Cameras on Tour

On this year's tour of the Alps, we had several cameras in use:

• My 2013 Sony RX100
• My Moto G3
• Arturo's Moto X Pure Edition
• Pengtoh's iPhone 5s
• Pengtoh's Galaxy S6

OK. The RX100 is in a class of it's own. The only drawbacks it has is that sharing is a pain --- I have to pull the SDcard, plug it into an SD card reader, plug that into my phone, and then run Nexus Media Importer and Photo Mate R3 to get a pictures. It takes time (which we had, since we had nothing else to do at night anyway), and while the photos are exporting, my phone is essentially useless for 15-20 minutes since photo processing chews up all the CPU. The other drawback is the lack of GPS. It's disappointing that in 2016, I still cannot find a high end large sensor compact camera that gives me RAW and GPS location.

The Moto G3 is pretty useless as a camera. I only used it when raining or as a last resort. It's better than no camera, but barely so. There's no doubt that if it shot RAW I could salvage more from the pictures, but let's face it, the phone is so cheap that was never going to happen.

The Moto X Pure is better, but suffered from hardware issues when exposed to water.

Pengtoh's iPhone 5S is very strange. When he used it to take pictures, the images as shown on the phone looked very impressive. But it also has a smaller screen (and lower resolution) than both the Moto X and the Galaxy S6. So when he uploaded the photos to Google Photos and I looked at all the pictures from both phones at once, it was obvious that whenever I saw a picture that looked good, it almost always came from the Samsung Galaxy S6. So while the iPhone seemed to produce better photos during the trip, when it comes to actually good photos, the Samsung phone did a much better job.

Ultimately, I have only a few requirements for camera equipment on a bike tour:

• I must be able to operate it one-handed and without having to look through a viewfinder or at a screen. I used to think this is impossible for a phone, but Pengtoh and my own experience with the Moto G has proven this wrong.
• It should be weather resistant if at all possible. Obviously, of the list above, only the Moto G3 would have fit this bill.
• It should produce as high a quality image as possible.

I think the best camera you can bring on a tour of the Alps is something like the Sony RX100 or the Canon G7X Mark 2. But if you have to be like Arturo and Pengtoh and rely on your phone for everything, it's very clear that the Galaxy S7 is what you want.

Long Term Review: Moto G 3rd Gen 16GB Edition

In the time since my initial impressions of the Moto G (3rd Generation) last year, I've had a good long time with my Moto G3 in and out of California: Japan, Iceland, and the European Alps. I also bought my wife a Moto X Pure. In the mean time, Motorola has released the 4th generation Moto G, the Moto G Plus, and of course there are other countless smartphones you can buy.

First, the strengths: the Moto G3 has proven to be a tough, durable phone that's truly waterproof. I used it to shoot photos in Hot Springs, rode with it in the Tour of the Alps in my pocket with no hint of any problems, despite rain, hail, and snow. By contrast, Arturo's Moto X Pure started giving problems early on in the trip, and while he had a workaround for the problem it irritated him to no end. This alone means that the Moto G3 is better than the 4th generation Moto Gs (which aren't waterproof), the Moto X Pure (also not waterproof), and pretty much every other phone except the Samsung S5, S7 series (note: the S6 is not waterproof!), the iPhone 7 (hey, if even Apple can do it, anyone should be able to do it), and the Xperia waterproof series (M, Z, etc).

By and large, the phone has been performant. While it could be faster for running Nexus Media Importer or Photo Mate R3, I never felt like more speed would have given me a better experience --- just a shorter wait time for my exports. I never felt like it was slow for uploading to Facebook, etc., which was the case for the (much cheaper) Nokia 521.

Battery performance was good. Except for the one day when I had a mega train trip after a plane ride with no place to recharge except a small portable battery, I never had any battery problems with the phone. It always ended the day with plenty of charge left to do photo processing, Skype calls, Google hangout calls, and plenty of text messaging and Facebook posting.

Support for SDcard storage was also huge. I had a 64GB SD card installed on my Moto G. I filled it with videos, audio books, music, and never ran out on the plane or on tour. I used the Moto G to process photos from my Sony RX100 (yes, at 25MB per picture!) from RAW to JPG using apps on the phone. Even with the 64GB SDCard (on top of the built-in 16GB primary storage), I was still occasionally having to manage storage on the phone and delete videos after watching, etc. I have no idea how people with iPhones or Nexus phones manage. There's no such thing as too much local storage capacity if you're a traveler!

