June 23rd: Sella Rondo Bike Day

Way back in  2007 when I first toured the Alto Adige valley, on my way up the Stelvio I asked a bunch of cyclists what their most beautiful ride in the area was, and they told me it was the Sella Group. I dutifully visited the Sella Group that year, and was rewarded by the sights and sounds of tour buses climbing up passes, and being stuck behind tour buses when descending. So when I saw that the Sella group was having a bike day, and the weather forecast was cooperative, I knew we had to participate.

We ate early enough to ride out from the hotel at 8:00am. In retrospect we didn't need to do this. Not only were we finished well before the 3:30pm cut off, by starting half an hour early we bore the brunt of the last minute rush of vehicles trying to get over the various passes before the roads closed. Fortunately, by the time we got to the ridge to climb over to Passo Pordoi, the road was well and truly closed.

The bike day is every bit as amazing as you might imagine. None of the other countries in the alps have regular bike days: the Germans don't do it, neither do the Swiss or the Austrians. The Gran Fondo-type events might feature road closures, but those require pre-registration in advance and the entry fees are usually high, and in some cases you might even need to be lucky enough to win a place. To my mind, this makes up for the insane driving you frequently see in Italian roads. The organizers suggested doing the Sella Rondo counter-clockwise, and most people followed their suggestions. This was great, since it kept the speed differentials down, and the roads were narrow enough that there weren't even center-line markings on them!

Along the road were photographers represented by FotoStudio3. They had clocks next to the photo stations so you could search for your pictures afterwards. I should have taken pictures of those clocks, but in any case I couldn't find any photos of us except the one that Hina found, since there were so many cyclists at the event! Every where you looked, especially after we descended to the saddle between Sella and Pordoi, where hordes of cyclists were climbing up from Canazei, which was apparently a much more popular lodging destination for cyclists than Selva di Gardena. Here's the thing about doing the Bike Day on a tandem: first, we were the only non-electric tandem that we could see. Every other tandem we saw was electric-assisted. The other thing was that every cyclist who passed us (which was most of them!) would say, "Bravo!" or "Grande!" Some would even speak to us, and tell us what a cool bike we had. I don't think I ever got so many compliments in my life for riding a bike on one ride. As is true back home, despite all the compliments on the bike, if I asked anyone if they wanted to exchange no one would take me up on the offer. 

Bowen, as usual, hadn't eaten much breakfast, and by 11:00am was quite hungry. The Sella Rondo bike day wasn't a supported event, but the restaurants and hotels all along the route were open, and happy to serve hungry cyclists with food, snacks, and drinks. He ate a sandwich and I ate some chocolate. While descending from Campolongo to Alta Badia to start our final climb up to Gardena, an Italian guy rode up to me and said "Piano, piano, kinder!" He was asking me to slow down so I could watch out for kids on the road? Or was he worried about mine? Bowen was a veteran of major descents at this time, and I didn't see any kids descending on the road. We did see plenty of other types of bikes, recumbents, e-bikes, even a guy towing a child in a trailer using an e-bike. Safety patrol was done by 4-wheeled dune buggies, which made the only motorized noise we would see that day once the event got going.

It was a relief when we finally made it up Passo Gardena, with only a small saddle to traverse before we began the descent back to Selva Gardena. The day clocked in at 6500' of climbing in 38 miles, and Bowen was a good sport about it all, complaining about the cold only a few times. Once we were in the hotel, we showered, tried to find the game room (which turned out to be just a bunch of toys thrown into a room), ate dinner, and spent more time in the swimming pool, as Bowen deemed the zipline at the local playground not worth the time and effort it would take to get there. My boy was definitely getting picky about ziplines and playgrounds! Miguel had yesterday mentioned that Adrenaline X-treme Adventures had the longest zipline in Europe, and I explored the idea of taking Bowen there, but nixed it when it turned out that their minimum weight for children was 35kg or 77 pounds. I could load up Bowen's camelbak with all the bricks that could fit and he still wouldn't come in close to that. My plan was to ride over Gardena to Corvara and climb up to Falzerago to Cortina over the next few days to show Bowen Misurina and maybe spend a day climbing up to Tre Cime di Laverado, a road I'd never visited before, but the forecast had turned sour in that direction, indicating thunderstorms were coming. Unusually, the forecast for Stelvio was good for at least the next 3 days, so after confirming to Bowen that he still wanted to climb over to Stelvio, I sent a WhatsApp message to Lukas to confirm the route down to Bolzano, where we planned to take the train back to Schluderns for our attempt. Lukas couldn't help with luggage up the Stelvio, but after doing the Sella Rondo Bike Day, I was convinced that a half day of riding with relatively little climbing would be sufficient rest that we could make it up the Stelvio.
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June 22nd: Via Ferrata Grand Cir

