view from the first novel, which treated dragons effectively as replacements for fighters and bombers.

I thought this was a very clever twist, and wondered how Novik would draw the plot to its conclusion, having written herself into a corner as far as the characters were concerned. Unfortunately, her solution's not very novel, with palace intrigues and betrayals being par for the course, but with some not very believable situations (even given the presence of dragons).

Nonetheless, the book had me engaged all the way to the end. While I don't find myself in a hurry to read Novik's follow on novels in this series, I'd be happy to read them in the future. Mildly recommended.

Review: His Majesty's Dragon

His Majesty's Dragon is Naomi Novik's novel about the Napoleanic Wars on an alternate world where dragons co-evolved with men. This co-evolution is obvious because dragons apparently learn human languages while still inside the egg, and easily adopt human companions/riders on a one-on-one basis.

Once you put aside that bit of suspension of disbelief, the novel works very well. We're given a run down of how squadrons are organized, how aerial warfare is conducted in an age where sailboats still rule the waters, and what the social organization and hierarchy of the aviators would be in relation to the rest of the armed services.

The novel is entirely readable and a lot of fun, though one cannot help but think about how much more interesting it would have been to read about the domestication of dragons in that universe, for instance. Recommended, especially for airplane reading or while resting during a bike tour.

Review: Assassin's Apprentice

Assassin's Apprentice is the first in Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. It starts with a boy abandoned by his family at the Kingdom's keep, with the grandfather noting that the boy's the King-in-Waiting's bastard son.

The story starts slowly, with the story being told in first person from Fitz's point of view. He is seemingly abandoned at first, left to the care of the stable-master. But we observe the repercussion of his appearance on the political scene shortly after in the abdication of the Prince and the political intrigues begin.

The world itself is fairly non-descript, though as a fantasy world there's magic in the form of telepathy and ability to communicate with animals, magic is not a major force in the world. The story moves along at a good clip; Hobb's a good enough writer that you're never left wondering why a scene is in place but are simply carried along by the narrative. Ultimately, Fitz becomes initiated in the ways of stealth and poison, and is sent on missions for his king.

The narrative speeds up in the last 10% of the book as Fitz is sent to help bring about a closer union with a potential ally by poisoning a prince, and everything comes together at once. Hobb is not afraid to pour hell on her characters, and the ending of the novel leaves us with some long running loose ends but with a satisfactory climax. I'm going to keep reading other books in this series. Recommended.

Startup Engineering Management Beta Program Reopened

I've just finished a substantial revision of Startup Engineering Management and am about to start the print proof process. To get some fresh eyes on the book, I'm reopening the program. Since the book's much further along, the price is set at $14.95. I'll close the program as soon as I get enough beta readers.

To buy, click through.

Review: The Last Wish

I started playing The Witcher, and found myself really like the world and the cynical main character, Geralt of Riva. So on my recent tour I found myself grabbing The Last Wish off the Kindle store and reading it one rainy day.

There's a coherent plot, which revolves around the opening sequence from the game, and Geralt's subsequent recovery. We don't find out how he loses his memory at the beginning of the game, but plenty of characters in the game make references to the events described in this book, which makes reading the book while playing the game very satisfying.

The story is told in little vignettes, short stories that provide some insight into the world Geralt lives in, or into Geralt himself. Though the game would have you believe there's a lot of sex, the book is much more restrained, and everything happens off the camera. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks later, I find myself without much recollection of the details of the book. Nevertheless, the writing is good enough that I'd be happy to read it again, either as an airplane novel or otherwise.

Mildly recommended.

Review: The Story of the Giro D'Italia

Bill McGann is at it again, this time documenting the history of the Tour of Italy. As with the story of the Tour De France, this history is mostly a year by year accounting of the various Giri, each with its dominating rider, scandals, and rampant cheating, both by riders and fans.

There are a few interesting titbits, like how Northern Italy speaks German (it used to be part of Austria and was given to Italy for picking the right side during World War 1), but by and large the history isn't as interesting, though McGann makes the very good point that the Giro is a far more contested race and therefore more interesting to watch than the Tour de France.

It's fun reading, especially if you're touring or planning to tour in the area. It does give you a good idea of why doping is so hard to stamp out in cycling though! It's been in there since the beginning!

Recommended.

More Photos, and a plug for Photosynth

I lied: I wasn't completely done with photos. I have a bunch of panoramic stitches, and they're still uploading to PicasaWeb (very slowly). But the reality is, PicasaWeb (and Facebook) are designed to be social network tools: low resolution pictures posted by drunk teenagers taken by lousy camera phones. Neither of them are designed to show off high resolution photos stitched together by people who care using powerful desktop computers.

The alternative, however, is Microsft's Photosynth.

Here's an embed of my Moos stitch:


And another from the Engadin:


For the entire collection, please view my Photosynth stream.

Tour of the Alps 2011 Photos

Tour of the Alps 2011

Between XiaoQin, Phil, and I, we exposed about 4200 frames over a month of touring and cycling in this year's tour of the alps, which included 5 days of hiking, and a week of almost daily rain. Those of you who remember past tour patterns will probably expect a tour report to come soon. This year, however, I've got a series of talks at REI coming up, so I'd be preparing a presentation for that, featuring some of the photos here in this album, so things will be delayed a little bit.

Nevertheless, I do intend to write a trip report eventually. In the mean time, enjoy the photos!