June 28th: Train transfer to Innsbruck

 We rode the 2 miles to the train station, and then took apart the triplet in order to get it onto the correct platform. When the train arrived, it was a mad scrambled to get everything in, since unlike the newer trains this wasn't a roll on roll off train, but was instead a double step up with a narrow turn to get the bikes on. While getting all the bikes on and off I got chain and grease marks all over myself and Xiaoqin. I would joke to Xiaoqin that these were the lover's kisses from my mistress, and she would punch me.

We arrived in Innsbruck and walked the 10 minutes to the hotel after traversing the maze of elevators (at least there were elevators!) to get out of the main train station. We parked our bikes at the hotel, and left our luggage with them while deciding what to do. The kids wanted to go the the archaeology museum, and after taknig the bus there we discovered it wasn't a museum, but just a display at the local university. I remembered that in 2010 we visited Castle Amblas, which had a lot of armor and other impressive stuff, so I suggested we go there. It would turn out to be a major mistake.

The actual museum was fine, and the kids enjoyed looking at all the armor. Xiaoqin enjoyed the display and took her time using the audio guide which discussed all the details. What went wrong was that despite my warning to eat well at breakfast, Bowen and Boen didn't do so, and we ended up having lunch at the museum cafetaria. Boen was lucky but Bowen ordered the Spaghetti Bolognese. I did too, but while all I did was feel slightly nauseated and had one instance of diarrhea, Bowen got a full dose of either food poisoning or food-borne virus and that would haunt him for the rest of his time in Europe. He even threw up some of that spaghetti then and there!

On reflection, the reason why of all my trips to Europe, I'd never once gotten food poisoning before, was because when you're traveling by bicycle, you don't usually frequent the places tourists go to, like museum cafetarias. If you eat at a restaurant or even a hotel that locals would eat at, any instance of food poisoning would result in the restaurant or hotel being shut down. (In many villages, the hotel also doubles as the place to dine out) But for a place like Castle Ambras, any food poisoning might have consequences only a day or two later, when the tourist is in another town, and in any case a tourist wouldn't even know who to call or complain about bad food!

After Amblas, we went back to our hotel and checked in for real, and then I booked train tickets to Landeck for the next day. I held off booking a hotel because I didn't know how far we might get up the mountain. It started raining, so I went out and bought fruit for snacks, and we ended up walking around in the rain after we got bored with staying indoors. Dinner was at a highly rated Korean place, but I learned from then on that the highly rated Asian places are highly rated because they're unusual for Austria, not because they're actually any good compared to what we got in California.

We went to bed with all the curtains drawn, reasonably confident that the next day's weather would be nice. I was hopeful we could do some cycling.

Review: Spenco Men's Fusion 2 Sandal

 I had a really bad case of athlete's foot, with bleeding and all the really nasty stuff. I finally saw a doctor and he immediately prescribed a athlete's foot creme to get rid of the fungus infection. He also recommended Spenco Men's Fusion 2 Sandals to reduce strain on my feet after I told him that I went barefoot all the time.

I usually hate wearing shoes in the house. The fact is, shoes take away tactile feeling on my feet, and of course if you're cleaning the house bare feet immediately let you know where the kids have spilled sugary stuff on the floor. But doctor's orders and all that. After several weeks of wearing this, my feet got much better, and to my surprise, I liked them so much that I don't want to go barefoot in the house anymore, so I guess the hard floor really was tough on my feet.

You can pay for these with FSA money if you get your doctor to write a prescription. I recommend them!

June 27th: Brunico to Sterzing

 The night before, I looked up hotels in Sterzing, and one particular one caught my eye, called Steindl's Boutique Hotel. The website said that if you called them they'd give you a discount, so I called them. The receptionist said, "I'll see if we have room." "Booking.com says you have room." Without skipping a beat, he immediately quoted me a price that was 20 Euros lower than the booking.com price and we were set. No credit cards, no obligation to show.

