July 2nd: Zurich

We woke up before the alarm rang, and packed up and got the kids ready. It was just as well that we were early, as I had a snafu getting the triplet out of the garage --- the exit was locked and it took several tries to find the staff that could open the gate!

At the platform, I took apart the bike and put it back together as a triplet. But I shouldn't have bothered. When the train arrived, I discovered that the bike compartment was so narrow (unlike the German long distance trains, where the bike car would easily accommodate a full size tandem) that there was no way to get the tandem onto the bike rack.

When the conductor arrived, he told me to take apart the tandem or the Swiss would have a fit, so I accommodated him by taking everything apart. In fact, the boarding of the train was very stressful, as I barely had time to get everything on board, kids and all, before the train departed with a station agent bugging us but not helping!

Once everything was nicely stowed away, the train ride itself was 5 hours long, which caused the kids to get more antsy than any long bike ride they'd been on the entire trip. It was scenic, and granted views of the Inn river valley, and I tried to get Bowen to be interested in parts of the bike path that he'd not ridden before, but all scenery through a train window is just more TV, so he was too bored to bother.

Despite my having visited Zurich many times before, I'd never actually visited or stayed in old town before. Upon arrival, with Xiaoqin's help, I put together tha tandem and we rode to the old town hotel we were to stay in, and after we were given our rooms and moved in, we proceeded to walk along the river after lunch to visit the Sprungli cafe, which gave Boen free macaroons because he would stare at the station and keep pointing at the macaroons!

After that we were pretty stuffed, and only came out to dinner at 8:00pm for a light pizza in old town.

July 1st: Various Salzburg Attractions

I woke up early so I could scout out the platform where our train would arrive early the next day. To my relief, it was relatively accessible, with a stairwell and an elevator which would take the ebike but not the triplet. I paid extra attention to the diagram telling you where the bike car was, but didn't stick around to see the train arrive, which was a mistake, as it would give me a clue as to what I was in for the next day. Perhaps that was just as well, as I might have spent the day stressing about it.

Bowen had asked a couple of nights before if we could see the fortress. Rather than walk around town and listen to the kids moan and groan about the "huge" amount of walking they had to do, we extracted the bikes from the parking garage, and rode to the foot of the funicular! There, rather than buying tickets for the fortress and funicular, we bought Salzburg cards, which would grant us access to practically all the museums and attractions, while also giving us transit. It might or might not have been a better deal than paying separate tickets for all the attractions we would visit that day, but on the other hand, it also gave us the potential for skipping the lines.

The fortress was quite impressive, granting us great views of the city, as well as a brief history of the area, including who Leopold (where various towns, hotels, etc were named after) was. Both Bowen and Boen were given audio tour handsets, and Bowen seemed to actually enjoy listening to the introductions and pressing the buttons. It turned out that he was given a special kids version of the tour, which I was impressed by and must have been very well done, because he didn't get impatient, bored or skip a single number on the tour!

From there, we rode downtown to Mozart's birthplace museums, where the tickets let us into the museum and we got a nice small museum that didn't have an audio guide. Here Bowen and Boen were bored, since the exhibits required more reading skills, and they weren't terribly interested in Mozart. But it was interesting to me to see the various artifacts of Mozart's life, as well as the display of early pianofortes, which are much less impressive and bulky instruments than what you see today even in family rooms.

Lunch was followed by a visit to the hand-made candy store, where the staff happily gave samples of various candies to the kids and adults, and of course we ended up buying some of that very expensive candy based on the results of the sample. Then we got to ride across the bridge to the Mozart's house museum, which was actually a museum not about Mozart, but about his father, who was probably the original prototype for a tiger parent. The exhibits were interesting, and more importantly, the place was air conditioned and had listening stations where you could actually listen to Mozart senior's music, which occupied the kids enough for the parents to actually tour the museum proper.

It was so hot that kids were running around the street in swim wear. We walked over to an ice cream shop and had some ice cream but felt rain drops as we walked back to the bikes. We hurried rode back to the hotel, and got into the rooms just as a thunderstorm blew through!

That cooled down the city, but not as much as you might think. We ended up having dinner near the hotel, packing everything up and setting multiple alarms so we wouldn't miss the train the next morning.

