June 26th: Cortina d'Ampezzo to Brunico

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 25th: Arraba to Cortina d'Ampezzo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Great Philosophical Debates - Free Will and Determinism

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

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

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

June 24th: Taxi Transfer Day - Hiking SassoLungo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Paradise Falls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 23: Lago di Fie and the South Tyrol Archaeology Museum

 We packed up everything and dropped the keys to the apartment off and then walked down to Hotel Regina, where of course we were too early to checkin but they allowed us to leave our luggage there. I'd considered just cancelling the reservation and extending our stay at the apartment, but the reason I'd picked Hotel Regina was that it was right across the street from the train station, making loading passengers and luggage into Lukas' car the next day easy. I thought we should visit the Otzi museum first, but we were so early that Xiaoqin suggested that we go swimming at Lago di Fie first. I'd already packed all the swimming gear and a towel into the backpack, so we were ready to go.

The bus ride was pleasant --- the bus takes a route that's not insanely steep compared to what a cyclist would use, but the traffic on that road would make cycling unpleasant! Once off the bus, we were greeted by amazing scenery, the equal to what we'd see anywhere else. The hike itself was short, and with our new working shoes it was not a burden at all!

Upon arrival at the lake, we discovered that it was very organized: there were 2 restaurants, changing rooms, and even lockers! We grabbed a table and ordered some snacks, and then I went in for a swim, and after playing a bit in the water, the kids did as well. It was a pretty perfect swimming temperature, much warmer than most alpine lakes in the Sierra, but cooler than a heated pool so you could swim as hard as you liked.

There was some grass and seeweed growing in the middle of the lake, so you had to take care for it, but I took my time exploring the various structures, swim ladders, and diving boards built around the lake, and then returned. Bowen had managed to swim to one of the other structures ,but didn't know how to navigate the grass, so I jumped back into the water, swam to a clear spot, and had him join me before leading him to a route back.

After that, it was time to have lunch, which was very good food, with huge portions suitable for cyclists and hikers. hike back. It turned out that there was a way back that didn't involve backtracking and let us visit another lake, so we took it.

The second lake wasn't nearly as inviting, with green water that didn't make you want to swim in it, but the hike back showed us more scenery, and we didn't have to wait too long for the bus to take us back to the train station where the day had become much warmer. We checked into the air conditioned hotel, took a quick rest, and then headed back out to the Otzi museum, though in the afternoon heat we made sure we stopped for ice cream first. I had ordered a replacement GoPro mount from Amazon, and it showed up, so now Xiaoqin could use her GoPro again!

I expected the kids to enjoy the museum, but I didn't expect them to like it so much. We spent almost 2 entire hours in there, and the kids so enjoyed the material that Xiaoqin would be showing them videos of Otzi the iceman and various documentaries going forward. We had more ice cream when the museum closed, and then went to the same place for dinner, since the kids liked it so much yesterday. We bought some food for the hike, and then went to bed. The next day was a taxi transfer day, but we'd also scheduled a hike as well!

June 22nd: Vetzan to Bolzano

 We had a nice early breakfast, and now that we knew where the exit from the bike path was, had no problem finding the bike path and rolling down it. We probably spent too much time at a playground that didn't have a zipline, but the kids had been playground deprived for a couple of days and wanted to play more, and I knew that while rain was coming, it wasn't going to be a cold rain and so was unconcerned.

The piece of the bike path before going into Merano is easy and fun, flat, mostly downhill, and winds through interesting towns with plenty of fruit stands. But once in Merano, the bike path signs peter out and you're on your own trying to guess how to get back to the bike path towards Bolzano. Unfortunately, it started raining in Merano, and the rain started getting heavier as we left Bolzano.

With warm rain, the kids didn't want to put on their rain jackets. I did put on mine so I could try out the Goretex rain jacket I'd bought, and it performed beautifully.

In Bolzano, I made a mistake, trying to use Google or Garmin navigation instead of just following the bike path to old town. Xiaoqin got frustrated and suggested I took the ebike to scout instead. Well, when I arrived downtown what did I find but that the apartment checkin was in the same identical place Bowen and I checked in at Bolzano 2 years ago! Right down to the bike parking which was outdoors at the Parkhotel Mondschein! I didn't like the parking since it was raining, so after receiving the keys I dropped by the train station and spoke to Lukas, who was happy to store our bikes at his office, which was the left luggage service at the Bolzano train station.

