Now Shipping: Startup Engineering Management

My latest book, Startup Engineering Management is now shipping.

Until now, all my books have been relatively independent of each other: there's no reason to believe that one person would buy An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups and Independent Cycle Touring at the same time. The topics are very different, and you're unlikely to be in the mood to read one book or the other.

However, folks are likely to want to read Startup Engineering Management right after (or before) An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups, so for the first time, I've provide one single page shopping cart where you can buy any (or all) of the books on one page. As a bonus, if you buy $50 worth of books (any 2 books), I'll provide free shipping. Obviously, this only applies to paper books, as electronic copies always have free shipping.

Incidentally, I recently met with both Obvious and PlayMesh to discuss engineering management, and the feedback on the material that we discussed (which all went into the book) has been very positive. There are other reasons to read this book even if you're not going to be a manager, and I'll get into that in the future. Watch this space.

Review: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught

I've been buying all the previous Lost Fleet novels on Kindle mostly because they were priced right, and written pretty much as airplane fodder. You don't have to think very hard, and it's a lot like eating candy: you won't get overfull, and you can eat a lot of it at a go. The books are relatively thin, and you can easily zip through a couple of them at a shot.

Campbell's publisher has decided that Campbell's (aka John G Hemry) popularity means that they can price his books as a hard cover, so Dreadnaught, which begins a new series now spots the cover price of $15.82 (and a Kindle price at $12.99), which puts it easily out of the impulse buy range.

Unfortunately, in length, plot, characters, and interest, this is pretty much the same as any of the previous novels. We have John Geary confronting impossible situations in his fleet, making quick decisions that allow him to escape nicely as background problems escalate. There's a cliffhanger at the end, but most of the book can easily be zipped through like the airplane fodder that Campbell's so good at delivering. Nevertheless, the series is getting a bit old, and the reveals are starting to feel like they're deliberately drawn out to milk the series for all its worth.

Not recommended. Wait for the entire series to come out, or check it out from the library if you must.

Charts and Tables from Independent Cycle Touring

One of the things I wanted to do but kept forgetting to was to extract all the charts and tables from Independent Cycle Touring and put it in one document so readers could easily print out copies and use them for packing or planning trips. I finally got around to doing so and you can now download all checklists and tables.

Review: Girl Genius Omnibus 1

Girl Genius has won the Hugo for best comic several years running. While they have everything on the web, it's much faster to read comic books on paper, so when my local library had the book I picked it up.

Humor is tricky. For instance, some people find fart jokes funny, others not so much. Some find zany characters like Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2 to be great, I personally characterize it as: "her idea of character development is to add more characters."

Unfortunately for me, Girl Genius falls into the latter category. The philosophy is to just keep adding more characters in the hopes that you'll find something funny somewhere. You could approach Girl Genius as a serious story, but that doesn't work very well either. The plots are unbelievable, and while there's a long running plot, most of the time you get just one gag after another, without a lot of plot exposition. There're also plenty of digressions that seemingly add nothing to the story. I say seemingly, because of course something might turn out to be relevant a few books later, but I haven't got the patience (nor do I necessarily want to spend the money) to run out and buy the books or click through the web pages just in case there's a pay off in the future.

All in all, if you like Ranma 1/2 or love lots of gags, this is the comic for you. For everyone else, I'd suggest paging through the first few pages to see if it grabs you.

Review: Big Bang Theory Season 3

I saw episodes at random times, mostly on the N1. This is the season that made Jim Parsons a major star (or rather, the critics finally agreed that he wasn't a fluke), and it shows. Nearly every episode is hilariously funny, and the writers take pains to get all the details of geekdom correct.

The season even ends with a cliff-hanger! All I can say is, I don't usually watch TV, but this series will have me watching every episode I can get my hands on. The Stan Lee episode definitely had me laughing out loud while sitting on a train. Highly recommended.

Review: Jack of Fables Vol 2-4

While Fables keeps going from strength to strength, Jack of Fables was for me, a bit of a dud. I read the first 6 issues but it didn't compel me to spend money, so I checked Vols 2, 3, and 4 from the library to see if got any better.