June 30th: Berchtesgaden Salt Mine

We woke up, made breakfast, loaded up the bikes, and rode over to Arte Hotel Salzburg, which was prohibitively expensive on Friday and Saturday, but was relatively cheap for Sunday and Monday night. I'd picked the hotel not just because of air conditioning, but also because of its proximity to the train station, and I was delighted to discover that it was basically 100m from the train station entrance. I'd never been to Salzburg since the renovation of the train station had been completed, and was very impressed by how nice it was. Not only that, it had the only supermarket that was open on a Sunday, so we could still pick up milk for Boen, who would still wake up in the middle of the night to demand milk.

It was way too early for our hotel to check us in, but they happily held our bags, and had us park in the underground garage where there was a special bike room. "You don't want to keep your bikes on the street!" admonished the hotel clerk. Earlier in the morning, I had done a Tripadvisor search, and discovered that there were excursions for the Berchtesgaden salt mines, where you got to slide down to the mines using the old chutes, visit an underground lake, and actually tour a working mine. The excursion prices included both the entry and a bus from the Salzburg train station to the salt mine, but the prices were such that it was cheaper for the 4 of us to catch an Uber, pay normal entrance fees, and then take an Uber back!

Well, it being a Sunday, there were only 2 drivers, and both of them declined to give us a ride way out into Germany, but no matter, we walked 100m to the train station, where the taxi driver happily let us into his taxi, promptly turned off the meter, and charged us 60 EUR and told us to text him for a pickup on the way back.

The salt mines, being underground would be cool despite the heat outside, which was the main reason I did this. But both kids really enjoyed the tram ride into the salt mines, the slide down, and the presentation was very good, reinforcing what Bowen had picked up at the Deutsches Museum mining exhibit. It happened to be reading Salt, and the exhibit brought to life how much the area was developed because of its proximity and access to Salt.

The driver happily picked us up and delivered us back to the hotel, where unfortunately our rooms were not ready. Boen threw a temper tantram but the staff gave him some chocolate to soothe him, which worked. After we moved into our rooms we enjoyed the view from the 10th floor of the building. The family room at the Arte Hotel occupied an entire end of the building, so you got a 180 degree panorama of the city. Rather than being a building with windows, the entire wall was glass, with button-operated exterior shutters in case you wanted to sleep in. I was very impressed.

It was very hot, but Xiaoqin found myIndigo, which had lots of indoor seat and was very cool despite the exterior heat. The food wasn't up to par, but they had sushi, which kept both kids satisfied, despite German/Austrian sushi being absolutely horrible compared to their Bay Area counterparts.

June 29th: Mondsee Strandbad

When I first visited the Salzburg lakes in 2008, Mondsee made a deep impression on me as being the prettiest, as well as having the best riding. It's a 40 mile round trip from Salzburg, but it's all uphill in one direction and all downhill going home. I proposed the ride to Bowen and he said: "Let's take the bus instead."

It turned out that Uber had recently introduced service to Salzburg, so using Xiaoqin's phone we snagged an Uber and got to Mondsee superfast using the freeway, which was a good thing, because by the time we arrived there was already a line to get into the Mondsee strandbad, which had multiple slides, a ton of water toys, an in-house restaurant/cafe, a swimming area, and even diving stations. Unlike an American park of equivalent size, there were very few lifeguards, and most of the slides and water toys were self-regulated or automated, with lights telling you when it was safe to use it, with many locals blatantly ignoring the rules with no repercussions. It's amazing how cheaply you can run things when the country isn't full of liability lawyers.

It was warm, but since the elevation was higher, it never got really hot until around 3:00pm, at which point the boys were pretty much played out. Boen discovered that one of the lower slides was so much fun that he repeatedly did it over and over, and Bowen made a bet with me about jumping off the highest diving board. It looked scary but of course, once you get to the top with 8 year-old girls jumping off it in front of you there's no way you weren't going to jump!

We got out of the park at just the right time to catch a bus back to Salzburg downtown, where we ate dinner at the Italian "Wasserfall" restaurant before heading back to our apartment to deal with the heat, which the fans barely made bearable. I was glad I had the foresight to book a hotel with AC for the last 2 days in Salzburg, as it was forecast to get even hotter. Forecasters were comparing the heat-wave to that of 2003, where thousands of elderly died from the heat. Despite that, the AC is still not prevalent in Europe, which is always a surprise to me.