Now, where are the compromises? The first big compromise is the number of bands the Moto G3 supports. The USA Moto G3 only supports 4 LTE bands: 2, 4, 5, 7, and 17. There's no version of the Moto G that supports all the bands that say, the Moto X Pure does. What this means is that occasionally in Iceland and in Europe, while my wife's or Arturo's Moto X Pure was getting a signal, I was getting nothing. It's irritating but not the end of the world, though it does mean that the "true" flagship phones like the Sony Xperia series or the Samsung S series do give you something for the insane prices that the manufacturers demand.

The camera is a joke. Now obviously no phone camera can come close to what the Sony RX100 that was in my pocket provide (though nowadays, I'd recommend the Canon G7X II). But on one day when it was rainy I would hide away the RX100 and use the Moto G instead as my main camera. What a mistake. Better to risk damaging the nice camera than to have the crap pictures the Moto G provides.

Finally, I think nowadays 16GB of primary storage is no longer sufficient for a heavy phone user. At least 32GB is required. Since adoptable storage doesn't mean what you think it does, primary storage is required for apps and OS updates, so I think sadly, that means if my Moto G breaks, I'd have to buy a waterproof phone that has more primary storage rather than buying a (now much cheaper) Moto G3.

Suffice to say that I still highly recommend the Moto G3. It's flaws are completely understandable, for the price, and the reality is that the phones that have similar features cost way more than what the Moto G3 would cost you. It easily outperforms phones 2-3X the price. It is truly a pity that Motorola gave up on waterproofing the new generation Moto Gs. If given a choice between the 3rd and 4th generation models, buy the 3rd gen!

Review: Canon EF-S 55-250 F4-5.6 IS STM

I picked up a manufacturer refurbished 55-250mm IS STM lens for the EOS M3 on sale for $141.36 after tax and shipping. There were a few reasons for this: the 50mm/1.8 that I had was not officially supported by the M3, with super slow focusing. It's useful to have a longer lens, and the 250mm is equivalent to a 400mm lens. While the M3 system has a much smaller lens, the EF-M 55-200, not only does that lens cost more (more than 2X more), it's also slower and has a shorter range.

This is an impressively good portrait lens. We brought it with us to Iceland, and at the 55mm end, even without being opened wide, you still get a nice background blur.

In fact, when I look at the Iceland pictures, whenever I see an outstanding portrait, it's almost always the 55-250.

For such a large zoom range, it's not very bulky, about equivalent to my 70-200mm/4L. Of course, that lens is much faster but doesn't have IS. Even with the 250mm range, however, I still had to resort to severe cropping for any bird pictures:

But that's OK. The M3 with its 24MP sensor lets you do a ton of cropping and still have great pictures. As an environmental portrait lens, it's also pretty great:

All in all, especially given what I paid for it, this is an outstanding lens. I highly recommend it, and it has earned its place in the camera bag.

(All photos by Xiaoqin Ma, except the first one)

2016 Tour of the Alps: Thoughts

This year marked my 7th tour of the Alps. There's no sign that I weary of the European mountain roads and their amazing facilities that enable you to ride with a minimum load, eat well, and sleep with a roof over your head every night. Further more, on every trip I discover new roads, or new ways of getting over passes I'd done previously.

Cycling is an amazing sport: if you tried the same level of effort when backpacking or running, most likely you'd be too sore to continue the next day. But because cycling is gentle on your joints, you can expect to get stronger over the tour, provided you eat and sleep well. Over the years, here are a few tips I've learned:

• In the mountains, winds build over the course of the day. If you're facing a stiff headwind at the end of the day, don't bother fighting it. Find a place to stay, and in the morning the wind will be gone. There's no point fighting mother nature --- you won't win, and there's no point even if you did those extra miles.
• Weather should determine your route. Last time, we did the northern route to Chur because of rain in the southern route. This time, we should have kept the northern route to avoid the extreme heat. Now, I don't regret finally getting to ride Splurgen and Maloja pass, but boy, those hours in the heat were not fun at all!
• AirBnB is viable if you can plan a head a day or two. It's not viable, however, in the touristy areas in the Alps, and only more viable in populated cities. As such, while I endorse AirBnB and use it a lot, the rest of the time you're better off with booking.com or hotels.com in Europe.
• Surprisingly, booking.com gives you the same or better price than just showing up at a hotel. I don't know why that is, so in general, it's better to use booking.com. When a hotel owner quotes you a more expensive price than booking.com, don't hesitate to point it out --- they'll give you a discount, and both of you save the cost of the booking.com commission.
• I'm not sure I'd start a tour from Frankfurt again. The train transfers were painful, and the ride back was only OK. Zurich is still the best starting point for the Tour of the Alps, though Geneva is probably also very good. But the reason to start from Zurich (or thereabouts) is Rosenlaui: I book Rosenlaui at the start of the tour because it's a destination worth planning ahead for. But while the start of the tour is fairly predictable, the end of the tour isn't (where I ended up riding during the last 2 days of the tour was nowhere near what I would have predicted!), and so if Rosenlaui is a must-visit (and believe me, it is!), then Zurich ends up being the place you start your tour in.
• Don't mix up your feet and meters when telling your friends about the expected elevation gain on the trip. It's funny after the fact, but during the ride it's not funny at all.
• In countries where train transfers are cheap, feel free to use them to skip flat boring parts or headwind. In expensive countries (e.g., Switzerland), you have to ration those transfers. Keep in mind that usually trains save you only 50% of the time you'd otherwise spend riding, so the real cost is the opportunity cost of riding the train when you could be riding the bike.
• There's a risk in writing a tour report like this in over-dramatizing the difficulty and level of challenge on an independent cycle tour. Yes, we had tough challenging days, but remember that we chose those tough challenging days. I've had people come up to me and say, "I'm in no way ready for one of your tours." After talking to them I discover they've done a challenging ride like the full 100 mile Sequoia century. If you can do the Sequoia century, you can do this ride! And if you can't, do your own independent tour --- when you determine where you go, where you stop, and when you stop, the days can be as hard or as easy as you like. Yes, my days got longer when I was on my own, because I like to ride a lot. But the flip side of it is this: any time you feel like stopping on a tour, you can! It's fun, not tedious, boring, or hellish. My idea of a hellish ride is one in which I have to do a ride because someone else said so, or because someone wrote it down without knowledge of the conditions I'd' be facing. On a tour like the ones I advocate, you'd never be placed in that situation.

But most of all, there's no place like the Alps. If my photos look pretty, keep this in mind: in no way can they be compared to actually being there. You need to go. Stop making excuses. Go.

2016 Tour of the Alps: Mainz to Steigenberger Airport Hotel, Frankfurt Am Main

In the morning, I took the scenic route to the Gutenberg museum and got there about 15 minutes before it opened. This wasn't bad, as it turned out that the museum was right at the center of town, and where the thrice a week market was, so I got to watch the stalls open with colorful fruit and vegetables. The architecture near the museum was pretty as well!

There was a sculpture of Gutenberg (made from imagination, since nobody actually knew what he looked like), and I couldn't help taking a picture of someone reading next to the sculpture of books and odes to the printed page.

Once the museum opened, I went in and had a look. It's a pretty impressive place, with various printing machines of all sorts, and even covered the Chinese printing industry, which were way ahead of the West at the time. While most of the machines were labeled as "please don't take pictures", the basement had a demonstration of the original Gutenberg printing process, and next to it were machines such as the original Heidelberg, which had no such prohibition.

Once I had my fill of printing, it was time to head back to the apartment, load up my bike for the last time, and ride once more across the Rhine.

German bike paths are not very well marked, and once again I found myself on the Rhine bike path for a while before realizing my mistake and then switching to Google maps to find the Main bike path. The ride along the Main river is pretty nice, and indeed would be an ideal beginner's tour --- it's well graded, has lots of facilities, and if you don't mind it being a little boring, it's not bad.

Near Kelsterbach, I ate my last bit of cycling food and rode off the bike path in search of the Steigenberger Airport Hotel. I started using Google maps for navigation and discovered to my delight that it routed me off pavement into the forest roads that I had used so many days ago when leaving for the train station near downtown. Only when I was obviously near the hotel did I ignore the directions and headed directly to the hotel lobby.

I had arrived at the hotel at noon, but the receptionist informed me that checkin was at 1:00pm. This being Germany, I knew that asking for an exception was not likely to garner a decent response, but that was no problem: I showed her the left luggage ticket and asked for my bike box so I could stuff my bike back into the box. She didn't have any issue with it, but the porter/bell-boy gave me a tough time, telling me that I was supposed to pay for storing my luggage at the hotel! Since it was obviously the receptionist and not the bell-boy who was responsible for such issues, I kept my mouth shut and just calmly accepted my luggage and proceeded to disassemble my bike at the place he designated. That did not keep him from coming back to me every so often and harassing me, however, claiming that the place he had designated might have customers coming through at any moment. He seemed determined to single-handedly prevent cyclists from staying at this hotel ever again.

By the time I was all done, it was 1:00pm, and walking in with my running shoes and bike carefully packed was more than good enough at that point to get me my reserved, single person suite. After the treatment I'd received, I was determined not to give the hotel any more money if I could help it, and so after a shower, I changed to civvies and took the complimentary airport shuttle to the airport and then bought a day pass for the train so I could go downtown. There, I had a great Thai lunch, and bought some stuff for family back home. I also bought enough instant noodles and fruits so I didn't have to leave the hotel for dinner and breakfast the next day.