The story has to overcome several problems. First of all, Jack himself is an incredibly unsympathetic character. Secondly, the problems encountered in Jack of Fables aren't all that interesting. You get impatient with the character's inability to see the obvious, and one would think that with immortality, even the most insipid personifications would eventually realize that his capers are repetitious and his continuing attempts to get rich never end well.

The art is good, but not so good that you can forgive the relatively lame stories. The introduction of the literals also draw a yawn, which is one of the many things that made Fables 13 boring and silly.

The mystery of why Fables was so much better was solved when I met Willingham, who said he handed over Jack of Fables to Matthew Sturges, because he felt that Matthew deserved a break. Well, Sturges' talent isn't in the same caliber as Willingham's, and it shows.

This series is only worth checking out from your local library.

Review: How To Train Your Dragon

At WorldCon, there was a panel entitled "The Real Revenge of the Nerds", where the theme was the recent spate of movies where the hero is a nerd and indeed gets the girl. How To Train Your Dragon would be exhibit #2 in that discussion. Exhibit #1 properly belongs to The Social Network, not only because it single-handedly raised CS enrollment nation-wide, but also because the antagonists, the Winklevosses, are classic good looking athletes.

The story revolves around Hiccup, who's the lone weakling in his village whose only hope of achieving social acceptance is to kill a dragon. When he finally gets a chance, he finds that he's too much of a wuss to do so... and to say more would be to spoil the story.

The animation is so-so, though the animators have cleverly avoided the uncanny valley. What's great is that our hero doesn't succeed through brawn: he succeeds through a combination of clever engineering, intelligent observation of critters, and ultimately, with kindness. To say that there is a total lack of such examples in typical children's movies (especially with male protagonists) would be under-stating it. In fact, it's the heroine of the story who supplies the brawn.

What's more, the protagonist sacrifices something real at the end of the movie in order to achieve his results. While everything does end well, the sacrifice makes it feel real in a way that recent Pixar movies (for instance) do not.

Highly recommended if you're a nerd.

Review: Why We Get Fat

I've pretty much ignored all the Paleo/Atkins/Low Carb diet craze the last few years, and Cynthia recommended Why We Get Fat as a way to see what it's all about.

Taubes has a good writing style and a lucid, clear argument as to why conventional diet and exercise doesn't work:

• The poorest people in the world don't eat a lot of meat but get fat anyway.
  
• The hunter-gatherers that exist today eat as much fatty meat as they can get their hands on.
  
• Carnivores are lean while Hebivores are fat.
  
• Insulin has been shown to be the agent converting sugars to fat. Having a constantly elevated level of sugars basically floods your body with insulin and therefore eliminates your ability to burn fat.
  
• The Atkins-type diets have been shown in some studies to reduce weight faster than other comparative diets.
  

Boy, vegetarians and vegans must hate this book. The prescription eliminates many items traditionally thought to be healthy and good for you such as fruits! (There's an assertion in the book that if you ate mostly meat, you probably don't need as much vitamin C)

Yet a few questions have answers that aren't very satisfying. For instance, why are the Japanese skinny? They eat plenty of rice (as do most Asian countries), and when you visit Japan, you're not going to see a lot of fat people around. Taubes says that these countries don't drink a lot of soft drinks, which is true, but a trip to your local Japanese supermarket sees plenty of sweet drinks. I'm not sure that this book holds the complete story: there's a lot about nutrition that we don't know.

Then of course, there's the assertion that exercise doesn't work. That one's weird, since I certainly know plenty of people who's lost weight from exercise. In any case, I found the book interesting as far as being an introduction to what all this high-protein/high-fat/low carb craze is about. Recommended.

An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups now on the NOOK

Note that as with the Kindle version, this is the first edition. I have no expectation of significant revenue, but the BN store front was easy to use, so it didn't cost very much time.

I'm not expecting a Mac version. The iBookstore requires owning a Mac, which I haven't done since 2009 (and even that Mac ran Windows since I found myself repeatedly booting into it in order to run Quicken, etc).

