June 17th: Lindau to Grunenbach

We woke up early and left for a cafe breakfast so as to not disturb the guests (and more importantly, the owner, who was watching our kids like a hawk). We returned, brush our teeth and packed as quietly as we could, and then left. The night before, I'd plotted a route to find the start of the Bodensee to Konigsee bike path. While komoot had the entire bike path plotted, there was also no way to load the whole thing, and the tourist board that had established the komoot route had broken it into so many little sections that we would probably finish more than one a day, so I opted for just following the signs.

What was even worse was that the stage terminus set by the tourist board were all obscure little towns with very little lodging. I had no idea how they expected us to use the stages, but I figured I'd figure everything out along the way. It was Monday and I didn't expected competition for lodging anywhere along the route.

The problem with riding away from the Bodensee, of course, was that every direction was up, except for the direction we'd came from. There was one easy direction, which was to head up towards Chur with a tailwind in the afternoon, but the year before, on the train from Lindau to Garmisch, the scenery looked pretty enough to justify a ride, and I decided that the Bodensee to Konigsee bike route was worth trying, not being so flat as to be boring, as well as taking us to Fussen and Bad Tolz. I didn't intend to follow the route slavishly, since Bowen wanted to go to Garmisch, and our final destination was Salzburg, not the Konigsee, but it would be a guide and approximation and assure us that regardless we would have a bike route marked out.

Of course, not half a kilometer from where we discovered the start of the route, we'd already encountered a detour, though this one was marked very well and wasn't onerous. We stopped at a fruit stand, our memories fresh of the amazing fruit the day before, but the fruit this time wasn't nearly as good. We climbed over a couple of hills with plenty of other cyclists about, all clearly following the same bike path, and then at one point saw another cyclist turn around. It turned out that the bike route signs had peter'd out, in the fashion of many German long distance bike path markings. At the next intersection, all of us stopped and scanned our maps to see the best way to regain the route, and it looked like it was an easy correction at the first town with any feasible lodging. It would be weird lodging, being run by a church, so we opted to keep going.

At the next playground in Hergatz, we stopped to refill our water bottles, let Bowen and Boen play, and try to find something to eat. To our surprise, nearly everything around us was closed! Even the water fountain that had enticed us to stop had “kein trinkwasser” on it! Riding on, I stopped by a house and asked if there was a supermarket nearby, and the owners replied, “No, the nearest place is quite far away. This is not a good place for shopping.” I asked for water and they obliged, and gave us 3 apples as well.

At Eglofs, we found a fruit stand, and I asked the fruit stand owner and she explained, that this being a Monday, nearly everything was closed as a holiday! This included the hotel that was clearly listed on booking.com as being open, and it being hot, I didn't want to climb to the top of the hill to verify. We kept riding on the bike route, riding a mix of dirt and pavement including an ominous omen --- a roadkilled hedge hog. Upon passing by a campground, we stopped just in case they had a grocery store in the fashion of many American campgrounds, but no luck. The folks at the campground told us that there was a pizza place at Gestratz over that was opened on Mondays, however.

We rode there and got there at 1:30pm. Despite it being opened, the waiter told us that the kitchen was closed. I was pretty pissed. I looked at booking.com and saw that Grunenbach, the next town over, had a guesthouse that was opened. It was only 5km, but was over a climb that had the dreaded “14% grade” listed on the arrow pointing in the direction. I booked it, and we committed to climbing in the afternoon heat.

Fortunately, 5km doesn't take forever, even on the tandem, and in 40 minutes we were standing at the front door. The hostess of the guesthouse was gracious and friendly, even calling a nearby restaurant to see if they would open for us, but everyone else was too cooked to even consider leaving the hotel. I took Xiaoqin's ebike and rode over to the net town where a bakery was open. There I bought the dregs of the day's lunch and desserts, some milk and drinks, and rode back. Unfortunately, the kickstand on the ebike had lost a bolt on the way there and was no longer usable. I examined the kickstand and determined that I didn't have a bolt that was a suitable replacement. Worse, I didn't even have a suitable wrench to tighten the remaining bolt or to remove it so we could stow it without it rattling all over the place.

We ate everything, and then went out for dinner at the local Indian place, which had a somewhat strange facsimile of Indian food as I knew it at the Bay Area. The gracious hostess told us how to find the local playground. There, I examined our options after this horribly challenging day. The next town was big enough to have a bike shop that could repair the kickstand. There was also a swimming pool that had water-slides, something Bowen discovered that he loved last year in Garmisch, but it would also make for a very short day, but folks might want one. However, Immenstadt was on the other side of the Grosser Alpsee, and the route description indicated that it was an easy, mostly flat ride, and we would get to see Grosser Alpsee. Regardless, it would be a climb over from Grunenbach to Oberstaufen, so I figured we'd decide when we got there.