I spent the rest of the day swimming in the hotel swimming pool and catching up on everything I'd missed for 3 weeks. The next morning was cloudy and rainy, but I didn't mind --- all I had to do was to catch the short shuttle to the airport, deliver my bike to Wow airlines, and keep myself occupied on the flight home. It had been a great tour, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it!

Next

2016 Tour of the Alps: Wilhelmsfeld to Mainz

In the morning, I had breakfast with Brigitte's husband. Even though it was AirBnB, I didn't actually expected to get to eat breakfast --- I was planning to catch an early bus to town to eat breakfast, but when Brigette heard of my plans she said, "No. You can eat cereal with us, and since we're headed in that direction anyway, you can come with us and we'll drop you off at the castle." That was way faster than the bus, so I took them up on the offer.

They first took me on a scenic route, and when we arrived in Heidelberg, pointed me at the bus stop where I would take the bus back. They'd given me keys to the house, and I gave them some of my cash to cover both gas and the breakfast that they never advertised. At $19/night, their price was absurdly low, and even if they were only doing so to meet people and see friendly faces, I didn't want to take advantage.

Heidelberg on a Monday morning was much different than a Sunday evening. Everything was quiet, and I could actually move through the main street without getting blocked every which way. The town was quaint and pretty. I hiked up to the castle for the panoramic view of the city and its environment, but didn't enter the castle as I didn't have sufficient time if I still wanted to ride to Mainz.

I was given conflicting information about when the bus would arrive, so I decided it was better safe than sorry. The light wasn't as nice as the evening before, but I didn't have the time to stay longer. And as nice as the place was, it still didn't compare to the Alps.

I left Wilhelmsfeld at 11:00am, and rode through the forested area to Wald-Michelbach and then Morlenbach before making the long descent into Heppenheim. This was the cool forested part of the ride, and it was pretty enough, but my goal was to hit the Rhine river and then make it over to Mainz along the Rhine. I confirmed my lodging via AirBnB but it turned out to be quite a chore. Thomas had switched his approval settings, but the AirBnB app had cached it and so I wasn't allowed to finsih the transaction. Eventually, I figured it out --- uninstall the app and then use the web interface using a mobile web-browser. While the app is convenient, bugs like this make the user experience much worse than if they'd forgone the app in the first place.

Once down into the flatlands, I tried the Rhine river bike path for a while, but it was incredibly rough! It was also relatively unshaded and hot, so I decided that if I was going to suffer, I might as well have something show for my efforts and got onto a main road as directed by Google maps. Unlike in the Alps, where every town had at least a couple of water fountains with which to refill water bottles, here in Germany there were not many water fountains to be found. In a little village near Riedstadt, I was finally forced to beg for water from a lady who was about to leave her house. She graciously went back into her home with my water bottles and refilled them.

At Kornsland, I arrived just before the ferry was about to depart. Given that I'd heard that the West side of the Rhine had much better bike paths than the East side, I decided that it couldn't hurt to do an earlier crossing in exchange for the 2 Euros it cost.

Indeed, it was night and day on the West side vs the East side. The pavement was smooth, and the bike path routed me up along the vineyards on the hill sides. When it eventually returned to the river, I was on an unpaved route, but one fast enough to sustain 16kph even with a touring load. Near Mainz, the bike path became paved once more, and I was able to ride along at speed, though still slow because the commute traffic along the bike path became quite significant!

Once in town, I quickly found the AirBnB lodging --- the owner had left on a trip, but had left the key locked in a pad-locked box outside the apartment. The best thing about AirBnB is that they usually have washing machines and a full kitchen. I took a shower and started the laundry going while I went out to a restaurant that turned out to be closed for a summer vacation. On the way back, I looked at other places but their prices were so high that I went to a supermarket and bought stuff to make dinner with instead, so the $35 AirBnB saved me about $20 in dining costs!

Next

Join the Shared Checklist Alpha

You might have been in this situation before: you and your spouse keep a shopping list next to the fridge, but you both took a picture of it on your smartphone and arrived home one evening with double sets of everything on the shopping list because each of you thought you were going to buy everything. Or, you have to visit multiple stores, or missed something on the shopping list.

In any case, I tried a bunch of shopping list apps on the Google Play app store, and discovered that none of them do something I thought would be obvious: let you share a shopping list with someone else in real time. The "real-time" part means that if you check something off the list, it shows up as being checked off on the other person's phone as well, preventing you from buying double of anything.

Well, I have some development experience, so I pulled up Android Studio and wrote my own Shared Shopping list app. Along the way, I decided that it could be used to share a checklist of any sort. For instance, if you're organizing a camping trip, you can set up a shared checklist, and if someone else in the party has that item (say, BBQ skewers), they can check it off, and then everyone going camping won't have to scrounge around their house to find it (or go to the store to buy it). Conversely, if someone remembers something that ought to be on the list but isn't, they can add it and everyone will know that it's something that's missing.