June 28th: Prien Am Chiemsee to Salzburg

Despite the fact that catching the ferry could save us an hour and a half of riding, nobody seemed very excited about trying to catch it, so of course we missed it by about 8 minutes. Unfortunately, in the rush to try to catch it, I left the electric toothbrushes back at the hotel.

The day was significantly cooler than the prior, and since we were just going to ride all the way to Salzburg that day, we opted simply to use Google Maps. I stuck my bluetooth headset in my ear and used Google Maps on the phone to give me verbal directions while cycling. This turned out to be a mistake, because right after we crossed over the autobahn into Bernau am Chiemsee, Google Maps routed us onto a private road, which we'd only gotten in because there were a couple of people leaving the fenced off areas and they let us in for whatever reason without telling us that it was private!

Thus it was that we rode for a good 20 minutes before private security caught up with us and gave us a questioning! We told them that we were following Google maps, at which point they nodded as though this happened all the time, and gave us directions off the plantation, but didn't bother following us, which was weird because at the exit gate, we were given a hard time as well trying to exit!

In Traunstein, we had lunch at a local asian restaurant. It was passable food, made palatable only because they had exotic drinks like Lychee. What was notable was that after lunch, Google Maps tried to route us onto a walking path that took us over bars that was impossible to traverse with the triplet! We turned around and rode back to find an alternate, which cost us time. With temperatures similar to the previous day, we would have been cooked, but fortunately the day remained relatively cool, and the climbing was somewhat moderate. Demonstrating how far we'd come since the start of the tour, we could take turns standing up on the bike without feeling like the bike was going to topple over and kill us. We'd arrived as a team, even if the two brothers on the back of the bike were still acting as though they were a teenage suicide cult.

In Lauter, Boen fell asleep, and we pulled into the driveway of a house to rest under shade. He slept for about 15 minutes and then was ok to go, but while he was napping the owner of the house came out and filled up our water bottles! The road then went down to Teisendorf where we stopped for some ice cream, and then gave us a  bunch of rolling descents to the Austrian border, very similar to our descent into Fussen oh so many days ago. It was a delight, fun, and very fast.

The Austrian border, when we crossed over it over a tiny pedestrian and bike bridge was anti-climatic. There was no sign that we'd crossed a border other than that the prevailing brand of beer had changed.

Riding into Salzburg on bike paths was very nice, but we had one more snag: Boen once again fell asleep 1km from the hotel. Well, it was a nerve-wracking 1km, but I kept riding figuring that he was clipped in and still holding on to the handlebars. When we arrived, I stopped the bike and saw what he was doing: he had his eyes closed and was nodding off, but every time his helmet hit the handlebars he would "microwake" and lift his head up again, all the while holding on to the bars, and staying clipped in!

I didn't know it then, but that was the end of our tour. We parked the bikes outside the apartment, where there wasn't a place to lock the triplet to anything except itself. Then got in and settled into a very well equipped apartment that had fans to keep everything cool. The supermarket was right across the street, so we bought a frozen pizza and cooked it and ate.

After dinner we went for a walk, visiting Mozart's birth-house (which was also a museum), and exploring the old town which had several bridges across the Salzach. Ice cream was bought, and I finally got to see the city up close which I had never done, given that I'd only ever passed through Salzburg in a hurry and never stayed there.

June 27th: Schliersee to Prien Am Chiemsee

Breakfast at the hotel was served at 7:00am, which meant we could get an early start. Our route today would mostly follow the Bodensee-Konigsee bike route to Fischbachau. We departed at 8:48am, rolling along the Schliersee before leaving the lake and heading inland. There was a bunch of traffic and Xiaoqin got impatient with Komoot/Garmin routing and decided to switch us to Google routing near Bad Feinbach. My theory was that the the route gave us a busy road for climbing so that the descent would be on a fast paved road where traffic wouldn't be an issue at speed. But I wasn't going to argue over the finer points of descent optimization with someone riding an e-bike who probably didn't care that the hard won climb should be paid back with nice descents!

Indeed, the quieter google-provided route gave us a gentle swooping climb and then a steep descent via a dirt road down into Bad Feilnbach. The descent was so steep that I stopped on two occasions to pour water over the rims in an attempt to cool the wheels. When we got to Bad Feilnbach, we got onto the proper Bodensee-Konigsee bike route, and there we finally saw the hordes of cycle tourists that this route should be attracting.