We slept well that night, all having been quite tired from the unexpected challenges the day had placed before us.

June 16th: Konstanz to Lindau

We woke up finally, almost un-jet-lagged, except for Xiaoqin, whose sleep was constantly interrupted by Boen's demands. I took both kids down to breakfast, and Jennie's family who were unencumbered by the need to pack and get ready, had already arrived at our hotel by the time I was rolling the bike out of storage. A thunderstorm had passed through the night before, leaving the roads wet, but the forecast called for a sunny afternoon, so we'd opted to ride anyway.

Garmin routed us on beautiful bike paths through Konstanz to get to the ferry, though at one point I balked at the dirt bike path which had become muddy, and opted to ride on pavement instead. We arrived at the ferry terminal expecting to have to buy tickets before boarding, but the sign said “buy tickets on the ferry.” To our surprise, the bike carriage on these car ferries on the Bodensee was to just roll on ahead of the cars and then park by the side of the ferry! Since the ferry ran about every 30 minutes, we basically were assured of an almost immediate crossing. The ferry could only take cash, but we'd crossed over into Germany at Konstanz (with no notification whatsoever on the bike path), so now I could use the Euros left over from my Spainish trip in April.

The ferry crossing was smooth as can be, but we felt a raindrop or two as we rolled off the ferry after the cars were let out. I promised Bowen that we could visit the Zeppelin museum in Frederickshafen, and wanted to make it to the museum before it started raining, so we started off at a furious pace. Jennie's family were unladen, but their bicycles were not as suited for paved riding as ours, so except for their oldest boy who had a fancy mountain bike, Jennie and her daughter had to struggle, since the bike path from Meersburg to Fredrickshafen was not flat.

In Fredichshafen we had lunch, and bid goodbye to Jennie, who'd declined to visit the museum, seeing that they had a drive back to Lausanne after the ferry took them back to Konstanz. The Zeppelin museum was small, and had less kid-friendly stuff than I expected, though there was a replica of the inside of a replica gondola as it was in the hey-day of airships.  I reflected that if the world got serious about reducing carbon emissions there might be a place for airships again, trading a slower transit time for better fuel efficiency, though there's also a concern that in a warming atmosphere winds might become so strong that what you can fit onto an airship might not be enough to fight any headwinds.

Bowen was disappointed by the Zeppelin museum, so we rode on towards Lindau. It being a Sunday I didn't expect there to be competition for lodging, so we didn't make reservations until after we'd stopped at a fruit stand and bought some amazingly delicious strawberries. Xiaoqin made the call to stay at a booking.com run AirBnB-type accommodation which to my surprise wasn't on the island of Lindau proper (which would have cost a lot more). We got to Lindau and were surprised that we had to climb to get to our lodging, and then I realized that the new town of Lindau (as oppose to the train station and old town) was in a different location.

We arrived late and were greeted. Unlike a hotel, there was no sheltered parking  for bikes nor a place to charge the e-bike, so I had to figure out how to extract the battery from the e-bike so we could charge it in our room. The owner of the place immediately told us that the garden was off-limits because of our kids. It was quite clear that she had oriented her place towards adult visitors, and didn't really like having little children on premise. We quickly took our shower, did our laundry, and walked out to the local Biergarten for dinner, having been told that she didn't take credit cards and would only take cash, we were also told where the ATM was and I made a point of going there after dinner to extract Euros. I also scouted out the two bakeries that would serve for breakfast the next day, it being a Monday.

June 15th: Neuhausen to Konstanz

Bowen and Boen woke up well before the 8:00am breakfast, so I took both of them down to the falls once again, this time getting views from the stairs. In the fashion of little kids, they soon decided that the funnest part of the area were the multi-stage elevators that let you skip the walk they had to take the day before directly to the train station. We couldn't have used that elevator yesterday because it wasn't big enough for the triplet, and sending kids up an unknown elevator wasn't something that even I would condone.

After breakfast, we headed up the river towards Stein Am Rhein. Soon, we hit a town where folks were practicing crossing the river with rowboats, timed by coaches who would make them repeat. Riding across the river, we discovered that the bike path signs had uncharacteristically disappeared, but after turning around a few times discovered that they'd been obscured by signs announcing that the main road through town had been closed to motor traffic due to a festival. Once past the festival, we made it to Stein Am Rhein, which had some sort of market through downtown.

Last time I visited Stein Am Rhein I was very impressed and thought it was the cutest little town, but my wife wasn't easily impressed, and so we ended up eating a quick lunch and then decamping to the campground. My friend Jennie Chen from Lausaunne was planning to join us, and it was a Saturday, so we booked a hotel in Konstanz after noticing the Meersburg on the other side of the ferry crossing was a lot more expensive. In my excitement, however, I'd neglected to see that the hotel we'd reserved had only one room left, and so Jennie had to scramble to find another hotel with openings.