Long Term Review: Garmin Edge 800

(Please also see First Impressions)

I've now lived with the Edge 800 for over 1700 miles, including quite a bit of hiking. The unit has survived a tour of the Alps with rain and plenty of sweat. A few notes:

• The unit's pairing with the cadence/wheel sensor is great. The only time I've seen problems with speeds being inaccurate is if the magnet is misaligned and hits the wheel sensor instead of zipping past it. When that happens expect to see speeds of 100mph or more. The cadence magnet slips easily, but is easily solved if you tape the magnet to the crank instead of relying on the zip-tie.
  
• Battery life is good. At 15 hours, you can expect 2 full days of touring on a complete charge if you forget to charge it one day. The battery drains at the rate of 5% per hour if the unit is not routing, which in practice means 20 hours. With routing, the drain is around 7% per hour.
  
• Routing is the same was other Garmin units, though sometimes address searches can get wonky.
  
• The unit really does work with full fingered gloves. This is due to the display technology, which also means that button pushes on screen are sometimes clunky. That's not a bad thing.
  
• In tunnels the wheel sensor pairing works well. In particular, Phil, who had the same unit, had his unit confused in tunnels and locked up, so I'm not sure how optional the wheel sensor is. A reboot solved the problem.
  
• Unit uploads are fast!
  

All in all, I'd say that this unit performed as expected and is reliable. Most people would probably buy an Edge 500 since most people don't tour, but for the touring cyclist, it's clear that this is the unit to get. Recommended

Review: Air Berlin

This year was the first time we flew Air Berlin. If you're a cyclist, there are only three viable airlines to Europe if you wish to bring your bike. Air Berlin, Air Canada, and British Airways. On British Airways, bikes fly free, but you have to fly through London Heathrow Airport, which many people hate (I've never had an issue with London Heathrow, but nightmare stories abound). On Air Canada, there's a $50 each way, which is reasonable, but they're not always the lowest cost carrier.

Air Berlin is almost always the lowest cost carrier, and they have a bike policy that's extremely friendly to cyclists: sign up for the topbonus Service Card, and you can carry your bike (at up to 32kg!) on any number of flights you take with them. The annual fee is 79 EUR, but in addition to unlimited bike carriage, you also get free early checkin for flights the night before, and an increased baggage allowance. You also get to make seat reservations (which is apparently a paid sevice). That makes it a good deal.

Good deals are useless if the airline loses your bike the way US Airways does. I'm happy to report that Air Berlin has excellent customer service. The staff is always courteous, and usually goes beyond the call of duty to get things done for you. Air Berlin schedules flights the way Germans schedule trains. That means connections are very closed together and you will find yourself in customs wondering "How the heck am I going to clear customs and make my next flight within 50 minutes?" Wonder of wonders, the German customs at Dusseldorf (Air Berlin's hub) are incredibly efficient and provided you don't dilly dally you will make your flight. We lost no baggage, and things were mostly on time. I can therefore recommend Air Berlin to cyclists wishing to bring their bikes to Europe and back.

Review: Olympus EPL-1

When my brother ran off to Europe for 6 weeks last year, he bought an Olympus EPL-1 for not much more than the Canon S95. What convinced me to recommend that camera was the DPReviews with the comparison shots that clearly showed the EPL-1 as being superior to many other more expensive cameras. Well, my brother shot tons of photos but didn't post any of them, so I had no idea what the photo quality was like.

Since XiaoQin was driving this year, weight was a non issue for her and she could carry the Olympus EPL-1, which we borrowed from him. There are a few annoying things about the Olympus EPL-1:

1. It stamps all photos with the caption OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA. Yes, this is a camera that shouts at you and demands that you remove all those captions.
   