The heat up till this point had been bearable because we'd mostly been going downhill or in the shade. But once in the exposed country side the warmth built up. A group of cycle tourists passed us, heaping "Bravos" and "Super" on our giant ass bike. I noted that they all had e-bikes, and there were a couple of leaders in the group who seemed to know the route well, so it might well have been an organized or commercial tour.

In Atlenbeuern, we stopped at a supermarket, bought food, and then visited a cafe to eat out of the sun. After that, we continued climbing  up to Pinswang, which surprisingly had a little bit of shade and even a bit of wind to cool us off, making what could have been a miserable day quite a bit less painful.

Nevertheless, Bowen was feeling really hot. "Dad, we should just stop at the next hotel. You can use mommy's e-bike to get to the train station to buy train tickets." I contemplated the idea, and then replied: "Ok, if we stayed somewhere here, though, you won't have a swimming pool, and you'll not have many places to eat. If we get to Prien Am Chiemsee, we'll get a place near the lake so it'll be cooler, and you can swim." I was saying this entirely on faith --- my earlier check of booking.com that morning had shown no lodging available, but my experience is that if you just show up the tourist information center can frequently find you places that aren't listed on booking.com. In any case, that response quieted him up for a bit, so we could finish the climb and begin the descent in earnest.

Soon enough, we were in Prien Am Chiemsee, and I found the tourist information center right on the main road! We stopped, I walked in, and while Xiaoqin took the kids to the bathrooms, I asked about lodging for a family of 4. The woman behind the counter clicked buttons on her computer and said, "I can put you on a farm a little further away..." "How about right next to the lake?" "That'll be very expensive!" "How expensive?" "180 Euros?" "Oh, no problem." "Are you sure?" Because we had shown up on a bicycle, she assumed that we were on a tight budget, but of course, I'd had to pay more than what she was asking recently, and the heat was such that a good location was well worth the money.

The place she found for us was right by the water, and when we arrived, it looked a little old and musty, but the rooms were actually quite good, with separate bedrooms, though of course there was no AC. I moved the bags while Xiaoqin took the kids across the street for some lunch. By the time I was done moving stuff, I was so cooked that I didn't even feel like lunch: I settled for a Banana Split ice cream and called it good.

I borrowed Xiaoqin's e-bike and rode it to the train station, where both ticket agents were free. I laid out my desired itinerary, and they pointed out that the bike reservation for July 3rd was taken, so I had to find some other route. All other itineraries on that day would deliver us into Zurich much too late, so I opted for the July 2nd. We explored all alternatives, but could only take the one that left at 7:56am from Salzburg and deliver us (with no change of trains) to Zurich main station at 1:20pm. The cost was 220 Euros, so I made the executive decision, bought the train tickets, and left.

I returned to the hotel, changed both kids into swimming suits, and then walked them to the local swimming pool/swimming beach, which integrated both indoors and outdoors sections. We paid for 2 hours and went in. This pool featured a high water-slide that was completely dark except for some lights on the tube, feeling almost like a sensory deprivation chamber. Bowen would later tell me that it was his favorite slide of the trip. Of course, Boen refused to do the slide and opted to play in the baby pool, so I had to watch him while encouraging Bowen to enjoy the German water slides while he could. After we got home we'd try a local water slide park but it was so much worse an experience than the European equivalent that I can't imagine why anyone would prefer the American version.

By the time we were done, Xiaoqin was done with her nap and met us at the exit of the swimming pool. We went out for an early dinner, but after dinner while playing at the playground next to the lake I noticed that there was an e-boat rental place that was renting boats by the hour! I asked the kids if they wanted to try it and they did.

Both Bowen and Boen got to try steering the boat and enjoy the feeling of being in control. They had a great time though obviously the boat never got very far anywhere. Bowen even docked the boat all by himself with very little help from me.

I noted that the ferries running the lake could go all the way to Chieming, but the only ferry that would do that leaves at 9:00am. It wasn't clear if they would take the triplet, but if we wanted to try we had to try to make that ferry.