I also added the ability to make a copy of a shopping list, so for instance, if you have a checklist you commonly use (say, a packing list for a bicycle tour), you can make a copy of it and send it to a friend. Said friend can then modify it for their own purpose without affecting your copy.

I spent about 30 hours or so on the project, so it's understandably incomplete. Here are the known issues:

• Only works on Android right now. (I have no Macs or iPhones, so unless the app takes off like a rocket, I'm not going to build one) I do have plans to work on a web UI so you can use a real computer with a keyboard at some point.
• Only works with Facebook login. I didn't want to maintain my own database of e-mail and password, so just piggy backed off Facebook. I spent a day trying to get Google's OAuth login system to work, and came away with a very deep understanding of why Facebook login took over the world. The Google OAuth integration probably ensures security and scalability but is developer-unfriendly to the extreme, even when you're the kind of person who uses Google's domain hosting, Android Studio, and Android phones. I might get around to it, but for now, Facebook login only.
• Cannot rename a checklist. Let's see how many people squawk about that.
• Cannot edit a checklist item. See above.
• Notifications are funky. I haven't found a good way to deal with notifications of shared checklists. Suggestions welcome.

I have to say that in the year in between attempts at writing Android Apps, Android Studio's improved dramatically. It's no longer slow as molasses on my desktop (a 2009 i7-920 which still runs rings around most people's laptops). The debugger has strange glitches, as does LogCat, but modern day programming tools suck and there's no escape from that sad fact. (No, don't blame it on threads!)

The app is in Open Alpha mode right now, and we'll see if anybody finds it useful enough to leave a note. I suspect the requirement for a Facebook login and Android phones rule out a bunch of the usual people who might otherwise try the app, but if you do try it and share it with friends and find it useful, let me know!

2016 Tour of the Alps: Baden-Baden to Wilhemsfeld

It was 8:00pm. I was sitting in a window seat at the Talblick Restuarant in Wilhelmsfeld. A tall glass of beer stood to one side and the view of the valley below on the other. Cool evening air came through the window, providing a contrast with my sweat-sticky bike shorts and jersey. I turned on my phone and plugged in my camera's SD Card to look through the day's pictures. My heart dropped like a stone. There were no new pictures. A random bump had shaken the SD card from the phone loose and every picture from that day had been lost.

2016 Tour of the Alps: Trossingen to Baden-Baden

We weren't in a hurry, but the forecast for rain made us not want to dally either. We ate a regular breakfast with plenty of time, and then rode the 10 odd miles to Villingen. We tried to take the bike path, but after some frustration, ended up on the local highway. It wasn't pleasant, but it sure beat waiting at the train station twice: once at Trossingen, and another time at Villingen where we'd have to make the transfer.

We asked a woman on what looked like a standard European "trekking" bike where the bike car was, and she said: "it's either the first or the last." Then I noticed that her bike sported a $1200 Rohloff Speedhub. This wasn't a casual trekking bike, this was a serious touring bike. And indeed, since we got on the train together and asked her about her travels, she'd been to England (on the ferry!) and done a few weeks of touring there, and hoped to one day ride the Land's End to John O' Groats route. She gave me a few tips on where to go on from Baden-Baden, mentioning that there was a bike path to Heidelberg (which she recommended) from Baden-Baden via the Neckar. I took note of Heidelberg, since I'd seen it on a map and it was labeled as an interesting town.

She expressed doubts that our skinny bike tires could handle the bike route, and I told her we spent half the day yesterday on the Danube River bike path, which was only partially paved. "Ah. If you can do that, then you can do the Neckar!" Europeans very much get sold on big fat touring tires on their touring bikes when in reality, with a little practice most dirt paths rarely get rough enough to demand anything wider than about 28mm tires. While I sympathize with the trend to ride wider tires, there are very few inexpensive lightweight high quality 700c tires above 28mm, and for those of us who climb alot, light weight is well worth the time spent learning to ride better.

She explained that she bought the Rohloff bike second hand, and that she did do an oil change every 5,000km, but didn't think it was really necessary.

The one nice side effect of the thunderstorm from last night was that Arturo had a nice long time to find a good hotel, and boy did he find a good one. Not only was it well priced, it had grand views and easy walking access to town. They didn't have covered bike parking, but supplied us with plastic bags to cover our bikes with outside. After that, we went downtown for lunch and then over to The Friedrichsbad. Introduced by Rick Steves as the 2nd best way to get over jet-lag (the best way, of course, is to ride a bike as hard as possible in the afternoon sun), the place was very German: the baths have 17 stages in which you're supposed to take them, each labeled carefully and in a certain order. Arturo told me to order the package with the soap and brush massage as well.