It thunderstormed during the night, enough to wake me up, which wasn't a bad thing since I had some stuff that was still in the wash and needed to be taken out and air dried. I went back to sleep, and still managed to get up early enough to make breakfast for Bowen.

After breakfast, we packed up our bike, which despite being under a shelter showed signs of chain rust, left the keys in the apartment, and rode down to the train station, carrying all un-eaten food on the bike since we knew we were getting a taxi transfer. It turned out that our taxi driver was none other than Lukas Panitz, the owner of Base Camp Dolomites and a mountain guide and tour organizer. While driving up, I asked him about good paths down from Selva di Gardena on the bike, as I didn't think that there was a good bike path up, something he concurred with. He said that there was a good alternative down back to Bolzano, by riding over to Castelrotto towards Siusi. "There's a plateau there, so even though you have to climb a bit, the rest of it is easy riding, and it's away from most traffic." I asked him for ideas for what to do on our free day in Selva, and he suggested that if we were lucky, we might be able to get a mountain guide to do a Via Ferrata which was something his daughter practiced and enjoyed. He named Piccolo Cir and Gran Cir as two options that we could potentially do with a 6 year old. I told him about our consideration to do the Stelvio and he said to ping him in case he could find a way to help us.

I'd heard Arturo talk about Via Ferratas before, but I had no idea that a little kid as young as 6 might be expected to do it. We rode over to the tourist information office after dumping our bags at the Residence Antares. We could have walked it, but Lukas had emphasized that we might have already arrived too late to get a mountain guide for the day, and while we could do it on Sunday, this was the optimal day to have an off-bike activity. The tourist information office told us that the mountain guide office was already closed for the day, but then she called one of the mountain guides she knew and he was available and would meet us at the office!

Miguel met us and told me the price would be 200 Euros. Well, I didn't know squat about climbing or Via Ferratas, so I agreed and we went back to the hotel to get Bowen's sandals. Miguel looked dubiously about my cycling shoes, but I told him that that was all I had. He picked up harnesses for us, and then we headed out. Residence Antares was happy to hold our bike in the ski room, and Miguel picked us up in his car and drove us to the cable car.

The view from the top of the cable car was pretty good. On the way up, Miguel told us that Piccolo Cir was shorter but harder and Gran Cir was longer but easier, and he would suggest doing the Gran Cir first. Not knowing any better, I took his advice. In retrospect, doing the Piccolo Cir would probably have been more fun, and might have left Bowen more enthusiastic about the Via Ferrata experience.

The approach started with a hike up to the base of the wall. Bowen happily kept up with the mountain guide and walked surprisingly fast. At the base of the wall, we were asked to put on the climbing harness. I would manage my caribiners myself, but Bowen would be tied to the guide.

The climb itself felt like it was too easy, with only a few places where I felt like I ws in danger of falling. But as I climbed, I caught myself doing dumbass things, which is probably how someone could get killed doing an easy climb. For instance, you're supposed to have one caribiner clipped in at all times, but I would catch myself moving both at once.

I thought Bowen would not be happy to get dragged along by the guide, but it turned out that he was very happy to do things this way, and indeed he seemed to be having fun. In due course, we got to the top, where unbelievable views could be had, because it was such a clear day.

Unfortunately, a cold wind blew, and Bowen got cold. Once Bowen gets cold, he stops wanting to work hard, so the mountain guide half-carried and half-guided him down the mountain. There was no question that Miguel had earned his pay that day! Bowen was quite tired, but he nevertheless still walked all the way back to the cable car station for lunch. There was no question that we were going to try Piccolo Cir.