The day was becoming quite warm, and when the bike path turned away from the river and started to climb into the hills to bypass the main road, I said “screw that!” and rode along the main road at speed. On a bike path next to the railroad tracks, however, Boen fell asleep on a set of rollers, forcing us to stop. He woke up after about 3 minutes off the bike, however, so we could proceed.

After all the climbing, the ride onto the Bodensee was a welcome relief: flat and smooth, with beautiful views throughout. We even stopped for photos. Once in Konstanz, it was a chore to find the hotel, as it was in the center of the pedestrian zone and the afternoon traffic made it so that we had to route around it. The hotel turned out to be a good deal, however, as it was a 3 room suite with separate bedrooms and a living room area. The towel dryers even worked, and the restaurant attached to the hotel was highly rated.

Jennie and her family had checked in and ridden over before I was done with the laundry, but after we were gathered together, we had dinner and discussed our plans the next day. My suggestion was that they ride over the ferry with us, and then rode over to Fredrickshafen, where a ferry could take them back to  the other side of the Bodensee, so they could leave their car at Konstanz.

We had ice cream, caught up on the years since we'd last met when Bowen was still in mommy's womb. We'd had plenty to catch up on, and the kids got ice cream as part of the bargain. We agreed to sync up again the next morning.

June 14th: Rumlang to Neuhausen

Surprisingly enough, I managed to sleep until about 6:00am, evidence that the Trader Joe's melatonin tablet worked. The secret was that when I woke up at 2:00am, I didn't just lay awake, but immediately took another one.

I took both sons to breakfast so that Xiaoqin could have a little more sleep time, but even she couldn't sleep much longer because of the jet-lag. Boen discovered Nutella on this day (we never have any in the house because his brother is allergic to hazelnuts) After getting organized, it was about 10:00am before we departed from the hotel, leaving our empty bike boxes and luggage with them. The first few meters with the triplet felt shaky, and I wondered if I really could do a long distance bike tour with the two kids and luggage, but I knew from past experience that we would eventually settle down.

Our plan for the day was to ride to Stein Am Rhein. I'm not in the habit of making reservations far ahead on a bike tour, but the hotel had particularly poor reviews on booking.com and so offered same day cancellations, so I figured that we could cancel the reservation if we couldn't make it that far. The bike path to Eglisau on the Rhein was bike route 29, and once there we would switch to Swiss Bike route #2. Unlike the bike paths in Germany, Swiss National bike routes are well signed, though not always paved, and frequently are bike lanes rather than bike paths in major cities.

As I expected, the shakiness of the triplet experience gradually diminished throughout the day, and we sync'd together as a team. At noon, we rode off the designated path in Glattfelden to find a supermarket, where we bought a picnic lunch and then found a city park with benches along the bike path with a fountain to eat. As we rode into the village, people would stare and point at us, but the Swiss were much too polite to make random comments.

After lunch, we joined up with Swiss bike route #2 after a climb, and I realized that we were riding up the river towards the Bodensee. When I had last ridden this way in 2011, I hadn't even noticed, since I was riding my single bike. About 10km from Neuhausen, the path dipped down to the river and then we had to climb back up, which made me realize that Stein Am Rhein was out of the question. Using a smartphone app, I booked a hotel in Neuhausen, reasoning that we'd at least visit the Rheinfall that day.

To my surprise, the bike path crossed over into Germany, and proceeded to roll along before descending across along the Rhein until we saw the falls. Boen had his priorities straight: his first words off the bike were: “Daddy, I'm hungry. I want ice cream!” We bought ice cream at Swiss prices in front of the tourist attraction and watched the falls.

When we were done, we found ourselves having to climb from the bottom of the falls to town. The grade was much too steep for the triplet in our condition, so I had to stop the bike, ask the stokers to get off, and push the bike up the hill. Fortunately, we were on a bike path in a pedestrian only zone, so it was safe. We got out into the city, set a course for our hotel, and then looped around until we found it, a 4 story structure near the center of town.

Upon checking in, we discovered to our surprise that the manager insisted that we bring the bikes indoors, triplet and all, into their billiards room. There was even a power plug for us to charge the ebike. We pulled our luggage up the elevator, and then proceeded with what would be our regular routine: shower and laundry for the kids, then a walk downtown where we had dinner at the local Thai restaurant at expensive Swiss prices. The supermarket was still opened, so we bought a bottle of milk for Boen's inevitable mid-night awakenings, which Xiaoqin had to deal with.