Near the end, Arturo said, "if you make it in the cold plunge a full minute I'll buy dinner." I got into the cold plunge and said, "Oh, this isn't nearly as bad as the Stelvio descent, and started counting." The result was a well-earned dinner at the Monte Christo Tapas Bar.

It was our last day touring together, so we celebrated and reminiscence over the adventures we'd had on this trip. It's a truism that as you get older time seems to pass faster, but cycle touring shows how you can reverse that. On a bike tour, even 2 days ago seems like a long time ago, as every experience is so intense that your mind recalls everything, which lengthens the days of your experience. People who ride to new places don't just live longer physically because of the effects of exercise, but also subjectively live fuller lives, as each day is packed with new experiences.

Next

Review: The Heart Goes Last

The Heart Goes Last is a sort-of science fiction story by Margaret Atwood. The premise is that the economy has tanked to the point that corporations have taken over towns, and in particular, one corporation has signed up citizens to take part in an experiment: a new kind of community where you spend half your time in prison, and the other half as a free person. Apparently, this makes everything so efficient that you can have really nice houses, etc. Of course, the corporation has some deep dark secrets and the reader (and the two protagonists) get to find out.

I write "sort-of" above because Atwood is not a science fiction author, and as a result, her world building is implausible and completely unexplained. Apparently, when you're not a science fiction author and are a main-stream "literary" writer, the kind of rigor I expect in my science fiction is not a requirement, and people just accept whatever premise you throw at them.

The plot twists are kind of transparent, and I'm not sure the plot makes much sense either. I kept reading hoping to get some sort of enlightenment or idea that this is some kind of metaphor for something or another, but nope, the story just keeps going in the most obvious fashion possible.

Not recommended.

2016 Tour of the Alps: Heiligenberg to Trossingen

It was absolutely pouring rain. We were standing at the train station in Tossingen looking at all our options. "How is it that a town of this size doesn't have any hotels?" I asked. Arturo said, "Look, there's one, Hotel Baren, but it has iffy reviews." "Let's actually read the reviews." "Oh geez, this guy's just complaining about internet in the room." "Well, I don't give a * about that. Let's go!" Now we were hearing thunder. "The sooner we get out of this rain the better!"

2016 Tour of the Alps: Bschlabs to Heiligenberg

Rain and wind blew through when I opened the window in the morning, forcing me to close it right away. "I guess this is not the day to ride Klausen pass." Looking at the forecast, it wasn't going to get better over the next few days, so our tour of the Alps was over.

Well, the good news was that there was a tailwind headed towards the Bodensee. As a result, backtracking Northwards didn't feel difficult at all. The miles that felt like a drag the day before flew by, and before long we were past Liechtenstein and in Austria, where we found a lovely zip-line along the bike path.

As we approached the Bodensee, however, the weather got better. The sun started breaking through, and we managed to have lunch along the lake in the sunshine!

We knew going in that the Bodensee typically has far better weather than the rest of the Alps. That's one of the reasons it's a prime cycling destination for the 3 countries that border it. Despite knowing all that, it was impossible for us not to come up with a conspiracy theory to drive us away from the mountains. We pictured Angela Merkel's German meteorology service: "Ve vill forecast rain all the time in the Swiss Alps. That vay, the tourists vill not spend their money in Schweiz. They vill come to Germany instead, and spend their money here! Bwahahahahaha!"

Well, at Lindau, a thunderstorm passed overhead and granted us a bit of rain, but it lasted for only all of 5 minutes. We found the bike path and rode along it until we got to Friedrichshafen, where the Zeppelin museum was. I asked Arturo if he wanted to stop here, but he shook his head: "The museum's closed for the day anyway, and it won't open until tomorrow at 10:00am. I doubt you'll have the patience to wait that long." He was right.

We looked at booking.com again, and the cheapest hotel that was in the direction we wanted to go was Heiligenberg. We booked the place and started riding. Within 2km we ran into a recumbent cyclist who said he was riding to Markdorf, where he lived. Since he was a local, we immediately followed him as he led us through winding paths at speed. At Markdorf, he gave us directions on how to find the bike path to Heiligenberg, which turned out to be fairly easy to follow.

With a name like Heiligenberg, you'd expect the place to be on top of a hill, and you'd be right. The hotel turned out to be a fancy place which was having a discounted rate for us for whatever reason. The restaurant was good, but after dinner we walked around and discovered cheaper restaurants in town that would have served just as well. We found a castle in town, but it wasn't open to visitors.