Back down in the village, Miguel showed us the zipline playground and the supermarket, and then we found an ATM so we could pay him in cash. The zipline playground wasn't good enough to hold Bowen's attention, so we went back to the hotel, where our room was finally ready for us  to move in.

It turned out that the supermarket was just behind the hotel, and the apartment was on the ground floor (even though the receptionist called it the basement, we still got plenty of natural light). I went to buy dinner and breakfast the next day. The kitchenette had no oven, so I had to be careful to buy stuff that could be cooked over a stove.

We then did our shower and laundry routine, though I didn't have to wring out everything as thoroughly since we were here for two nights and there would be time for everything to dry. We checked out the hotel's indoor pool, which was Bowen's first exposure to a European-style pool, which typically has toys like button-activated waterfalls that give you a shower, jet-streams that would push you back-wards when you pushed a button, and even bubble makers on the floor. It wasn't a very big pool, but Bowen loved being able to turn the waterfall on at will. Even the showers were kind of strange, as they had aroma therapy options, where you could push a button and get various smells in while you showered.

We had to have an early night. Technically, the Sella Rondo Bike Day started at 8:30am, but Lukas had encouraged us to get an early start because things tended to warm up in the afternoon, and of course, certain winds could build up. In any case, the Bike Day ended at 3:30pm, and given that traffic would be waiting to traverse the passes the moment they were let through, I didn't want to be on the mountain when they opened up the roads.

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June 21st: Bardolino to Bolzano

 The Hotel Bardolino's breakfast was great, and we ate quickly, packed, and left the hotel at 8:24, hoping to beat the heat. But first, we visited the Lake again to say goodbye.

Most of the climbing on the 17 mile ride from Lake Garda to Verona happened within the first half hour. Once we got out of the rim of the lake, the ride was mostly flat, and Komoot did what it does best, which was to put us onto a river-side bike path.

I couldn't argue with the views from the bike path. In Bussolengo, we ran into a mid-week market that required us to dismount and walk, but it was so interesting that I didn't mind. I gave the camera to Bowen hoping he would take a few pictures of things he thought were interesting, but all that came out were tons of pictures of my butt instead, which I can assure is not interesting.

The temperature mounted as we got into Verona, until in the last 200m to the train station, Bowen suddenly stopped complaining and just closed his eyes as though he was asleep. He would later claimed that he wasn't asleep, just that he had closed his eyes. I can believe it now, since the minute we entered the train station, his eyes opened wide and he had no sign of sleepiness, but at the time, I was convinced that he'd developed a fever and I was going to have to deal with the Italian medical system.

Things being what they were, I decided that a train ticket back to Bolzano was the right one. There was an EC German train serving Verona to Bolzano, but the ticket machine wouldn't let me buy a bike ticket! When I found one of the assistants to help me, she said that the ticket machine would only let me buy a bike ticket on the Italian trains. That train was a lot slower, but since navigating the Deutsche Bahn website on my phone would have been too slow, I just let her help me.

Italian train stations are nowhere as nice as the German or Swiss train stations: there are no ramps for the disabled or for bikes, and the elevators aren't big enough to take the tandem. Fortunately, a German man at the end of his bike tour took time off to help me move the tandem to our platform, and we boarded the Italian train with no problems, being careful to validate the train ticket before we boarded. There was already a bike on the train, and it belonged to Elisabeth, who had also ridden her bike from Laas up in the Alto Adige river down to Lake Garda and Verona. She said she was developing "sun allergies" and so had to abandon her plans to continue riding past Verona as well.

It was fascinating to hear her talk about immigration and its impact on Austria. "We're becoming a nation of immigrants too," she said. I couldn't tell from her voice and facial expression as to whether she thought it was a good thing or a bad thing, and I didn't ask. But she was very friendly and even offered to help us find a place in Bolzano, going so far as to call a friend who didn't pick up. I found an air conditioned residence apartment in Bolzano with a kitchen and a washing machine, so I wasn't too disappointed!