Prologue: June 13th Zurich

“I am sorry, sir, but we have no record of your reservation of an e-bike.” My heart sank in despair. I'd pre-arranged the reservation, but for whatever reason, the system had hiccuped and placed my reservation as happening on January 1^st, 1970. Clearly I needed to check the e-mail more carefully. “Why do you reserve an e-bike for this long anyway? You should just buy one if you need it for so long.” “And sell it when I leave? Where am I going to find time for that?! You're not allowed to bring ebike batteries on the plane!” I was now outraged. The service representative clearly didn't want to help and was trying to blame me for my predicament. Reluctantly, he pulled up his computer and then made a few phone calls. “You can go to the Zurich Hauptbahnof. They have a bike there.”

It had been a long day. First, the United Airlines agent had charged us for 2 bikes when we flew from San Francisco, even though our triplet should have counted as one bike. Secondly, we'd arrived at Zurich, cleared customs with our bike, only to discover that we had arrived during lunch hour, so the Holiday Inn Express Zurich Airport shuttle wasn't going to pick us up for an hour. A taxi ride would have worked, but no taxi would take our large amount of luggage.

Thinking that Xiaoqin's e-bike had been taken care of, I started by assembling the triplet, and then took the shuttle to the airport's ebike reservation desk to try to pick up the bike. That was when the bombshell had exploded. Now it was 4:00pm and I was under time pressure since rental offices could start closing soon. The young service rep sold me a ticket for the Hauptbahnof, and told me to look for “lost and found” at the main train station to pick up my rental bike.

The folks at the main train station were much more competent. They showed me the e-bike that was reserved for me, but I noted that it was the wrong sized, since I needed a small. This started a sequence of reactions where they first searched for a bike, and then tried calling a customer to see if he could take a Medium instead of a Small, and then finally located a small sized bike in Winterthur, another city away. They called to make sure that they indeed had the bike in stock, and then sold me another ticket.

By the time I arrived at Winterthur it was 5pm, but the ticket office for rental bikes turned out to be the same as the Swiss train reservation center, so I had to take a number and wait. When my turn came, I agent stared once again nonplussed at the reservation, but fortunately decided to go ahead with my irrational long term ebike reservation and printed a contract and had me sign it. I asked if I could return the ebike at the Zurich Airport and the answer was “no. You have to return it here.” I was told to go to the rental station which was at the end of the station. There, I showed the contract, and I was handed an e-bike, along with a tiny pannier that held the charger. I asked for some brief instruction on how to ride the bike, and was taught that the mode button selected how much assist to get, and there was a special button for “walk mode.” I asked how long the range of the battery was, and was told that the limit was 1000km. It was quite clear to me that no e-bike battery could last 1000km even on a good day, so I just smiled and assumed that it was a mileage limit on my contract.

I'd programmed the location of the hotel onto my Garmin Fenix 5X, so now it was time to show its colors as I rode back to the hotel 24km away. The nice thing about being this far North was that even at the late hour I had plenty of light to ride with. The beauty of the Swiss country-side was obvious even in my jet-lagged and distressed state, where I was missing turns and ended up doing a loop around the train station before locking onto the Garmin route and riding out of the city onto Swiss Bike Route #5.

The ebike was a Flyer City-Bike, a low-end bike not intended for performance with a Panasonic BB motor detecting torque and a 540Wh battery as support. Maximum speed with assist was 26kph, with a Shimano Nexus rear internal gear'd rear hub with 8-speeds controlled by a twist shifter mounted on the right. The brakes were hydraulic Magura V-style brakes which had the job of controlling the 50+ pound bike on flats and descents, but they turned out to be more than equal to the job. The bike came with fenders, a kick-stand, and a Pletscher rear rack. The tires were the usual European “trekking” bike tires with 26” wheels and a fairly wide footprint (1.75”), but since it was an e-bike, I didn't find the Marathon-Plus e-bike series tires to be objectionable. The bike rode surprisingly well, very similar to Xiaoqin's Cheviot, and with the electric assist, could accelerate decently on the flat. Uphill, the motor would lug, causing me to slow down to about 15 or 12kph depending on the grade. In my jet-lagged state, I took more than a few wrong turns before getting back to the hotel around 6:30pm. I was so tired I don't even remember what I had for dinner. We took the kids to the playground and then gave them a bath and put them to bed. I slept the sleep of the tired.

Index Page: 2019 Tour across Bavaria

From June 13th to June 28th in 2019, Xiaoqin, Bowen, Boen and I executed a bike tour from Rumlang, Switzerland to Salzburg, Germany. The tour was 372 miles and 14,221' of climbing, with several zero days including Garmisch, Bad Tolz, and multiple days at the end in Salzburg. We suffered two mechanical failures (one kickstand failure on Xiaoqin's rental e-bike) and a mis-shift that locked up the drive-train on the triplet but had no flat tires, and only one day when we were forced to ride in the rain. This was Xiaoqin's first bike tour of any length.