Looking at the map and the weather forecast, it looked like we should stay in Germany for a couple of days. Tomorrow looked like a nice riding day still, but the day after looked horrendous. Arturo had been to Baden-Baden a couple of times before, and thought that the baths might be a great day to spend a rainy day. So the goal was to head to a train station that would take us there in reasonable time tomorrow, and then we'd be in place for the baths. After that, I would head north towards Frankfurt while Arturo would take the train back to the Bodensee and ride back to Zurich to catch his flight to South Africa. It looked like a great plan. The last time I visited the black forest, I had no idea that Baden-Baden actually had baths!

Next

2016 Tour of the Alps: Bschlabs to Trubbach

We were stumped. One plan we had was to descend the Arlberg pass on the East side, loop around Landeck and ride up Silvretta. But the construction equipment made it quite clear: the road was closed. We were going to have to head West, whether we wanted to or not.

2016 Tour of the Alps: Hotel Grubl to Bschlabs

"Hm.. I think we went the wrong way." "Really?" "Yup. Looking at the map, it doesn't look like this goes anywhere."

2016 Tour of the Alps: Winklern to Hotel Grubl

"You rode down this on a tandem?" asked Arturo, after he rolled to a stop. "Yeah. In 2010." "You're nuts. I'm far more impressed by the descent than the climb. With the climb if you keep pedaling you'll eventually get there. But that descent? Yeesh!" "There was no point where you were in any danger whatsoever." "Yeah, but it was fast!"

2016 Tour of the Alps: Niederolang to Winklern

We were riding as hard as we could. "5 minutes left!" I told Arturo. Down below us, the valley was silent. In 5 minutes, the road below us would open up and we would hear the sound of motorcycles and cars racing up the single-lane, one way road.

PSA: Android External Storage Adoption is not what you think it is

I got a little fed-up of managing app storage on my Moto G3. My storage use was perpetually at around 1GB free, which is not a big deal, but the OS would constantly remind me to clean up. I noticed that Marshmallow allowed you to "adopt" a microSD card as internal storage. That seemed like it would be the ultimate solution, right?

Wrong. It turns out that even after "adopting" a microSD card as internal storage, there are still several issues:

• Not all apps could be moved to the SD card, so you'll end up managing storage manually anyway!
• Google Play Movies refuses to download video (yes, purchased videos) into the now adopted "internal storage." So you end up losing functionality!
• The conversion slows down all apps, not just the apps that move to the SD card. I have no idea why this is, but my guess is that swap, etc gets moved to the SD card. (I was using a UHS-1 card, so my card wasn't the bottleneck, though conceivably, microSD card readers in relatively cheap Android phones might simply not be that fast!)

There's really no point to adopted storage as Google has implemented it. What is annoying is that each app manages SD cards differently, so you end up with a mish-mash of different approaches in each app.

I really wonder if the Google PMs who run Android actually use Android phones, or whether they all use iPhones and only carry an Android phone only for appearances sake.

2016 Tour of the Alps: Alba to Niederolang

"I don't believe it!" I cried. But there it was: the sign clearly indicated "Furkelpass", despite the lack of climbing chevrons on our map. I looked up the pass elevation: 1789m, so about 800m of climbing. We'd already climbed 2 passes and fought a nasty headwind all the way to this point. "I'm OK with riding to Bruneck." said Arturo. I stared at the map. Two nasty tunnels were on the flat route to Bruneck. I couldn't bring myself to consider it. "We don't need a rest day," I said. "Getting to the hotel too early would just leave us with nothing to do. Let's climb."

2016 Tour of the Alps: Brez to Alba

I'd been riding in the dark for 20 minutes. I still couldn't see the end of the tunnel. The air was dark, musty, and even the smallest car sounded like a giant truck. I cursed myself for picking the route, but we were committed. Then I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. My elation lasted all of 2 minutes when I saw that 50m past the end of the tunnel was the start of another tunnel!

2016 Tour of the Alps: Bormio to Brez

The morning looked gorgeous, with fresh snow all around outside the hotel window. It was gorgeous and I had slept well. I was motivated to ride! Our first order of business was to lubricate the chains on our bikes, which had rusted overnight. I used up all my lube, and asked the hotel owner (a cyclist himself) if he had any to spare, he said, "No, but if you go down to the mechanic 3 houses down he'll help you." Sure enough, the car mechanic had a whole spray can of lubricant which he generously let us use, and I even sprayed some into my syringe of oil to recharge it.

Gavia has always been a gorgeous climb, but with fresh snow around us it was nothing short of spectacular. I made it up to Santa Catarina at speed, and had time to stop in a grocery store to buy chocolate and bananas, and ate some bananas before Arturo and Pengtoh showed up. I handed them chocolate and said I'd wait for them at the top.