Arriving in Bolzano, Elisabeth offered to help us move our big heavy bike, but she had a train to transfer to, so I said that she should focus on that rather than risk missing hers. We got out of the train station just fine and rode to the address specified on booking.com, but it turned out that the Park Residence Apartments didn't have full time staff: most of the people who stayed there apparently arranged for someone to meet them at a specific time, rather than just showing up from the train station like a vagabond. Fortunately, the hotel that the apartments were connected to told me about this, and when I called them they were happy to come down and open the office so we could leave our panniers in there.

As a matter of fact, by the time I'd gotten my bike locked up, the primary receptionist had showed up early and checked us in, which meant that we could immediately move into the apartment, and rather than eating out, we could buy food from the supermarket next door and cook it, which was what we did!

After we'd eaten, I realized that if I still wanted to do the Sella Rondo bike day on Saturday, I had to find a way to get to either Canazei or one of the villages near the start, so I let Bowen take care of himself in the apartment while I went out to find the tourist information office. The tourist information office had information about the Sella Rondo bike day, but they weren't able to help with transportation. From my experience in the past, I usually made it to Canazei via Costalunga and the Karersee. But those climbs were severe, involving grades over 20% and/or long tunnel traversals. Even if I could make it over there on the tandem, I'd probably be too tired to do the actual Bike Day. The tourist information office did point me at Base Camp Dolomites, right at the Bolzano train station.

I walked over there and to my surprise they spoke English, and enthusiastically talked about providing a transfer service and suggested that I stay at Selva di Gardena, the official "start point" of the Sella Rondo Bike Day. They asked me if I had a hotel in mind, and I said, I could make a reservation right now on my smartphone. The employee looked at my phone, and then said, "Wait a minute. Let me call the hotel." He called the hotel, spoke some Italian into the phone and when the receptionist spoke to me, she quoted me a price for 2 nights at 100 Euros less than the quote on my phone! Coincidentally, that was the price Base Camp Dolomites gave me for the taxi transfer as well, so I gladly accepted and arranged for a taxi pick up at 8:30am the next day.

After that, the rest of the day was spent buying and preparing dinner, getting ibuprofen as insurance in case Bowen's behavior in the morning was indicative of a fever, and running the laundry machine. I even bought Weisswurst for breakfast the next morning. That evening, I checked Bowen's temperature a few times with my hands and they were normal. I'd wasted my money on ibuprofen, but these came in little satchels for dissolving in water so I packed a few in the panniers just in case.

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June 20th: Trento to Bardolino

We had a great breakfast and then rode down to Trentino downtown. Bowen had lost his sunglasses, and his cough which he had brought with him on the plane from California didn't seem to be getting better, so I bought a bottle of cough syrup from the pharmacy, and $3 pair of sunglasses from a Chinese-run knick-knack store. In 2010, Phil Sung told me that European cough syrup was the best tasting cough medicine in the world, and Bowen said nothing to contradict this statement, eagerly awaiting every spoonful 3 times a day. Looking at the ingredients, it looked like the cough syrup was basically honey spiced up with a few herbs like menthol and other throat-soothers no different from any cough drop sold at an American pharmacy, but with a much more pleasant taste. The pharmacist told Bowen to drink lots of water, which probably did more good to eliminate his cough than the syrup did. Bowen would insist on taking the cough syrup whether or not he had a cough for the rest of the trip until we used up the bottle.

The bike path didn't get any less boring than the day before, but with the knowledge that we had far fewer miles to cover than the day before, I was far more motivated to ride hard and move fast than the day before. Unlike the upper part of the Aldige river, this part of the bike path had far fewer water stops, and was equally unshaded, so we wanted to get it over as early as possible.

In Rovereto, there was a tourist information kiosk staffed by a woman who told us that all we had to do was to follow the bike path signs for Lake Garda. The kiosk was right next to an ice cold water fountain, so we refilled and sure enough, the bike path soon departed from the river side, and we found ourselves climbing. We were now in the Italian-speaking part of Italy, unlike the higher parts of the Aldige valley which spoke German, having been historically part of Austria until after World War 1. Once we climbed out of the Aldige valley, we saw a shaded spot with a water fountain and stopped to eat the apples so kindly given to us by our hotel just before we left. These were golden delicious apples grown on the other side of the Merano valley and tasted delicious! I'd mistaken them for granny smith apples in the past (which I hate), and now wished I'd eaten more of them on previous visits to Italy.