2. It has no orientation sensor, so you have to manually fix the orientation of all the photos that are shot vertically.
   
3. It does not have a rear control dial, so exposure control requires cumbersome button presses.
   
4. The auto-focus is piss poor.
   

I hoped that the extra quality of the EPL-1 would offset those faults, but the last one really did me in. One out of every three shots were poorly focused, and the screen wasn't sufficient to show it. Whatever auto-focus mechanism Olympus uses, it's not as smart as the one on the Canon S95/S90 series, since the S95/S90 screens aren't any better than the Olympus'. The flip side of it is that the camera is fast! Shot-to-shot wait times are nearly non-existent. Unfortunately, coupled with the problem auto-focus, that just means you just take more crappy photos. The camera does not have decent battery life, so it's a good thing my brother gave us 2 spare batteries. As with all other micro-four thirds cameras, it does not fit in a jersey pocket, and so would not substitute for the S90 that I was carrying. But the reality is, even on a hiking trip, the S90 shot better pictures, provided better control, and while slower, wasn't so slow that it didn't out-perform the Olympus EPL-1. I see that Olympus has lowered the price on this camera to be the same as the S95's. Nevertheless, it is a bad deal. There is no reason you wouldn't carry a S95 instead of the Olympus EPL-1. I found no circumstances under which the EPL-1 took better pictures than the S95. Given that the S95 fits in a jersey pocket, that's pretty damning. Not Recommended

Conclusion and Thoughts

If the Tour of the German Speaking Alps last year was an example of everything going wrong, this year nearly everything went right.

• We started a week later, and thus only had a couple of days of poor weather at the start.
  
• We booked a hotel nearly next to the airport avoiding the possibility of losing luggage right from the beginning.
  
• We scheduled the hiking at the start of the self-supported touring part of the trip, enabling us to ship our hiking stuff back to our airport, which enabled us to travel lighter and faster once we started riding.
  

Other notes:

• I'm getting older. We only had a couple of days exceeding 100km and 2000m of climb. As I get older and slower my days of doing those 100km/2000m days back to back seem to be gone. Part of it is that Sleep Apnea forces me to carry more weight up and down the hills, but the other part of is that my recovery isn't what it used to be. Last year I could pretend that it was the tandem's fault. Not this year.
  
• We actually did more cycling once we lost use of the car. The car enabled us to skip to "the good parts." The reality is, though, that cycle touring is about all the parts, not just the good parts.
  
• This is my first year where I could do both the French side and the Italian side back-to-back. The result: no contest, the Italian/Swiss/Austrian Alps are way prettier than the French alps. People who only ride in France because that's where the Tour de France is don't know what they're missing.
  
• If you're going to have rain for a week on the trip, having it at the end is much better than at the beginning. At the beginning you just lose shape and motivation. At the end, you're ready for a rest!
  
• When coordinating with a car, make sure that you pick good locations to meet up. In particular, meeting in the center of strange towns is going to make your driver very antsy, as towns are harder to navigate than country side. It's far easier to arrange to meet at an intersection or a very small town.
  
• Having a car was very nice: Phil said, "The car was totally worth the money!" We definitely had to thank XiaoQin for driving. A lot of the days would have been unmanageable or we would have had to take a less than optimal route when cycling. That said, I loved the unsupported part of the trip every bit as much, so I wouldn't go out of the way to get a car in Europe if everyone was up for riding every day (as was the case in the past).
  
• Remove the plastic dust caps from valve stems before mounting bikes on cars!
  
• We did our hiking in the St. Moritz Area instead of the Bernese Oberland this time. Compared to the Bernese Oberland, St. Moritz is less pretty, and not as interesting. It was worth doing once, but I don't think I'll revisit. Having now stayed at Wengen, Grindelwald,Lauterbrunnen, Rosenlaui, and Murren, I would recommend Murren for first time visitors and Rosenlaui for people who would like to get away from the Rick Steves/Lonely Planet crowd. Wengen is nice, but not as nice as Murren, and definitely not as nice as Rosenlaui.
  

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Day 31, 32: Epilogue

We woke up in the morning to gloomy skies, despite attempting to sleep in. We were due at noon at a restaurant downtown to meet Stefan, so we had a bit of a leisurely breakfast before heading to town on our 24 hour ticket.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

The restaurant featured Swiss German food, with an entry way granting us great reasons to not smoke in the area. Stefan told us stories about his trip to the Himalayas. The trip proper sounded really fun, but the stay in Kathmandu and the aftermath of the consequences of the stay were ugly and off-putting. Stefan does a far better job than I did of explaining it, so I won't attempt to paraphrase him. Stefan as an outdoor enthusiast is second to few others, and his preparation was thorough and complete, so if bad things happened to him and his girlfriend, I'm not sure I want to risk something similar.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Stefan took us on a river side stroll back to the train station, and it was lucky that he stayed with us because the train back to Kloten had a problem. We ended up hopping onto the train to the airport and then taking the airport shuttle back to Hotel Flyaway.