This is the index page for the day by day trip reports and photos for the trip.

Stein Am Rhein

Daily Trip Report

• June 13th: Prologue
• June 14th: Rumlang to Neuhausen
• June 15th: Neuhausen to Konstanz
• June 16th: Konstanz to Lindau
• June 17th: Lindau to Grunenbach
• June 18th: Grunenbach to Immenstadt
• June 19th: Immenstadt to Fussen
• June 20th: Fussen to Reutte
• June 21st: Reutte to Garmisch-Partenkirchen
• June 22nd:  Partnach Gorge
• June 23rd: Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Bad Tolz
• June 24th: Munich
• June 25th: Bad Tolz to Tergensee
• June 26th: Tergensee to Schliersee
• June 27th: Schliersee to Prien Am Chiemsee
• June 28th: Prien Am Chiemsee to Salzburg
• June 29th: Mondsee
• June 30th: Bechtesgaden Salt Mine
• July 1st: Salzburg Attractions
• July 2nd: Zurich train  transfer
• July 3rd: Epilogue
• Thoughts

Post Tour Reviews

• Pixel 3a XL
• Polar OH1+
• Continental GP5000 700x32 tires
• Google Pay
• Arkel Dry-lite Panniers
• Taotronics Bluetooth Headset

First Impressions: Dell XPS 13 9380

My lifestyle doesn't actually demand a laptop, so I was happy to hang on to my ancient X201 and even replace the keyboards 2 or 3 times whenever Bowen destroyed them. Even when the device went missing, I resisted replacing it. Finally, there was a 15% coupon which stacked with a $150 rebated on an already discounted Dell XPS 13 9380, which I then jumped on at an after-tax price around $750 or so.

If you look around on the internet, you'll see that most reviews of this Dell laptop are of the fully-loaded configuration (i7, 16GB RAM, and 512TB or more of storage, and a 4K touchscreen display). Dell wants the reviewers to say nice things about the device, and of course, sending the highest end SKU for review is necessary because reviewers are used to reviewing high end devices and will benchmark the device against other similarly configured laptops.

Here's why these SKUs are a very bad deal, at least in this model: most thin and light laptops are thermally throttled --- the CPU overheats and then the speed of the i7 drops down to that of the i5 anyway. Even worse, the 4K touch screen drains the battery life, and for me anyway, the whole point of a laptop is for disconnected operation. I have a real desktop at home for serious compute tasks, and the laptop is meant to provide a mobile lightroom editing machine on-the-go for maximizing the use of my time on a plane. I've discovered that while 8GB is pushing it for Lightroom, an extra 8GB would cause me to have to opt for higher end configurations with corresponding decreases in battery life and weight which I am not willing to put up with.

To my surprise, the Dell XPS 13 9380 clocks in at 1168g, or 2.47 pounds, much lighter than the mainstream reviewer's unit weight of 2.7 pounds (probably caused by the touch screen, since Intel CPUs don't increase in weight when you buy an i7 vs i5!). My most common use case in Lightroom is flipping between photos trying to decide which one to pick, and I tried that against my i7-7700k desktop and the two were similar enough in performance that I couldn't tell. (Keep in mind that my i7/GTX 1070 device was pushing 4K pixels while the XPS 13 was only pushing 1080p, so these results aren't as surprising as you might imagine) The power pack weighs in at 144g, and the USA 3-prong plug comes in at 79g, so the total travel weight of the laptop is around 3 pounds. Most of the mainstream reviewers don't even weigh the power adapter, mostly because they're not as weight conscious as I need to be. I'm sure there's a lighter adapter that can charge this device somewhere around, since the Dell adapter is rated at 45W, which seems overkill (though it should charge the laptop in an hour or so). A 20W adapter would take longer but might be much lighter.

The keyboard is very good: much better than the recent Macbook keyboards that I've used recently, which have too little travel to be satisfying for a touch typist. The keyboard does squeak occasionally, which can be annoying, but overall, I'm surprised by how little I miss the X201's keyboard, which was the selling point of the Lenovo Thinkpad series for me. Similarly, I was surprised by how nice the precision touchpad was to use. I still prefer the thinkpad nubbin for precise text editing, but nobody's about to sell me an X1 Carbon with quad core processor for $750.

Battery life is outstanding. For mixed mode use (writing the past 4-5 entries on this blog, including photo selection/placement, interruption by Facebook/Hangouts, etc), 4 hours of use would drop the battery by 30%. A 12 hour battery life for normal use is definitely not hyperbole. Of course, with intensive Lightroom use, I expect the battery life to drop by 50%, which is still acceptable.