The ride over Passo Giovianni turned out to be much less steep than the climb up from Rovereto. Despite signs broadcasting a 10% grade or something like that, nothing we rode over fell into the "challenging" territory. Even though it was warm, a gentle headwind cooled us off, and the anti-climatic pass sign wasn't even exciting to Bowen. I suppose 287m is no big deal once you've already climbed to 1500m a couple of days before.

Once over the pass, Komoot recommended one direction while the bike path pointed to another. Sometimes this is a trap: bike paths might be optimized in the uphill direction and then not grant you a smooth descent. In this case, however, I reasoned that most people would be riding the transalp route from North to South, in which case the bike path was likely to be optimized in the direction we were going. This turned out to be correct.

From the bike path, your first sight of Lake Garda is dramatic and impressive. The road sweeps away beneath you at a steeper than 10% grade, and you cannot see the other side of the lake. "Wow, I didn't expect it to be this pretty!" I said. "Well, I did." came the reply from the back of the bike. Bowen's 6 years old and already he's hard to impress. The descent was fast and fortunately the bike route while on a road shared with cars didn't seem to have much traffic. We rode down to the lake side, found a supermarket, bought a picnic lunch, and proceeded to find a bench and picnic table at the lakeside for lunch.

There's a hard headwind blowing from the South, which I did not feel like fighting. I knew there were ferries servicing various destinations on the lake, so asked for the tourist information center and got an answer. We rode there just in time, as they were about to close. It turned out that many of the passenger ferries took bicycles, and the big ones had no problems taking the tandem, so we didn't have to take a car ferry like I thought we would have to. We could take the slower one from Torbole, where we were, or ride over to Riva di Garda where a faster ferry would depart later but arrive earlier but would skip Torbole. We decided to ride over to Riva since we were so early, and were told that Riva was  a much bigger town than Torbole and we could walk around the old town while we were waiting.

Riva di Garda was a gorgeous lakeside town and very walkable through its downtown area. We had ice cream, and then I realized that if I wanted to see Lake Garda without cycling, the ferry wasn't a bad idea, and the slower ferry would visit way more destinations than the fast one. So I found a hotel in Bardolino, and then we proceeded to buy tickets for the slow ferry and braced ourselves for a 5 hour tour of Lake Garda.

The various towns around the lake very much reminded me of the small towns we visited in Greece on our 2013 sailing trip. In many cases, the terrain was extreme, with mountains coming right down to the lake and the town simply nestled in the small flat section of lakeshore. I could see why there would be bike hotels in Garda catering to cyclists, but it was also very hot, so I guessed that it was only a cycling destination in the Spring or Fall.

Each town looked like it would be worth staying at. By the time we disembarked in Bardolino, it was 7:00pm and we were hungry, despite having eaten snacks on the ferry. We rode down the street and found our hotel.

In retrospect it wasn't a bad idea to arrive late: our hotel's AC was so old and worn that it could barely keep us cool in the evening. I expected that it wouldn't have even been able to cool our room 2 degrees if we had arrived earlier. We turned on the AC, took a shower, and hurried out to a late dinner at a restaurant hotel owned by the same owners as Hotel Bardolino, granting us a slight discount. This far south, it was not unusual to have dinner late, and even the supermarket was opened after dinner and we could buy some fruit for desert.

With the continual heat, I decided that to attempt to ride to Venice would be suicide. Since no train stations serve Garda had lines that would bring us back to Bolzano, we would have to ride to Verona to catch one. We went to bed knowing that our best bet for a cool ride to Verona would be to eat breakfast at 7:30am and then head out as quickly as possible. I pre-plotted our ride to the Verona train station, sync'd it to the Wahoo Bolt using the hotel's fast WiFi, and we went to bed with the AC running. To my surprise, I slept well, indicating that my jet-lag was finally resolved.

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June 19th: Merano to Trentino

The morning's breakfast was generous, and Bowen would develop a taste for tea after deciding that hot chocolate was too sweet for him! (Yes, I have an odd kid) He was still disappointed that we weren't going to do Stelvio but were going to keep riding down the Aldige valley until we got to Lake Garda, which I've never done. Recognizing that it was going to be a hot day, our hotel gave us ice in our water bottles, a much appreciated gesture.