Xiaoqin didn't like the fact that the train from Brunico to Sterzing required a train change, even though I told her it was no big deal. She tried to convince the kids to take the train as well, but they were having none of it! I'd never ridden to Sterzing before, though I'd taken the train there from Toblach in 2007, so I was curious to see the route. We rode for all of 10 minutes before we found a zipline playground, which demanded a stop of course!

After that, the bike path, which was mostly paved, would descend all the way down to Mulbach, after which it would split --- one would lead to Brixen and then Bolzano, while the other would head up towards Sterzing. All the descending had me nervous, because it meant that the climb to Sterzing would come in the afternoon heat.

In Aicha after the split, I caught a flat in the rear tire. Upon checking the flat, it turned out to be a thorn. I pulled out the thorn from the tire, and then got out one of the two spare tubes and inserted it into the tire and pumped it up while simultaneously patching the punctured tube. We were all getting hungry, but Google Maps said Aicha had no grocery stores or restaurant. The next store was in Fortezza, so we kept riding to Fortezza, where we ended up eating lunch on what looked like a public school, kids and all, after which we kept riding.

It didn't take long, however, before there was a loud hissing sound and we had another flat! Fortunately, there was a freeway underpass in front of us so at least we could get out of direct sunlight. I inspected this flat, and it turned out that a patch had failed. I guess that something that would hold up just fine on a single just cannot possibly stand up to high pressure on the triplet. I put in my last spare, pumped it up but not to the tire pressure I had pumped up the other one before, proceeded to patch the patched tube, and we kept riding.

Now the heat was on, with the sun bearing down hard on us, such that any shade was a relief. The climbing also increased in intensity, though the bike path made it more palatable by grant us relatively traffic free roads, and frequently hugged the shade rather than being beside the freeway.  Finally, in Futures we hit a 10+% grade in the full sun and in our cooked state just couldn't do anything except get off and walk. It was the steepest grade of the day and fresh we could have just made it but in our condition and reduced morale after 2 flat tires we just gave up. Fortunately, there was a shaded bench right after that section and we took a long break, drinking nearly all of our water.

From our oasis of shade we could feel that whenever the breeze blew it actually wasn't too bad, but the cyclists coming down at speed made us feel worse, since to gain that much speed meant more climbing. We finally saw a tandem couple zooming by at speed, and decided that we simply had to keep going. Well, after that we finally found a water fountain, and a small rise later descended down into the Isarco river for the nearly flat, final run into Sterzing which we did at an easy pace, having burned all our matches earlier in the day.

Steindl's Boutique Hotel was at the far end of Sterzing, so that gave us the opportunity to ride through the picturesque town, drawing attention much as we always did. The town wasn't too crowded, and the grade was gentle, and as we got to the hotel there was much relief. It felt like the day had gotten cooler as well!

We checked in, dumped the bags, and Xiaoqin wanted to take the kids swimming. That was a good idea, but I also needed to replace our tubes with better ones. Fortunately, there was an e-bike rental shop right next door, so I had them walk on ahead to buy ice cream while I asked if they had tubes. Indeed, they had Continental Touring tubes of the correct specification, so I bought two at absurd European prices. I caught up to the others for some much needed ice cream and we proceeded to walk to the other side of town to the swimming pool.

The pool was crowded so we avoided the indoor section in favor of the outdoor section. It felt really good to swim. The kids enjoyed the Jacuzzi as well, and after we were all ready for dinner we walked back in town and ate at a restaurant before going back to the hotel and doing the shower and laundry thing.

Xiaoqin insisted on taking the train to Innsbruck, and I  opened up my OBB app and bought train tickets for Innsbruck. With bikes, you have to make bike reservations, so you can't just take any train going in that direction. I noted the time and we also made a reservation in Innsbruck. I decided that while I was going to take the part anyway, we'd also take the train to Landeck the day after, to save a day of flat riding along the Inn river. The plan was to ride up the Silvretta and then make Feldkirch the next day before weather turned bad. Ideally we'd want to make Sargans to access the Swiss train system.

We went to bed early, setting an alarm so we wouldn't miss the train the next day.