At 6pm, we went to the airport with our bikes and checked baggage, and made use of the early checkin to get our boarding passes and to get rid of the bikes. With the TopBonus service card, we did not have to pay to use this feature, and our cards let us bypass the line to pay to checkin! We then spent the rest of our swiss francs on dinner and on some extremely expensive Truffles du Jour at the Sprungli store, as recommended by Stefan.

The rest of the stay was uneventful, as was the flight proper. I'm happy to report that one and a half N1 batteries was all that was necessary to get me through the flight. (I did spend 2 hours on the X201 sorting pictures in lightroom --- when you run heavy duty photo-processing on the Thinkpad, the battery just doesn't last as long as when you're just typing away on Emacs) Phil performed the super human task of packing all the chocolate in his carry on baggage (he did not want to risk losing any of that precious cargo!), and not eating any of it on the flight. I did not trust myself, and checked all but one bar of chocolate, and that bar did not survive the flight. All our chocolate arrived safely, and now a month later, a lot of it is already gone!

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Price Drop on Independent Cycle Touring

While at WorldCon, I had a discussion with Sandra Taylor of Schlock Mercenary, who told me that I could get full color books printed in China at about $5 each, instead of paying the $15/copy that I'm paying right now. The problem? I'd have to print 5,000 copies at a time. Well, that's ok if I sell enough copies, so I'm going to start pricing the books as if I was going to get them from China and see how things go.

As of right now, Independent Cycle Touring is $29.95 for the paperback, and $14.95 for the digital edition. If you want both, it's $34.95. If this experiment works, the price change will be permanent. If not, prices will have to go back up. There's no way I'm ordering 5,000 copies of anything if it doesn't sell. Storage at my house is not infinite, and it'll be squeezed if I have too much inventory.

Day 30: Neuhausen to Kloten

We woke up in the morning to overcast skies and wet roads. Looking at the weather forecast, it looked like rain was in the cards for the next morning as well, so I called Hotel Flyaway and informed them that we would arrive a day early. We ate an anemic breakfast and got on our bikes and headed again for the Rheinfall, since our route would initially be along Swiss bike route #2.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

What a difference 12 hours made! Instead of the beautiful water, now all we saw was gray. Riding past the falls, we quickly found ourselves back in Germany!

From Tour of the Alps 2011

The gray skies continued all the way until we came back into Switzerland, but at last the rain stopped. At Flach we ignored the bike path sign to Eglisau and headed instead towards Embrach and Kloten. Since our GPS units already had Hotel Flyaway set as a way point, we had the units set, but ignored the GPS most of the time since the bike path signs were more reliable.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Upon leaving the Rhein, the route led relentlessly uphill for an hour or so, but at a gentle grade and without much rain. Even the roads were starting to dry. Once in Embrach, bike path signs for Kloten showed up and we followed that over a hill and found ourselves descending at speed into Kloten, where GPS units and Phil's memory led us easily back to the hotel. We checked in, got our bike cases out, and started taking apart the bikes for stowing. The skies were blue when we checked in but as we started wrenching on our bikes rain came down from the sky in sheets of water and thunder shook the skies around us. We had clearly ended the tour right at the nick of time.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

It took us about 45 minutes to pack the bikes, after which we cleaned up, feeling happy about not having to do laundry for a change. Our freshly laundered clothing had arrived safely from St. Moritz, as had our Amazon.de order for maps. We ate a late supermarket lunch, then started shopping for chocolate. Phil had never really spent much time in downtown Zurich, and Cynthia had wanted us to bring back some Lindt Summer Edition chocolate, so we caught a train downtown with a day pass. We took a quick break at the Sprungli cafe downtown for some chocolate cake.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