The ride down Merano was easily, and just on the outskirts of Merano we found another Zipline.

I'd done the ride from Merano to Bolzano only once, and going the other way, but I'm afraid I don't have much to say about river-side bike paths. I find them fairly boring: miles after miles of same same with not much elevation gain or loss to distinguish them. The Aldige bike path is particularly bad, because there's almost no shade at all, though there are many water stops.

We stopped in a little town of Mezzocorona, following signs to a restaurant, but the food was not very good, though an ice cold coke was much appreciated. Over lunch, I searched and found a hotel in Trentino with AC and created a route for it in Komoot to sync to my computer. Once back on the bike path we didn't go 3km before finding a huge rest station with snack bar and restaurant right on the bike path! In Lavis, Komoot took us off the bike path into some local climbs which apparently would make it easier to get us to our hotel. Once in town, however, it failed, and routed us up a route that looked like it might connect, but a neighbor living on the street told us that it didn't, so it was back to having Bowen use Google Maps on the phone from the back seat to navigate, since the Wahoo Bolt would want to take hours to sync with the phone. I certainly did not appreciate the extra climbing in the afternoon heat. The hotel turned out to be a new B&B in the middle of a renovation, and wasn't really a "farm stay", more like a winery stay. The facilities were brand new, but they didn't have a restaurant yet. We got into our room and turned on the AC and kept it on while doing our shower and laundry routine. When it was dinner time, we called the number supplied by the hotel but the taxi dispatcher claimed that there were not taxis available! We walked down to the lobby and the owner of the hotel said, "We'll drive you downtown!"

Downtown Trentino was a happening place, despite the heat. We were early enough that we had no problem getting good seats and had a nice dinner, followed by ice cream. I'd noticed that there was a bus that might serve where we were staying, and sure enough, Google Maps gave me routing directions via transit. It looked like it would only be a 400m walk, but that was better than trying to get a taxi.

Well, I guessed wrong. Google Maps routed us to the wrong place via transit, and we ended up with another 1.5km of walking. That by itself was no big deal, but it was 1.5km of walking on a highway with signs that said: "No bikes." I don't know about you, but if a highway says "No bikes," walking on it would be very unpleasant as well. I tried hitch-hiking but that was a no-go, so we ended up walking.
Back at the hotel, I looked at the map and debated dropping the rest of the ride and taking the train back to Bolzano. Once I noticed that we were only about 60km from Lake Garda, however, I decided that we should at least see Lake Garda, which Bowen had started calling "Lake Gaga".
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June 18th: Reschen Am See to Merano

The morning started with a lovely breakfast, after which while packing up in the hotel room, we saw a lovely rainbow which made me glad that I had a real camera and not have to rely on the crappy camera on my LG V20. After we were packed, we immediately made a stop at the zipline that so captivated Bowen the afternoon before. He made 10 runs before we decided that we didn't have infinite time that day.

The lake itself is famous for a town that was famously submerged when the hydroelectric dam was built, flooding the town so that only the top of a church tower can now be seen. This was my first time in this part of Italy, and the views were outstanding. Unlike the lower part of the Alto Aldige valley, it had a lonely isolated feel to it. The bike path runs on the opposite side of the main road, ensuring that you were isolated from it for even more solitude, especially in the morning.

After the dam, we saw the Monte Maria Abbey. We stopped for a picture, but it didn't seem particularly remarkable, and almost immediately after that, the bike path took a series of descents that quickly dumped us out into the Glorenza snack stand that I was so familiar with from previous years.

From Glorenza, it's a short ride down to Prato Allo Stelvio, where I told Bowen that the only way we'd climb the Stelvio was if we found someone to carry our bags up the hill. My memories of Nobert's pass was still fresh, and I felt as though I need a few rest days before signing up for more intense riding. At the visitor's center, the information center person gave us a list of numbers, but I called all of them, burning about $3 in Skype fees and nobody was willing to even quote me a price for carrying 2 panniers up the mountain. Bowen was surprisingly emotional and disappointed about not getting to do the Stelvio. "You've seen the mountain, so why don't I get to see what you've seen?" I assuaged his disappointment by spotting the zipline playground right outside the visitor center, and then as we rode down towards Merano, found an ice cream place and fed him a banana split for lunch.