They were both similarly motivated, however, and caught me as the climb came out of the treeline. This was all good, as the spectacular scenery around us gave us nothing but beautiful pictures. Most cyclists were based out of Bormio, since Bormio had multiple loops you could do in the area. Many would just do one climb a day. Despite that, they were all carrying backpacks approximately the size of our saddlebags! Granted, most of them looked like they were filled with lightweight down jackets rather than touring gear, but I can't imagine wanting to carry something on my back when I can have the bike carry it!

Surprisingly enough, the low clouds had lifted and the sun had come out by the time we reached the summit. I showed Pengtoh the poster of Jobst Brandt climbing the Gavia in the 1960s when it was an unpaved road at Rifugio Bonetta, and then we proceeded to descend.

This was my first time riding down the Gavia in excellent weather and dry roads, and I found myself stopping at various corners to capture action shots of my companions bombing down the pass. In many places the pass hits 16% grade making some of the experience more like sky-diving than like cycling. At the bottom, we ate at the same pizza stand that we ate in 2014, and then proceeded to bypass Ponte de Legno to climb Passo Tonale.

Passo Tonale is an easy climb, with nice views of the valley behind us. It's only at the top that the ugly character of the pass is revealed: the place is a ski resort that spares no effort to look pretty.

Once on the top of Tonale pass, there's really only one direction to go: down. I could see storm clouds in front of us, and so told Arturo and Pengtoh to look for the bike path entrance on the left in Piano. The descent is fast with a smooth road, almost no braking needed. But once past a few galleries I noticed that rain drops had gone from being wet to being painful, which meant that I'd encountered some hail. Rather than stop and wait I pressed on, hoping that I could punch through any rain and come out on the other side into better weather.
Italian drivers are misery on roads like SS42. Like their American counter-parts, they don't give you much room to pass, and seem to delight in passing you with as few inches of distance between their fender and your handlebars as possible. Statistically, they're no worse than American drivers, but that's no comfort whatsoever when you've been used to a week of cycling with Swiss drivers, and the 25th driver who buzzes you is even more annoying than than the 15th.

Fortunately, just as I was getting fed up, I saw the road sign for Piano and pulled over to the left side of the road to wait for the others. They were just as relieved to find the bike path as I did, though upon descending to th e bike path I realized that it actually started earlier, in the village of Mezzana, which I should have a look at in the future.
We zipped along at a good clip along the bike path, but by the time we got to Tozzaga, Pengtoh looked a little ragged. "I'd like to stop and find a hotel." Arturo didn't look any better, but he was game for more. "Well, I'd like to make it to Fondo." "I hate Fondo," said Arturo. "Why?" "Last time we stayed there the food was no good and the lodging was nothing special. I don't know why you like that place." I thought about it. "Hm.. you're right. We'll look for a place that's better, then. Let's stop for ice cream next place we see."
We made it back onto the main road, and road past the Lago di Santa Giustina, part of the apple-growing district in Italy, with the smell of Apple blossoms everywhere, and signs telling you (in Italian) which Apples were being grown. It wasn't until we got to Cagno that we found a hotel with a Veranda and had Gelato. "This is great!" declared Pengtoh, "Now I'm ready to go to Fondo!" We pulled out our smart phones and looked for places with great food. The one place that stood out was Locanda Alpina in Brez. It wasn't cheap, but the reviews were great, and I was asking my friends to do more than 100km with 2 major passes that day, so off we went. The ride took longer than I expected, since Cagno was basically at the bottom of the hill, but we arrived there just at about the same time the owner of the hotel showed up.
He showed us the place and gave us locally grown apples, which were delicious. The dinner was indeed excellent. We started making plans. "I think I should just take the train to Innsbruck tomorrow from Bolzano," said Pengtoh. "Do you really need 2 days in Innsbruck?" "Wait, what day is today?" "Today is Thursday the 14th." "Oh. I thought for some reason that today was Friday the 15th. In that case, I can ride to Canazei with you folks tomorrow, and head over Passo Sella to Ponte Gardena on Saturday to catch the train to Innsbruck." It's a sure sign that you're having a good vacation when you start forgetting which day it is!
Since the next day was Friday, we knew it was prudent to pre-book lodging. We booked Hotel Aurora in Alba. Saturday was more of a problem. The plan was to head over to Cortina D'Ampezzo, but that place was expensive! I looked at the map and realized that my goal was to actually head over Staller pass into Austria, and there was a more direct way to do it which would enable us to ride with Pengtoh over Sella pass. So we ended up booking Hotel Scherer in Niederolang. I hate booking places two days in advanced because you never know what could happen in 2 days, but I figured that with the decent weather forecast and by being a little bit more conservative with the distances we should easily be able to make both hotels. Next