I was starting to despair at finding summer edition chocolate when I finally found it in the basement of the City Coop near the Sprungli store. Phil and I each bought about $100 worth of chocolate. We then had dinner near the train station and headed back to Hotel Flyaway just in time to see the Double Rainbow.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We had one more day in Zurich, but our tour was over.
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Day 29: Radolfzell to Neuhausen

We woke up to pretty clear skies and beautiful weather, and so cooked our Weisswurst and ate them before heading over to the train station to see Alan. To our surprise the forecast was pretty grim, so we opted to take the train over to Schaffhausen. Alan had told me the night before that Scahffhausen was the only Swiss town that got bombed by the allies during World War 2 because the allies thought it was German!

From Tour of the Alps 2011

We got on the train and had a fairly long train ride, and watched gloomily as the weather got more and more overcast as we approached the Bodensee. Finally, I suffered from a fit of impatience and we got off the train at Radolfzell to start riding towards Schaffhausen rather than take the train all the way there. It was drizzling as we got off the train but I figured that it wouldn't be too bad.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Indeed as we wound around the final parts of the Bodensee the rain never got so bad as to restrict our visibility. The bike path provided ample reminders that Germany was a cycling country, with a bike repair station mounted right past the town of Moos. (Yes, we'd visited two towns named Moos and Wangen on this trip)

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At the town of Horn, we saw a fruit stand and stopped to buy and eat some fruit. The vendor turned out to be from New York. He spend every summer in this part of the country helping out his friend, and said that the weather was unusually wet this year. It was unusually wet last year as well, so I was starting to think this was pretty normal. He told us to stay on this side of the river and that Stein am Rhein was a pretty town and worth visiting.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Indeed when we got to Stein Am Rhein, we found a cute town with a walkable central district with what were obviously some nice old houses with painted facades. It was a little too early to stop, though, so we pressed on, as Schaffhausen was literally right down the river.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At Schaffhausen, it took us some time to find the tourist information center, but we then discovered first that the falls were at Neuhausen and not Schaffhausen, and as a bonus, the cheap lodging was at Neuhausen. With help from the lady at the information center, we booked the cheapest hotel at Neuhausen, and then proceeded to ride along the #2 bike route, the Rhine route towards Neuhausen where we found a non-descript hotel that nonetheless featured internet access at the ground floor.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

The hotel had a transparent shower, but fortunately, in addition to having the shower in the room, there were also showers on the same floor, so we took showers simultaneously so as not to have to deal with taking showers with other people in the same room potentially staring at us.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Of course, as soon as we showered the sun came out, which meant that we should visit the falls. It was a mere 15 minutes walk from our hotel to the Falls, and on the way we went to the supermarket to pick up snacks and drinks.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

The falls were billed as the largest waterfall in Europe. It's not very big compared to say, the Niagara or Victoria falls, but it was charming in a very European style, with no less than 3 castle-like buildings lending atmosphere to the natural wonder. We spent time exploring the falls from several different angles and shooting pictures before our hunger compelled us to seek out dinner and we returned to our hotel.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Once at the hotel, I pulled out our map and said, "Hey wait a minute, we're only 35km from Zurich, if that!" We looked at our options and decided that we would see what the weather forecast looked like the next day: if it was good, we could keep riding and explore more of the area but if it sucked we would just ride to our hotel in Zurich and spend an extra day in Zurich.
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Startup Engineering Management Pre-Orders

I am now in the final stages of proofing the Startup Engineering Management and pre-orders can now begin. For a limited time (basically while I'm getting the final proof copy), I am providing pre-order copies at $22 each. This period will last until I get the final proof from CreateSpace and order the initial print run. (The reason I can offer this discount is that the more copies I order, the cheaper each copy will be)

Furthermore, so you aren't stuck waiting in case shipping is slow, this pre-order comes with an electronic copy as well, so you can start reading right away!

So if you want a copy, visit the above link and buy away!