From Prato Allo Stelvio, the descent down to Merano along the bike path is pretty easy. We found a self-service honor system fruit stand with some of the best tasting fruit we'd had (Bowen remained a huge fan of apricots for the rest of the trip), and also another zipline playground.

I'd booked a hotel near the center of town while Bowen was on the zipline, but as we approached Merano, my phone rang and it turned out to be the hotel, which was calling to cancel our reservation as they were full! This led us to a mad scramble: we checked out one of the hotels near the center of town, but it wasn't acceptable and the man running it tried to take advantage of my desperation. I ended up booking (via booking.com) Hotel Verdorfer, which had excellent reviews. Of course, Komoot would route us but my Wahoo Bolt stubbornly refused to download the route, so I ended up giving Bowen the phone and having him use Google Maps to navigate us while we were riding. By the time we arrived at the hotel, my Vivoactive HR (which wasn't fully charged in the morning) was dead, and Bowen's Garmin Edge 25 was also in low power mode. I learned to be more careful about charging those devices and we never had a ride as long for the rest of the tour. I would get more and more frustrated with the Wahoo Bolt for the rest of the tour.

In the future, I'll know that when in this situation, I could have hired a limousine to take us to the hotel and then charged it to booking.com for reimbursement, but the bicycle ride up to the hotel, painful as it was, was under the rules of the web-site not considered worthy of compensation.  Nevertheless, when we were greeted by a very friendly young man who looked fresh out of college, I was inclined to let bygones be bygones. The hotel's not great for cycle tourists, as the walk to the nearest restaurant was substantial, but the pool was crystal clear and the facilities very nice. At dinner, the world cup was playing but the food was just not that good, though portion sizes were generous enough to feed two very hungry cyclists. The wind was high so I was certain that our clothing would dry by the next day.
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June 17th: Landeck to Reschen am see

The morning had us riding up along the Inn river bike path. Having ridden this 4 years ago, it was interesting to see it going the other way: the climbing was pleasant and not at all overwhelming, and in Pratz, we found a zipline playground right next to the campground that the other bicycle tourists we met yesterday was heading for.

Paset Pratz, the road opened up and we started seeing signs for Switzerland! "Hey, we can have breakfast in Austria, lunch in Switzerland, and dinner in Italy today!" I said to Bowen. That sounded so good to him that he would repeat it over and over again like a mantra throughout the day.

Just before Martina, the road suddenly took a huge dip, and we sped rapidly down towards the Swiss border. I realized once we got to Martina that Arturo and I had passed this very same spot 4 years ago, but there wasn't a lunch place in sight except for a little kiosk with bicycles parked outside. Going in, we bought what looked like the last packet of meat, some chocolate, and half a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven. Bowen was fascinated by the Swiss army knife display and asked to see my Gerber Dime, which was smaller than any of the knives on display.

After lunch, we crossed back over to the Austrian side of the border and immediately started up Norbert's pass. At this point, the afternoon heat combined with cumulative nights of jet-lag and the prior days' climbing finally caught up to me and I struggled up the hill at a dog-slow pace. While I was never distressed enough to stop, the pass felt like a much tougher pass than it should have, a memory which would color the next few days of the tour.

At the top, we ate the partially melted chocolate, and I found myself dreading the climb over Reschen pass, which I thought was around 1800m, while Norberts pass was at 1405. Another cyclist said, "It's not a hard pass, compared to Noberts pass", and I'd already promised Bowen dinner in Italy, so no matter how exhausted I felt, I was committed to making it over the pass. My initial plan of riding all the way to Schluderns was gone.

There was a fast and furious descent into Nauders, and then a bike path pointing us to Reschen pass. Despite the relatively high elevation of 1300m, it was warm, but the bike path led us away from the highway despite giving us occasional views of it. The climb was gentle and I didn't feel like I was climbing a pass at all. When we finally crossed over to the Italian border it was a surprise! Indeed, I had misread the altitude of the pass: it was 1504m, not 1800m. I was pretty happy to be wrong.