All in all, I'm impressed by this laptop. I wish I had it in Spain, which is as high a praise as you'll find from me.

June 6-8: Shasta and Scotts Valley Loop

Thursday morning was significantly colder than the day before, so we took our time getting ready and only left at 9:40am. There was rain in the forecast but we got lucky and saw no sign of rain other than an occasional damp road. Arturo hadn't brought his saddlebag, but I had a brand new Revelate saddlebag that I loaned him, and he would like it so much that I gave it to him, not having any possibility of doing a bike tour on my single bike any time in the near future.

The city of Shasta was at 3800', which meant that going to Shasta Valley was a fast descent that didn't need any brakes. That would be the theme of the entire trip: the area was blessed with swooping, gentle descents that never provided any technical challenge. On a single bike I probably would have been bored, but on a tandem it's great to achieve high speeds without any effort.

Once in the valley floor, the views opened up, with Mt. Shasta the volcano dominating the landscape with its beautiful, snow-covered peak. This was "Big Sky" country, and I had explain to Bowen the concept because of course through all the touring we had done we had never traversed this type of terrain before! Cars came at the rate of one every 30 minutes or so, which explained why Mike tended to ride in the middle of the lane or even on the other side! "You should tour in England, Mike, you're already riding like you're there!"

Past the town of Gazelle, the road turned up towards Callahan and we switched to our low gear. The road was lonely and it was cool, so for a change I could work as hard as I liked. At one point we stopped and a rally/race with fast cars came past us at speed. Fortunately, we were off the road but after that the wind grew as we approached the summit and we put on more clothing again for the descent.

The descent was interrupted by a short climb up to Callahan at 47 miles, where Arturo and Mike had already ordered lunch for us. After lunch it was a mere 15 miles to Etna, where we had pre-booked the last room in the affordable Etna motel. Mike asked for the reason why a motel in the middle of nowhere was booked in the middle of the week and the manager said it'd been like that all summer and was projected to get worse, as one of the motorcycling magazines had named Etna a destination for one of the coming issues!

We did laundry (this being a 3 night tour, this was the only night of laundry we needed to do), and Mike and Arturo flipped a Euro coin to decide who got to sleep on the floor, and Arturo lost. We had dinner at the Denny Bar, a distillery/restaurant that served a very expensive lobster Mac & Cheese that Bowen devoured, guarding it jealously against all attempts to taste it. I had the short ribs which looked tiny but turned out to be quite a hefty portion.

Etna to Yreka in a straight line was only twenty-odd miles, but Mike wanted to show us the Quartz Valley loop, so away we went! It was a day with quite a bit of headwind, and to my surprised that headwind came from the front no matter which direction we faced!

The area was mostly composed of flat farmland interrupted by Mugginsville (notable only because of the name) and an Indian reservation.

Exceptionally for California, the roads were in excellent condition, so much so that at one point when Bowen saw patches on the ground where the road had been repaired he asked to get off and examine it because it looked still wet!

Having satisfied my little scientist's curiosity, we rode on to Fort Jones where Dave's place provided hefty hamburgers that to my surprised, I could eat and still not feel too stuffed to climb! Bowen had been complaining of his aching butt all morning, so I declined the dirt alternative to Yreka. While he and I had ridden much longer days in the Alps, with much more climbing, the little towns in the Alps are spaced together nicely, providing a playground stop every hour or so. No such luck in the isolated parts of California, where most playgrounds appeared to be people's backyards.

The climb reminded me why I told Mike to buy the European version of the Garmin 1030 because touring in America sucks. The climb over Forest Mountain summit (4097) therefore came only after a few rude drivers, unrelenting sun, and of course, a litany of complaints from Bowen: having been spoiled by much prettier mountains in the past, he wasn't happy to endure this road just for the descent.

The descent when it came was a relief. Like all other descents in the area, you could ride it with no brakes though our pannier slowed us like an air dam. We arrived a good half hour before Arturo and Mike, but only because they stopped at a coffee shop to celebrate. Bowen made me stop at a fruit stand for some mediocre fruit, but the motel let me check in using Arturo's reservation. Arturo said he had to walk and I would have had to walk a lot more because the off-road route wasn't very tandem friendly. I was glad I made the decision to short-cut the route.

Dinner was at Jefferson Roadhouse. I had such a huge lunch that I opted for a salad and the fish frenzy instead, and still couldn't finish the meal.
Bowen woke up on our last morning of touring complaining about missing his bunny. "Today you'll get to see your bunny, because we're riding back to Mike's house!" We had the hotel breakfast, while Mike and Arturo went to the Black Bear Diner. The hotel breakfast was surprisingly rich, with eggs, bananas, apples, and even good yogurt! When Arturo and Mike got back we departed north-east in order to get to more isolated roads back to Shasta.