I returned to the wife and kids, ate lunch with them, and then led them to the train station where I took apart the triplet and gave that and the ebike to him and then we walked to the apartment with the panniers turned into shoulder bags.

Once into the apartment we all took showers, got cleaned up, and took advantage of the washing machine to do laundry. While Xiaoqin took a nap, I grabbed the kids and took them to the Sportler shop where we shopped for shoes and new socks for Bowen, shoes for Boen, and shoes for me. My criteria was simple: the kids had to have shoes that didn't have laces, and I had to have shoes that didn't have laces and were as light as possible. Boen had no problem finding a pair of running shoes that had velcro. They didn't have the same model sized for Bowen, so he ended up with hiking shoes with drawstring pull straps. I scored a major find, a pair of Salomon SLAB Sense 8 trail runners that were the lightest shoes I'd ever tried, and were 40% off at 111 EUR! Xiaoqin thought they were garish and horrible looking but the price and the weight won me over and I really loved them. We spent just over 250EUR on shoes and socks, and I debated buying new hiking pants for Bowen but he said he was happy wearing swimming shorts instead.

Bowen was sneezing so I bought some zyrtec at the local pharmacy, figuring it was easier than eyedrops (and their eyes weren't itchy anyway), and was way better than the placebo pills I'd been sold earlier. I had cracked my screen protector earlier on in the trip (on the ride to Fluela pass), and asked various cell phone shops if they had a replacement screen protector for me. The disadvantage of owning a Pixel 6 was that nobody in Italy had ever seen one before, so no help could be found.

We had a kitchen but the kids wanted Sushi so we ended up at Iki Experience, a Japanese restaurant run by Chinese people and it actually served pretty good food. By the time we got back to the apartment the washing machine had actually finished doing the load (it took no less than 3 hours) and we could hang it up. Tomorrow was a zero day, so we anticipated getting some rest.

But before going to bed, however, we discovered that one of the lights in the apartment wouldn't turn off. Luckily, I always pack some electrical tape, so I got the kids to give me a bunch of books (the light was an upward facing shelf-light!), climbed up, and electrical taped the books and any light leakage to the point where we could sleep. The cleaning staff would discover this the next day, and the apartment managers would immediately cancel our reservation, giving us 40EUR back. You might ask why they would do this --- the reason is that if they cancelled our reservation we wouldn't get to leave a bad review, and giving the customer 40 euros back was a fair price for avoiding a potentially poor review. So now you know why all the apartments in Bolzano handled by this management company had nothing but positive reviews!

Review: Garmin quarter turn watch mount

 I've been using the old style Garmin rubber mount for many years. It works, but is always sloppy and finicky. I recently discovered that Garmin now made quarter turn mounts for the Fenix 6. These new style mounts make use of the quick release bands on the watches, which you unlatch and then the bars those bands mount onto turn into latches for the plastic mount that comes with the kit. You then quarter-turn that onto any Garmin mount, which remains the most effective mount I've ever seen for bike accessories.

The old rubber mount weighs 54g, and the new plastic mount weighs 9g. 2 industrial rubber bands weigh 1g, and the quarter turn bike mount and the rubber washer weigh about 2g, so it's about a 40g weight savings for about $30. There's also an Asian knock-off of the same kit for about half the price, but unlike the Garmin version you have to know which of the 3 mounts that comes with the Garmin kit which is a hassle.

You might think that you can just buy one of the Chinese knock-offs on Amazon if you know exactly what your watch size is. But I actually tried one of them, and believe it or not there's a quality difference. The Chinese knock-off wouldn't let you pull your watch out without using a pair of pliers, so this is truly the only version you should get.

This is clearly a superior way to turn your watch into a bike computer. Recommended.

June 21: Hotel Alpenrose to Sporthotel Vetzan

In the cool morning air we did the descent stopping less frequently than usual, but once we got into Santa Maria we took off our jackets and arm and leg warmers and put on sunscreen. From Santa Maria to the Italian border, we could ride on the paved road but at the Italian border the bike path started. When Arturo, Pengtoh, and I rode that bike path in 2016 it was unpaved, but since that was 6 years ago, I hoped that the bike path had since been paved.