 

Review: Sea of Tranquility

 Sea of Tranquility is Emily St John Mandel's pandemic novel. Mixing a time travel story, a pandemic, lunar colonies, and the themes of being a writer and a parent, the story kinda meanders all over the place but never actually does anything provocative or particularly imaginative with the subject material. For instance, the lunar colonies don't seem any different from a New York City neighborhood, which seems kinda strange, since everything from breathable air to potable water must be a constant struggle. It's very clear that St. John Mandel is non technical and not very interested in the actual nuts and bolts of a moon colony.

The time travel story is at least somewhat competently handled, with the time traveler going back and forth and looping back upon his own story eventually. But even then, the character isn't very good at his job.

The book is short, so at least if you don't like it you're not going to waste days on it. But to be honest the book seems like a non science fiction writer's failed attempt to write science fiction. The pandemic parts also seem particularly insular, again, very focused on a relatively privileged view of a city bound person. As you and I both know at this point, such privileged people abscond from the city at the earliest opportunity. Again, the transplantation of the author's experience into a novel might make for ome relevance, but I didn't find it particularly insightful.

The book's short enough that I didn't bounce off it, but I think I will avoid the author's work in the future.

June 26th: Cortina d'Ampezzo to Brunico

 We woke up in the morning, had breakfast, loaded up the bike, and walked up to where the bike path begin, and who would pull up but Lukas! But he forgot my wallet! He promised he'd mail it to my hotel in Zurich. He would eventually do so, but not without spending all the cash in the wallet for a DHL overnight delivery.

The bike path out of Cortina starts out being paved, but soon turned into a dirt road, on a retired railroad grade. The nice thing about the railroad grade is that there's relatively little climbing, but the unfortunate part was that it was relentless. The views of the Dolomites was pretty impressive though!

The route went through no less than 3 tunnels, and it was clearly a much easier route than Tre Croci would have been.

When we got to the Cimabanche pass, Xiaoqin was quite mad at me as she didn't enjoy the dirt road. In retrospect, we should have gone over Tre Croci. While the Cimabanche pass was praised by websites, the websites that praised it weren't enthusiastic cyclists, and the bus to Misurina didn't run very often, nor could I find a taxi that would take us.

Following the bike path, we found the view of Tre Cime Di Lavaredo, a hiking destination very similar to the hike that Lukas had taken us on. It would have been a nice hike from Misurina, but we were now committed to riding to Toblach at the very least.

We ended up having lunch at Ristorant al Lago on the Toblachersee, crowded but with good views of the lake. There, I found an apartment in downtown Brunico, a place that was worth staying at because of the Messner Mountain Museum Arturo had showed me last time. I figured Bowen and Boen might enjoy it.

The ride to Brunico was lovely, easy descents, wide open vistas, and quiet bike paths separated from traffic most of the time. The views were very similar to Austria, this part of Italy having been part of Austria once upon a time.

I noted that we passed through Niederolang, where Arturo and I stayed during the 2016 Tour of the Alps. Upon reaching Bruneck, we found the apartment but nobody came to give us the key, with the owner giving me excuse after excuse when I called him about his kid being at the hospital. When I finally reached out to booking.com's support staff, I finally got a call on WhatsApp from his daughter, who explained to me that the apartment wasn't clean. I told them that we just needed a place to park our bikes and leave our luggage while they cleaned the apartment. So her brother came out to take us to the parking garage, where I left the luggage.

The kids and Xiaoqin went to get ice cream, and then I walked the kids up the hill to the Messner Mountain Museum. Xiaoqin declined to walk up the steep grade, a decision that turned out to be fortuitous because we weren't 15 minutes into the museum when the apartment owners called and declared that the apartment was now clean, and practically demanded that we show up right away to claim the key. Since Xiaoqin was 2 blocks away from them, it all worked out.

Unfortunately, the kids didn't like the Messner Mountain Museum at all, but they explored every nook and cranny of it before declaring their dislike for the place. After that, we went back to the apartment, took showers, and got cleaned up. It being a Sunday, the town was pretty dead, the only restaurants being run by immigrants, but a pizza place nearby was open. We had some pretty good pizza and shopped for breakfast the next morning while the supermarket was open.