The views were once again sensational, and the isolated roads very pleasant, granting us 2 cars per hour, if that. In the town of Montague, we were offered a chance to extend the route by 15 miles, but Bowen was hurrying to see his bunny and was already saddle sore, so I opted to short cut the route by going straight to Grenada to pick up the rest of the route.

In Grenada we turned under the I-5 again, and once again got vast expansive views of Shasta and the surrounding country side. Traffic was light and it wasn't too hot, but I knew that this ride had most of the climbing back loaded, as the valley was at 2000 feet and Shasta was at 3800'. Fortunately, this part of the ride had very gentle climbing spread over a fairly large distance.

We re-entered the town of Gazelle and suddenly the road look familiar to me. We ate most of the food we brought with us (with the lone exception of the hotel pastry, which Bowen declared to be too sweet!), digging into our store of clif bars. At the intersection with I-5 and Old Stage Road, we took a break. Right after the break, a little dog ran out of a fenced area, jumped over the concertina wires, and began chasing us! Bowen with the dog on his heels put in some power and we gained some real speed to outpace him until we were out of his territory.

From there on, the climb to Shasta began a series of stair step climbs, with the steep parts between 10-11% grade. It was all manageable on the tandem, but by the time I got to downtown I was famished. I made the mistake of buying lunch in town at the Bistro which took 15 minutes to get everything ready. That made my legs stiff and I had to climb the last 4 blocks to Mike's house feeling like someone strapped splints to my legs. But we got back about half an hour ahead of the single bikes and Bowen immediately ran into the house to get his stuffed bunnies, worried that the cats in the house might actually consider them prey. What a great pre-tour checkup ride for our upcoming adventure!

June 3-5: Kayaking and Camping

We arrived at Mike's beautiful house in Mt. Shasta in the late afternoon on Monday after a long drive. We unloaded the bikes and other non-related camping gear as we would need 2 cars for the shuttle.  On the morning of the 4th, Mike suggested that we go for a short walk at the head waters of the Sacramento river. It was amusing to see the signs warning people that the waters had not been tested for potability, while people filled up huge barrels of drinking water:

The views of Mt. Shasta were quite stunning, as it was easily the tallest peak in the area, with few other peaks to offset it.

After that, we went back to Mike's house to get all the materials settled for our kayaking adventure. Mike prudently suggested that we go to the local lake to practicing flipping the boat and getting back in before we tried it on real white water. This also gave us a chance to sort out all our equipment, including neoprene pants for me, a life jacket and helmets for each of us, and deciding between the tandem kayak and the single. That latter was a tough decision, as a tandem kayak would enable Bowen to feel like he was contributing, but a single kayak was much more maneuverable, and as a neophyte I expected to need all the maneuverability I could find.

Bowen after some thinking decided that the single kayak would go, so we loaded all the kayaks into Mike's car and drove down to the lake. It was pretty amazing that we could fit all that into his car, but inflatable kayaks roll up just like sleeping pads, and were light enough that each person could carry one (excepting Bowen).

After the inflation, Bowen and I got into the water and paddle around a bit. The boat felt cramped, because Bowen's helmet-encrusted head was basically in my lap, making paddling awkward, but after some practice I discovered I could even paddle into a stiff wind! We practiced turning circles and then with some help, practiced flipping the kayak, flipping it back upright while we were in the water, and getting back in.  I was impressed by how stable the kayak was, and saw that it would take quite a bit to flip it. Bowen yelped and screamed a bit when we first hit the water, but by the second time we practiced this, he stayed calm and hung on to the boat while I flipped it, swam to the other side, got in, and then helped him in. Arturo's boat drifted from him in the wind and we helped pushed the boat back to him while he practiced the self-rescue.

After that, we had a sandwich lunch and then repacked everything for the camping trip, but first visiting the local fish hatchery, which apparently used to have bread you could feed the fishes but we had arrived too late as it was locked!

Tree of Heaven campground was right next to the Klamath river, and was conveniently where we were going to put-in the next morning. It was cooking hot when we arrived, around 90F but we had plenty to do, picking campsites, pitching tents, setting up the hammock, and then scouting the river so Mike could tell us what to expect the next day.

That evening, a deer visited us, and Bowen got his customary marshmallow. It was so warm that I eschewed putting up a rain fly and opted to sleep with my sleeping bag open, since it was forecast to be 60F even at night, and I had brought far too warm a sleeping bag for the conditions.