That night, I looked at the forecast and noted that the next couple of days would have decent weather for riding, with nothing into the 90s, but the days after that looked horrid, with 100 degree days in Salzburg. I booked June 30th->July 2nd at the Arte Hotel in Salzburg which boated air conditioning, a rarity in Europe. Then I thought about what the best itinerary looked like. I noted that if we were willing to ride a little longer, we could make Salzburg tomorrow. My original plan was to ride into Mattsee and Seeham, meander over to Mondsee, and then make it into Salzburg, but that plan had significant climbing in it, and I reasoned (irrationally, it turns out) that we could just ride into Salzburg and do day rides into Mondsee and/or Mattsee as needed without a load, and that would be more palatable than trying to do big climbs with panniers. That was an irrational thought, because given a choice, the kids will once again (as our spring break tour proved) choose to take the bus or public transit or even taxi, rather than ride! Nevertheless, with that in mind, I booked 2 more nights in Salzburg at a separate apartment without AC, since those 2 nights weren't going to be murderously hot. I'd nailed down the final days of the tour and locked in the rest of the trip, for better or for worse.

June 26th: Tergensee to Schliersee

 This time, we managed to leave a little earlier: 9:33. Eschewing the bike route, we took the main road all the way back to Gmund where we gave the kids 10 minutes at the zipline before following the bike route to Hausham.

Despite the earlier start, it was quite warm by the time we left on the bike route and the route immediately began climbing steeply. I confirmed with various cyclists going the other way that we were on the route to Schliersee, and they all said "OK, kein problem."

The road was shaded, and I was very pleased with it --- until it degenerated into dirt fire roads, and then became very steep. On no less than 2 occasions did I have to stop, ask Bowen and Boen to get off, push the bike to the summit, park the bike, turn around, go back and pick up Boen, take him to the summit, and then go back down for Bowen. I noticed that all the cyclists I saw on the route had e-bikes, and there were warning signs about how steep it was to become.

This would have been fun if the descent was good, but the descent was also a dirt road! While it was well within my ability to handle at this point (I'd done much tougher descending on the way to Garmisch), it was frustrating not to get back any of the energy I'd put into the climb!

Our arrival into the Schliersee Seehotel hotel, however, was great. Not only was there easy parking for Xiaoqin's e-bike without needing to separate the battery and haul it up the stairs (we could charge in place), our check-in was immediate, and the swimming pool looked awesome.

After lunch, I showered the kids, took them to the swimming pool, and had them swim until they complained about the cold! Then I took them back upstairs, and then headed over to the Schliersee train station. At this point, we were committed to going to Salzburg, so I needed to book train tickets on a train that would take bikes. Long distance bike reservations can fill up, and you need an international bike ticket as well to go from Germany/Austria into Switzerland, so I needed a Deutsche Bahn ticket office with real people.

Alas, Schliersee's train station was too small to have a real ticket office, but the tourist information center told me that there was one at Prien Am Chiemsee, our likely next destination. I fired off an e-mail to Alan Wissenberg in case he could help. And then headed back to the hotel for another round of swimming with the kids, this time, dipping in the lake proper. I also ordered the hotel's half pension for both Xiaoqin and I, figuring that the huge discount for the fixed menu would be sufficient for both kids to feed off our plates.

The dinner was utterly fantastic, though it was hot, with the setting sun shining directly on our backs. After dinner, nobody felt like doing more swimming and it was a french-style dinner, finishing at 9:00pm, so we went back to our room and slept.

June 25th: Bad Tolz to Tergensee

The forecast for the next few days were for heat, heat, and more heat. On a bike tour, my traditional solution was to climb up into the mountains and stay as high as possible, only descending into the valleys in the mornings to climb back out again. On the triplet, that was not a a feasible solution. I considered briefly riding from Bad Tolz to Tergensee, then over to Achensee to Innsbruck for access to the Alto Aldige Valley. But one look at the forecast told me that Innsbruck was going to be even warmer than the Munich/Tergensee area! Once the temperatures climb past the point where you can sleep, your bike tour is going to be in sorry shape. So the best bet was to continue towards Salzburg. Besides, Xiaoqin was giving me a hard time about not making it to Salzburg!

Despite my exhortation for leaving early, we ended up departing the hotel at 10:00am. Compounding the heat was that it was a climb up to Waakirchen on a busy road, thanks to Google routing. Sweat came off me in heavy drops, soaking my headband. I just wanted out, and that's why you saw no pictures from this period. The ride was miserable, and our relief came only when we dropped into Gmund and got our views of the Tergensee.