Xiaoqin declared that she didn't have a good day at all, and said she wanted to take the train the next day. We went to bed thankful that while it was warm, the apartment itself was relatively cool and despite having no AC we could sleep quite well.

June 25th: Arraba to Cortina d'Ampezzo

 Bowen and Boen and I hit the breakfast room just as it opened, and even then there was already a ton of stuff that had already been raided. But the restaurant was huge so there was still plenty of food. Xiaoqin came by a few minutes later and remarked on how different the culture was just one valley over!

We packed everything and got the bikes loaded. There was already a bunch of cyclists in the parking lot, and but nobody was in a hurry to move. Those who were riding the bike day were unloaded, and and 4 hours to do the ride was plenty of time if you were a decent cyclist. Prior to the trip I'd contemplated doing the entire loop, but then the next day we'd have to ride to Cortina with nasty traffic, so I decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

The day started with a descent down to the intersection with Falzerago pass from Caprile. It was comforting to see the Italian police already having cordoned off the roads to car drivers. After the descent, we climbed a little bit before the kids, driven by hedonistic adaptation, decided to stop and wait for mommy so mommy could act as their sherpa, carrying their luggage up the mountain.

An Italian bike day is something to thoroughly enjoy. Cyclists are allowed to use the entire width of the road, both lanes, and the number of cyclists is incredible. Tunnels and galleries that would be normally scary are just a pleasant escape from the sun. The climb up Falzerago was easy, but even then, every 3rd cyclist over-taking us would offer encouragement in whatever language they had. Once again, the triplet got tons of attention and the kids had lots of encouragement, but Xiaoqin, being on an ebike didn't get anywhere near the approbation.

Lukas had encouraged us to ride the extra km up to Valpora to enjoy the view of the Mamolada glacier, but I wanted to use the extra time to descent to Cortina. As a point of fact, by the time we got to the intersection with the Cortina highway, nobody wanted to do the extra kilometer.

The descent was traffic free as expected, and without too many turns or corners, so the triplet could take the descent at full speed and not slow down at all! It was exhilarating, and we only stopped at intersections to make sure that Xiaoqin didn't take a wrong turn.

One of the most exciting things about the descent is that right after you pop through the tunnel there's a glorious panoramic view of Cortina d'Ampezzo right below you, and on a slow traffic day you could pull over to the benches and sit and enjoy the view. Even the kids were impressed by the view.

Unfortunately, after that, the traffic got busy, and we descended with a ton of traffic. Once in town, we circled around and eventually found the Hotel Bellevue. There was an ultra running race in town for the weekend, which made all the hotels exceedingly expensive. I'd picked the hotel on the basis of the food reviews on TripAdvisor, but we would discover that the half pension definitely didn't live up to the reviews, though the breakfast was excellent.

We left the bike at the hotel, and then walked out to eat lunch, which was punctuated from cheers or whistles whenever an ultra runner finished the course. I asked Xiaoqin if she was impressed by the bike day, but she wasn't. She thought that the bike paths were good enough as far as car free was concerned.

The cable car that Arturo and I took way back in 2014 (the Faloria) was closed, but the other cable car in town (Tofana) was open, and I hadn't tried it before, so we tried it. We were going to go all the way to the top, but the woman selling tickets discouraged us, as we were so late that we wouldn't have any time to look around at the top before we came down, so we took the cable car only to the first stop.

Of all the cable cars we'd taken on the trip, the Tofana was the least interesting. At the top there was a wine shop, but neither Xiaoqin nor I drank. There was a playground which had interesting views ,but no interesting hikes, lakes or much else!

On the other hand, it was warm enough down in the valley that we didn't feel like taking the cable car ride down too quickly either, so we just lazed around the area until around 5pm, whereupon we took the cable car back down and walked back to the hotel. I googled around and apparently there was no need to climb Tre Croci --- there was a bike path all the way to Dobbacio from Cortina, something I'd never tried before. I figured it was worth a try, and there might be a bus or taxi to Misurina from the intersection with the Dobbacio bike path.