I was warned that the bike path kept climbing despite having crossed over the pass, which made this the most anti-climatic path I'd ever seen. But at least the weather had cooled off a bit and we were now riding through greenery and flowers that were missing on the Austrian side. We finally got a view of the lake and what did we find but a playground with a zipline!

While Bowen played on the zipline, I searched on my phone for lodging. Not surprisingly, most of the good deals on lodging were on the Austrian side, where I'd spotted large numbers of hotels, mostly to cater to the ski resort. The Italian side didn't have any ski lifts, so there was no summer competition to keep prices down. I eventually found a guest house (which looked much more like an apartment building) nearby, and booked it. On the way to the hotel, Bowen complained that he couldn't clip in any more! Upon later examination, we found a piece of stone (from the playground) embedded in just the wrong place that was blocking engagement. I got out the Gerber Dime multitool flipped open the knife and pry'd it off. This would happen a couple more times during the trip. This never happens to my adult shoes no matter how much I abuse them on dirt and gravel hikes, but the Giro Manta that Pardo had bought for Bowen (from a thrift shop) seemed to be much more susceptible.

When we arrived, we discovered that nobody was there to greet us, but a phone call led to the owners/managers having a mad scramble to come and meet us, and all was well. It turned out that the place was quite far away from the main "town", but we were walking distance from a restaurant and so after our afternoon routine we could walk there. It was quite clear that e-bikes had taken over Europe as there was a free charging station right next to the restaurant.

I was quite tired, and hoped for an easier day the next day.

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June 16th: Bschlabs to Landeck

The guest house at Bschlabs offers a generous breakfast, including eggs that you can make yourself. Bowen discovered that he really liked soft-boiled eggs, and would eat them whenever he got a chance. We packed up and left by 8:40am, and immediately started up the mountain.

I'd forgotten how tough climbing on a fully loaded tandem was. Add to that my lingering jet-lag (which my melatonin pills were absolutely not helping with), and problems getting used to my HDM Z1, it took no fewer than 4 stops to get to the top of Hahntennejoch. I was grateful that I did not try to do the entire ride from Elmen all in one day!

At the top of the pass, there was an ice cream vendor, so Bowen got a popsicle, while I relaxed and recovered from the ride. Other cyclists and motorcyclists would make it up the hill and stare at the tandem, and we were the only obvious cycle tourists on the mountain that day.

The Hahntennejoch descent was my first descent in the alps, and it made a deep impression on me back in 2003. 15 years later, doing the descent on the tandem, I'm a much better bike handler and the scary parts no longer seem scary. Even the steep 20% grade in the town of Imst posed no problems, and I wasn't even concerned about overheating the brakes because I wasn't using them very much. In town, we stopped at a supermarket to buy lunch, and then proceeded down into the valley where I found the bike path as described to me by the late Jobst Brandt way back in 2003: follow the signs to the Bahnof, look for the river rafting put-in, ride past the put in and look for the bridge across the river with the bike path marked for Landeck.

Now that we were in the valley, the afternoon heated up rapidly. We were getting hungry, but kept not finding picnic spots, and eventually just gave up and parked the bike on a bench outside somebody's house where it was shaded and ate bread and meat. A woman bicycle tourist rode by and gave Bowen some cherries! It would turn out that they were part of a group going over the Reschen pass (which we planned to do) over to Lake Garda and Verona (which was also potentially part of our plan). We'd see them on and off that day, but not see them again after that day.

In Landeck, we saw a swimming pool, which looked really good given the hot weather. We found a hotel nearby on booking.com, and rode over to pick up guest passes and drop off some of our panniers and rode back to it. The swimming pool had very cold water, and neither of us lasted 15 minutes in the pool, but it was still a refreshing swim. On the way back to the hotel after the swim we got hot again and bought some ice cream before checking into our hotel for our regular routine of shower and laundry.

For dinner we walked over to the best reviewed pizza place in town, which turned out to be right next to the Sport Camp Tirol. We really should have stayed there instead, since it appeared to be quite nice though not quite on our way up to the Reschen pass. I went to bed hoping that after all that sun exposure my jet-lag would get better.

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