Day 28: Rest Day in Munich

We woke up in the morning to a light drizzle that would wax and wane all day, leaving us glad that we had taken the day off. I ran downstairs to buy some senf (sweet mustard) as well as bread for the Weiss Wurst, made some, and then Phil and I went downtown to first get an umbrella and then chat with Alan about dinner arrangements. He seemed happy to meet with Googlers, so we set a time for 6:00pm and went back downtown to use the ATM, browse maps in the bookstore (Phil found an Austrian map to his liking, indicating that perhaps he might return to Austria some day for some more exploration), and then visited Google for lunch.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

After lunch, we bought more Weiss wurst and then headed back to the apartment where Phil slept and read while I watched movies on my Nexus One, which had become my only source of entertainment after my Kindle had died.

Dinner with Alan, Frank, and Daniel was great. Alan explained to us all the construction that was happening in front of the Google office in Munich near Marienplatz. The train line through downtown was the busiest in all of Europe, with a train passing through every 2 minutes, bottle-necking the entire system. The construction was intended to alleviate that by not just building multiple lines, but also enabling Munich's East train station to further allow more traffic. The result should be complete in about 5 years or so. Discussion also revolved around the politics of the train station. The big news, however, was that the French TGV system, which was famously unfriendly to bike carriage, would finally run a line from Lyons to Frankfurt. However, as a condition of being allowed to run on German tracks, the German train system had negotiated with the TGV to have a bike car! As a result, this will be the only TGV/long distance train run by the French system to allow bike carriage. This train will start running in 6 months, and you heard it here first.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Dinner passed very quickly, and at the end when Alan heard about where we were planning to go, he suggested that we went to Schaffhausen, both for less riding in the rain, as well as to visit the biggest falls in Europe. He told us to show up at 9:00am the next day at the Deutsche Bahn counter where he'd look up the weather for us and provide us with suggested routes.

We went back to the apartment, did laundry using the laundry machine and dryer (what a luxury), cleaned up the place, and went to sleep hoping for better weather the next day.

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Day 27: Rorshach to Munich

Our goal today was to make it somewhere inside Germany to have access to the Bavarian ticket so we could have a cheap ride to Munich. We settled on riding to Wangen im Allgau as a destination with a train to Munich without having too many transfers. The day started out sunny, without a cloud in the sky, which made me question our decision to go to Munich. Nevertheless, the weather forecast has been more right than wrong recently, so we stuck with our plan, riding towards Bregenz along the bike path, backtracking what we did yesterday. There was a brand new bike bridge across the mighty Rhine, but once in Bregenz we immediately headed up the hill so we could get some climbing in.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

When you're near a lake, it doesn't take a lot of climbing before you start getting nice bviews of the Bodensee, and at that point it really started getting overcast.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

I always had the impression that once we left Bregenz we'd be immediately in Germany, but that's not true. It took quite a bit of riding through the small villages before we entered the Bavarian border at Neuhaus. While the climbing wasn't steep, there was a lot of rolling hills, and coupled with our not quite recovered state, we were making less good time than expected, putting into question our ability to catch the train.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Once we got into Lindenberg, however, things started flowing more smoothly as we descended towards Wangen. The last 15km went by in a hurry and we found ourselves arriving at the Wangen train station at 12:30pm, well ahead of schedule. We caught the 1:00pm train and ended up in Munich around 4pm.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

At the Munich train station I dropped by counter #1 at the Deutsche Bahn station and met up with Alan Wissenberg of Euraide. He was busy that evening but thought he could get permission from his wife to stay out late the next day, so we arranged to do dinner tomorrow. We then rode into the Google Munich office, said hi to everyone, picked up keys, and rode off to Chris' apartment. We took showers and then rode our bikes back to the Google Munich office because Chris' apartment complex had no indoor bike parking and the Google office looked more secure.

Together with Daniel, we went over to Haxnbauer in Munich for giant pork and beef Knuckles for dinner. Despite my having lived in Munich this was my first time there, so it was an experience, with giant hunks of meat and some potatoes to down it all in.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

Phil bought some Weisswurst for the morning's breakfast, and we hung out at the Google office with the brand new 4th floor until it started raining hard, making us glad that we were not riding the next day. It poured like crazy, and we went to bed glad to be in a big town with stuff to do.

From Tour of the Alps 2011

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