Dinner wasn't very impressive, and was in fact disappointing, but our suite was spacious (and we had paid through the nose for it), though the hotel had nothing by the way of a swimming pool for us to spend any time otherwise. We hung out everything to dry, and went to bed early.

Review: Great Philosophical Debates - Free Will and Determinism

 Niniane told me that Hoopla has a ton of Great Courses downloads available for free, and one of the free courses was Great Philosophical Debates - Free Will and Determinism. I ended up being disappointed, but not because of the lecturer or his coverage of the topic, but by how shallow the debate between free will and determinism is. It's quite clear that the world itself (because of quantum mechanics) isn't really deterministic. Of course, that doesn't mean that people have free will, since it hasn't (yet) been proved that quantum mechanical constructs are in human brains, or that you even have control over your decisions. So that debate is a dead end.

Now there are some interesting implications of whether or not you have free will, such as whether that means you have responsibility. But on the other hand, if you don't have free will, we'd still have to organize society in such a way that people who are dangerous to others should have any damage they do minimized, which effectively means our systems remain pretty much as they are.

Along the way, the lecturer explores many philosophical dilemmas some of which are much more interesting than the famous trolley problem. But it could all have been done in 6 lectures.

June 24th: Taxi Transfer Day - Hiking SassoLungo

 In 2018, Lukas Panitz of Base Camp Dolomites gave Bowen and I a ride to Selva Gardena after saving us several Euros in lodging simply by giving a phone call. This year, the Sella Rondo Bike Day was already over by the time we got to Bolzano, but there was an alternative that was intriguing, which was the Dolomiti Bike Day.  The route went from Corvara to Arraba to San Cassiano, doing Campolongo, Falzarego, and Valporola passes. But I'd wanted to show the rest of the family Cortina D'Ampezzo and so decided to do just the Falzerago pass and then use the lack of traffic to descend what would normally be an insanely busy descent to Cortina. (Hina crashed on this descent in the 2014 edition of the Tour) Since the bike day was the 25th, we needed a transfer to Arraba on the 24th, the climbs out of Bolzano being too difficult for me to contemplate doing on the triplet.

During the transfer in 2018, Lukas had mentioned that there were many trails where you could do a hut to hut hike, and I asked him if he could lead us on a hike during the transfer day. The additional cost was reasonable, though we'd be responsible for the cable car rides, lunch for him, and any additional fees. So on the morning I walked down with much of the luggage to the train statin, where Lukas informed me that the hoped for minivan was actually broken, so he would have to take us in his station wagon with a bike rack on it.

It took quite a bit of work, but even split the triplet into all 3 parts, took the ebike's battery off, and then loaded all the bags (sans anything we would need for hiking) into the station wagon before mounting the last piece of the triplet and the ebike (sans battery) onto the rack, locking everything with a giant lock. Lukas then drove us past Sella Gardena, and then towards the SassoLungo cable car, though not before the kids got completely bored with sitting in a car.

The cable car was unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was a little box/closet/phone box, reminiscent of the Tardis from Doctor Who, and it would shake and sway with the wind. Fortunately, there was not much wind that day, and we arrived at Sasso Lungo little worse for wear. We saw hikers climbing the mountain on the hiking path next to the cable car, and it indeed looked very steep.

Lukas's passion was climbing, so he showed us all the different routes that were available for climbing the cliffs of the mountain. I was very pleased. There was no way I would have found this hike by myself, and having him on the hike basically meant that I didn't have worry about route finding, planning, or getting back to the car. The forecast was for rain in the afternoon, but I trusted Lukas to pick a hike where we would finish despite getting poured on, though I'd packed the rain jackets in the backpack, which came in useful as there was still snow on the route!

The hike was unlike anything I'd ever done in the Alps or the Dolomites before. Rather than greenery, we started off with a bleak landscape (though the kids loved the snow and took every opportunity to throw snowballs at us). It was a steep descent, and I was very happy not to be trying to do it with cycling shoes! With the clouds swirling around us, the scenery changed from step to step, occasionally shrouding us with fog, and occasionally lifting above us to give us clear views of the valley below.