Of course I was wrong! The bike path was in the same condition, with large unpaved sections and not much fun descending --- we would have been better off on the road. Near the intersection at Laatchs, we even had the indignity of being watered on by the irrigation devices that were misaimed at the bike path instead of at the agricultural assets they were supposed to be aimed at.

In Glorenza, we saw a sight that wouldn't be seen in the USA --- a school led bike tour, where a few teachers would coral an entire class worth of kids down the bike path. In a country where you can take the train up the valley and then bike down the path this was an entirely reasonable field trip idea.

I'd picked Vetzan because there was a Sporthotel there with a swimming pool in case it got hot. It started to rain as we approached Vetzan, and Garmin gave us wrong directions as did Google, but we eventually found the place anyway.

The hotel was in the center of Vetzan, but it turned out that while they served dinner, there was nothing in town as far as food for lunch was concerned. After we got settled in, the hotel told us that we could take the bus to Schlanders for lunch and to use the outdoor swimming pool with a waterslide. But one look at the schedule convinced the hotel manager that that was an absurd idea, and he offered to drive us instead. We accepted, and then had lunch downtown before walking over to the "Lido Schwimmbad". But as we got there thunder and lightning ran out and they closed the pool, so we had nothing to do but to walk back to the bus stop and take the bus (with the free bus passes the hotel gave us).

Prior to the trip, I'd told the kids that if they didn't pedal hard on the Stelvio, they'd be forced to take the SAD bus. They got very excited when they actually god a chance to get onto the SAD bus. Boen even made a sad face so that he would be appropriately expressive for the bus ride.

We got back to the hotel as the rain stopped, and used the hotel's indoor pool instead. I was pretty disappointed in the Vetzan sporthotel. It wasn't in a convenient place, and while the facilities were fine, I would have rather had been in Schlanders instead if I'd known the location was this bad.

We debated riding all the way to Bolzano tomorrow and having a zero day there, vs breaking up the ride and stopping in Merano, which had a train museum and easy access to the train. Everyone seemed to enjoy the idea of a zero day. I wrote our hotel but they had no place for us to stay, so I had to book a different apartment in downtown Bolzano. I also wrote Lukas, and he said that rather than spend the entire zero day in Bolzano, we should take the bus to Lago di Fie and go swimming there, since it was going to be hot. He pointed me at a weather forecast app that was more accurate for the area and told me not to trust Google's weather results for the South Tyrol area. I'd gone to the Otzi museum with Arturo a few years back, and I'd been impressed, so I thought that would also be a good thing to do in Bolzano. We were also committed to buying hiking shoes in Bolzano as well, so having an extra day to do all that would be a good idea.

That evening a big thunderstorm blew through, but fortunately our stuff was already indoors and would dry overnight. Unlike the Sporthotel in Pontresina, this one wouldn't do your laundry while you slept, so I still ended up being the manual washing machine.

Review: Moosetreks Feedbag

 In past years, I've used CamelBak backpacks for Bowen and Boen to drink from the bike while riding. Most of the time, however, enough on hard rides, they don't even want to wear the camelbak, resorting to stopping the bike to drink. I learned however, that the rise of bikepacking has introduced the idea of a feedbag, and the cheapest model easily available was the Moosetreks feedbag. The last straw was when a water bottle was ejected from the triplet. I went all in and bought 2, one for each of my sons.

The bag mounts on the stem and is large enough for a full sized water bottle. It's insulated too, so water stays cold. Side pockets mean it can be used to store clif bars or gatorade chews. Bowen used it on a 7.5 hour ride, and said it's much better since I could now use Nuun tablets in his water bottle, something I'd avoided before since Camelbaks are notoriously hard to clean!

All through this year's tour, both kids used the feedbag for water bottles, snacks, and for a change, they disposed of wrappers into the feedbag rather than into my back pocket, for which I'm grateful. Both bags survived the tour, through rain, etc, with no issues.

I'm thinking that for any new bikes or my mountain bike, the feedbag is a far better alternative to the usual water bottle cage or handlebar bag. You don't see too many new ideas in cycling, but this is a good one. Recommended.