The next morning, after setting up the kayaks again and setting up the shuttle, we embarked on our adventure. I asked if the seat on my kayak could be moved back because I'd felt cramped the day before and after help from both Mike and Arturo I managed to do so. We did a test put-in and it felt much better, vindicating all the time and effort.

The actual river was far more challenging and exciting than the lake and my previous white-water trips. Being on a kayak is like being on a bicycle, while being on a paid rafting trip on a highwater raft was like being in a bus. The difference in experience cannot be over-stated. "The water is much higher with faster flow than in previous years, which will make some things a lot easier!"

Indeed, the first couple of rapids were fast but felt completely manageable in our new configuration. Water did flood into the kayak as we crested waves, but other than making Bowen yelp with cold, it wasn't an unpleasant experience and the feeling of control vs a traditional raft was exhilarating. Mike suffered a deflation event when something he wore snagged open a valve, so we put in to fix the flat.

Despite the cold, Bowen was committed to finishing the entire trip, and was really starting to enjoy it! "Can we do this again tomorrow?" "Well, tomorrow it'll be cold and we're going to do a bike tour." "Aw..."

During one of the rapids (I think it was called school house), we got stuck on a rock! Arturo passed us and saw us, but couldn't do anything to help. After trying to rock the kayak forward I gave up, got out of the kayak, and pushed, being careful to get in before the kayak was taken by the waves! It was a nerve-wracking experience, but I figured anything was better than being stuck there all day. Bowen whooped with joy, and the last couple of fast rapids were bigger and better than anything we had faced all day, but our experience meant that we were able to do it without problems. When the end came it came much faster than expected, and we finished the trip in style, landing our kayaks easily and celebrating.

I had neglected to start my watch until 3 miles into the trip, but it was great. Arturo said he wasn't happy with his previous white water experiences but this was an order of magnitude better and more exciting. We ate lunch in Yreka after picking up Arturo's car, and then went back to Mike's house to prepare for the next days' bike tour.

Index Page for Shasta Trip 2019

From June 3rd to June 9th 2019, Arturo Crespo, Bowen and I took up Mike Sojka's generous offer to visit him and stay at his house while doing some white water kayaking and a short bike tour. This is the index page for the full length trip report.

Photo Album

Photo Links:

• 2019 Shasta Trip Photo Album

Trip Report

• June 3-5: Kayaking and Camping Trip
• June 6-8: 3 Day Shasta and Scotts Valley Loop

Review: Stuff Matters

Stuff Matters is a book about materials science. It's written by a materials scientist, yet strives to be eminently readable and non-technical. This is both a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing in that anyone can read this book and come away with a good understanding of how important material science is. It's a bad thing in that all the theories and technical ideas have been hand-waved away, so I ended up learning less than I thought I would from the book.

Early on, the book explains that materials science is largely about the electrons in the material, and how they form clouds which enable conduction or impede the flow of electrons as insulators do. But beyond that, there's no sense of how for instance, you would use this information to invent new materials.

I did enjoy all the explanations of the difference between chocolate and cocoa, and why only the temperate regions tend to be the large consumers of chocolate.

In a list of the countries with the highest consumption of chocolate, Switzerland comes top, followed by Austria, Ireland, Germany, and Norway. In fact, sixteen of the twenty countries with the highest chocolate consumption are Northern European. (In America, chocolate is more popular as a flavor than as a bar, with more than half the population saying they preferred chocolate drinks, cakes, and biscuits than any other flavor.) Given the reputation of chocolate as a substitute for sex, it is tempting to draw all sorts of cultural conclusions from this correlation. But there is another possible explanation for the high chocolate consumption in these countries, which is also associated with temperature. In order to transform from a solid to a liquid easily within the mouth, chocolate requires a fairly cool ambient temperature. In a climate that is too warm, chocolate will either melt on the shelf or need to be put in the fridge, which defeats the purpose entirely—cold chocolate gets swallowed before it’s had a chance to melt. (This problem may explain, perhaps, why the Mesoamericans, who first invented chocolate in the tropics, never created a solid bar but consumed it only as a drink.) Moreover, if solid chocolate is exposed to temperatures above 20°C, as a result perhaps of being left in the sun or in a hot car, it undergoes fundamental changes of structure. The changes can be spotted immediately because they result in “bloom”: fat and sugars migrate to the surface of the chocolate and form a whitish crystalline powder, often with a river mark pattern. (Pg. 88)

Other great stories in the book involve concrete, graphene, including other forms of carbon such as diamonds, coal, etc. That I found fascinating, including the discussion about how long it took for carbon fiber to gain adoption in the aerospace industry.

The stories about steel was also interesting. In fact, the whole book is great, especially the details about how steel reinforced concrete works, and the possibility of self healing concrete. There's a lot in this book, so despite the lack of technical details I can recommend it for reading.