We eventually reached the first hike, but Lukas determined that it wasn't wise to stop, as if we sat down for a long meal, we might not make the end of the hike before the forecasted rain showed up. I was so happy that it wasn't me communicating the bad news to the rest of the family, as it was an absolutely gorgeous looking mountain hut!

Past the hut, the scenery changed from being bleak to being full of flowers and greenery, and the trail became easier to walk on, so we could make better time.

Wildflowers became plentiful, and our pace once again slowed down as we repeatedly stopped to take photos.

We eventually reached the second hut, but not before an amazing series of exposed trails, going under a cave, and then climbing out of a gully. It was definitely an adventure, and to add excitement, it started raining just as we got to the second hut, where we walked into the restaurant to eat a meal.

Lukas gave us an introduction as to what the local specialties was, and we ordered food. He also expressed surprise at how much the prices had inflated. Clearly inflation was not an American-only phenomenon.

The rain stopped just as we finished lunch, and then we hiked back to the car with no incident. We were running late, but Lukas delivered us to Arraba and the hotel with no problems, and then helped me put together the triplet and I paid him with cash afterwards. But after I assembled the triplet and moved the triplet to the hotel's garage, I realized that I'd left my wallet in his car. I called him but he was already in Selva Gardena. I should have just offered him the contents of the wallet to turn around with the wallet. The contents weren't that important, but it had my driver's license and the luggage tickets for the luggage in the hotel in Zurich! While it was unlikely they would give me a hard time about the luggage tickets, it added unnecessary worry to the rest of the trip.

This was in a different valley from the Bolzano valley, so different rules for dining applied. I told the kids and Xiaoqin that when dinner opens you have to show up right away, as there's a feeding frenzy for the buffet and the good stuff disappears. This would apply to breakfast as well. The dinner was great, and there was plenty of food for all. Despite a storm blowing through, our clothing would mostly dry by tomorrow. It was only hiking clothing so it was no big deal, but wet stuff is heavy!

Review: Paradise Falls

Paradise Falls is a book about a section of the town of Niagara Falls known as Love Canal. It was the site of chemical dumping by the Hooker Chemical. The story revolves around the women who lived in their area and the health effects, as well as the activist movement they started to get remediation. In parallel, we get a view of the Superfund program and its founding, as well as the politics around it, much of which was very new to me.

It is astonishing to me how evil the bad actors in the story were. For instance, the health commissioner of New York State at that time, David Axlerod, not only refused to admit that the site was dangerous (even with high levels of dioxin found near the house where one of the kids died), but actively pursued a vendetta against one of his staff who was helping the neighborhood women collate and collect statistics about the medical problems of the folks who lived in the area.

The CEO of the company that owned Hooker Chemical, Hammer Amaud, himself was also quite evil:

When he faced criminal charges in the mid-1970s for making $54,000 in illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon—and attempting to conceal the donations by making them in the names of other people—Hammer made sure Nizer was standing next to him in court. The well-known lawyer helped keep Hammer out of prison. Noting Hammer’s advanced age and declining health, a federal judge sentenced him to probation for his illegal donations and ordered him to pay a mere $3,000 fine—the Armand Hammer equivalent of loose change found between the seats of the family car. Now the wealthy oilman was apparently hoping that Nizer could pull off a similar trick with Joan Malone and Luella Kenny. The goal: negotiating a truce before the shareholders’ meeting. Occidental didn’t want them to come. (kindle loc 4569)

 The story does have a happy ending. It takes years and the damage to the residents were considerable, but eventually the government buys out the residents' housing and relocates everyone. Even so, the science isn't fully settled, and David Axlerod was never made accountable for pursuing his vendetta against his staff.

Even worse, the Superfund law has been gutted (by the Republicans of course), and there's no question that if something like this happened today it'd be much harder to get the government to do the right thing. It's quite clear that polluters making a lot of money still have more political power than most of its victims.

You should read the book. It's unpleasant but the issues in it are very real.