Right in Gmund by the lake we finally saw a playground with twin ziplines! This enabled Bowen and Boen to have a zipline race:

When we'd had our fill of ziplines, we kept riding in the heat towards Tergensee, stopping only for ice cream.

The apartment we'd chosen to stay at turned out to be closer to Rottach-Egern than to Tergensee. But it was close to a supermarket, so once we checked in I could run out and buy lunch so we could stay in our cool apartment. We then took a short (free) ferry ride, before having dinner, and even got in a short dip in the lake proper.

I looked online and decided that rather than stay put, we could ride to Schliersee the next day so we could make (minimal) progress towards making it to Salzburg. Booking.com showed several promising places, but the place that was cheap was far away from the water, and the place that was on the water was stupid expensive.

I deployed a trick that worked for my Spain trip: I went directly to the hotel web-site, and reserved a room. Booking.com would try to make me book 2 rooms for the hotel on the lake, but the hotel's website itself considered Boen a "free entity" since he was still 4. So we could book just one big family room, and only pay a minimal (30 Euro) extra charge for Bowen. This made the nice looking lake side hotel (with swimming pool and private beach) much more affordable. I went to bed satisfied that I had a plan for what was likely to be the hottest day of the week. And since we didn't have breakfast as part of the hotel/apartment we rented, we could eat early and leave early.

June 24th: Munich

The year before, we started the tour in Munich, but Bowen was fixated on castles that year. Once he discovered Minecraft he decided he likes mines, and I told him that the Deutsches museum had a full scale replica of a mine. He got very excited and told me I should have told him about it the year before, but of course how was I to know that he'd like mines!

I opted not to ride into Munich this year. Part of it is that city riding is unpleasant, even more so on the triplet, but mostly because in all my European touring, the only place where I ever get flat tires is in big German cities on their bike paths. Germans love their beer, and refuse to drink from cans, preferring glass bottles. Large numbers of Germans must gather in the night on bike paths to drink beer, and then when they're done with those beer bottles, will smash them right on the asphalt bike path, especially under bridges. On my commute in Munich, I'd frequently discover a flat, and after fixing it would look up and around me to see all around my tens of cyclists also fixing flat tires. It got so prevalent that on the Munich bike path, I would get off my bike before any bridge underpass, lift my bike on my shoulders, and run through the underpass before getting back on my bike again. There was no chance of my being able to do that on the triplet, so the 32 Euro Bayern ticket seemed like a bargain. Not only does the ticket grant  you full access to all regional trains for the day (for up to 5 adults, and a practically unlimited number of children), it also granted you full access to the Munich municipal transit system, which itself is a 20 Euro value!

The problem with Bad Tolz, however, was that the train station was far enough away that we needed a taxi ride to the train station. Once on board the train, we discovered that it had a special compartment meant for families with children. Once in town, we headed straight for the Deutches museum, where Bowen had fun being in the simulated mine, which was so big that he even felt as though it would never end!

When done, we headed over to Viktualien market for lunch, buying gooseberries and the various fish snacks from various stations. Then we visited Marienplatz and the Schuster, the outdoor store where we replaced Boen's Camelbak bladder, as well as getting Bowen a new pair of sunglasses to replace the one he'd just lost the day before. Both kids asked for new helmets, but their reasons weren't legitimate, so we put them off. Xiaoqin noticed that the prices for kids cycling clothes at the Schuster were even cheaper than what I'd found in Barcelona!

We then visited the Englischer Garten by transit, getting a much needed afternoon break. Bowen started complaining agian about being tired, but of course, perked up again once he saw the playground at the Chinese tower Biergarten.

Dinner was at the Haxnbauer for pork knuckles which were huge (the full size portion is just 3 euros more than the half portion, which was enough for Bowen and I!). After that, we took the transit back to the main train station and got onto the train back to Bad Tolz.

I  contemplated visiting Alan Wissenberg at Euraide, but we were pressed for time. It was just as well, as it would turn out that he was on a trip to Sweden. Back at the Bad Tolz train station, we visited the supermarket for some milk and drinks, as it had warmed up a lot, and then took the taxi back to the hotel. It was a very full day, and I told everyone that the next day was due to be even warmer, so we should sleep early and get up early so we could leave early. The kids ignored me, of course, knowing that I was the one who'd be paying the price the next day.