June 24th: Motirolo

 The reason to stay at Bormio 3 nights was so that we could do the much feared Motirolo with unloaded bikes. To my dismay in the morning as we went to prep the bikes I discovered that my Sofirn headlight had water intrusion and failed! What was strange was that it hadn't rained on us since the Albula pass, so my guess was that the water intrusion had happened earlier but just took time to corrode enough electronics to kill the light. It had rained the day before, but the roads looked beautiful and sunny today, and the Garmin route I had laid out brought us onto what looked like freshly paved bike paths. 

Soon, we ended up pacelining with a bunch of South Americans (Argentinians maybe?) who were intending to do the Motirolo Gavia loop. With the fast pace Arturo was dropped, and to add insult to injury his Bryton radar had fallen off his bike and he couldn't find it!

We separated from the Argentinians and proceeded to the town of Mazzo di Valtellina where the official pass started. (There's also an option to start at Grosio, but all my research indicated that you wanted Mazzo for the full experience) We found a rest stop with a water fountain and proceeded to snack and refill while waiting for Arturo to catch up.

 Once the pass started it went up steeply. I saw 10-14% grades and several times I saw 15% grades, but nothing worse than that. Nevertheless, because the pass starts low it was quite hot, and we almost ran out of water a few times. I had my jersey unzipped and were grateful that we found water fountains at appropriately spaced intervals.  We saw our Argentinian friends descending to Mazzo, so apparently they had decided not to do the full Gavia loop.

To my surprise, we discovered that my route laid out was wrong --- I'd neglected to include the climb to the summit but had routed to a loop with the highway coming up from Grosio. We had come so far and it would be silly not to do the summit so we went up to the summit. This last section was a lot less steep and also quite a bit prettier, if windier, being much more like other alpine passes we had ridden. At the top we took pictures but clouds were gathering and so we started down.

"Aren't you cold?" "No?" "I'm freezing." Arturo said to me as we returned to the intersection with the Grosio highway. "You're low on blood sugar. Quick. You need to eat something right away!" "Wow, you're being nice to your friend," a voice came from up the road. I saw two women with Crust bikes! They turned out to be the CEO of Crust bicycles out for a day ride to the top of Motirolo. They identified them selves after I noted aloud to Arturo and Boen how serious those bikes were --- generator hubs and steel frames. Having heard Arturo's plight they fed us with nuts and chocolate before we went back down to the valley.

The descent was great, granting us lovely views of the valley below us, and though steep without a load whenever we stopped to check rim temperatures they were never scary. At the bottom we started getting hungry once again and stopped at Sondalo for a quick meal. It was an odd looking pasta (the waiter called it the local specialty) and the service was fast.

After that the ride into Bormio was easy, despite the occasional raindrops. Once in Bormio, we stopped by Stelvio experience to buy a new headlight for me and a new taillight for Arturo. We asked about our planned route to Livigno the next day but the bike shop staff was negative about attempting it on road bikes. I noted that Europeans don't believe in under-biking, and decided we would do it anyway!

We did a full load of laundry and set it all out to dry so we could depart Bormio early the next day. The forecast was for rain in the afternoon and we wanted to not be riding on dirt (which would turn into mud) when it happened. I texted Sean Kendall and got directions on how to get to Passo di Valle Alpisella, and with those encouragements we went to bed and rested.

Review: The Language of the Night

 The Language of the Night is Ursula Le Guin's essays on writing --- collected from fairly early on to the I want to say around the 1990s. These essays were not written all at once, and over time, you could see her evolution of views on various topics as she grew and matured. For instance, her stance on pronouns changed dramatically over time and she goes back and adds footnotes to her own essays rather than changing the text of her essays to reflect her views at the time of editing.

She is critical of modern society and its aversion to fantasy or science fiction. She connects science fiction and fantasy as being aesthetic, complexity and remoteness. (Kindle loc 464) Her view of how the typical b businessman views fiction is great:

To read War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings plainly is not “work”—you do it for pleasure. And if it cannot be justified as “educational” or as “self-improvement,” then, in the Puritan value system, it can only be self-indulgence or escapism. For pleasure is not a value to the Puritan; on the contrary, it is a sin. Equally, in the businessman’s value system, if an act does not bring in an immediate, tangible profit, it has no justification at all. Thus the only person who has an excuse to read Tolstoy or Tolkien is the English teacher, who gets paid for it. But our businessman might allow himself to read a bestseller now and then: not because it is a good book, but because it is a bestseller—it is a success, it has made money. To the strangely mystical mind of the money changer, this justifies its existence; and by reading it he may participate, a little, in the power and mana of its success.  (kindle loc 642)

More than her evolution on gender, pronouns and her approach to her work, I loved her interpretation of Frodo, Gollum, and Sam in Lord of the Rings:

Frodo and Gollum are not only both hobbits; they are the same person—and Frodo knows it. Frodo and Sam are the bright side, Smeagol-Gollum the shadow side. In the end Sam and Smeagol, the lesser figures, drop away, and all that is left is Frodo and Gollum, at the end of the long quest. And it is Frodo the good who fails, who at the last moment claims the Ring of Power for himself; and it is Gollum the evil who achieves the quest, destroying the Ring, and himself with it. The Ring, the archetype of the Integrative Function, the creative-destructive, returns to the volcano, the eternal source of creation and destruction, the primal fire. When you look at it that way, can you call it a simple story? I suppose so. Oedipus Rex is a fairly simple story, too. But it is not simplistic. It is the kind of story that can be told only by one who has turned and faced his shadow and looked into the dark. (kindle loc 1065)

Her point is that you can only write great fiction when you come to terms with both your shadow side and your bright side. And of course, that's the entire theme of A Wizard of Earthsea. And obviously nobody who has tried to adapt that novel into visual medium has succeeded.

In terms of weakness, the problem with this book is that there are way too many introductions. There's an introduction by someone who's not Ursula Le Guin, then Ursula Le Guin's introduction, and her addendum years after for the latest edition, and this is repeated for nearly every essay and each section in the book. I felt like the text had more introductions than actual material. Essays, like short stories, should be left to speak for themselves with the author's footnotes addended, not introduced to death.

Nevertheless, it was worth reading. Recommended.

June 23rd: Zero Day in Bormio

 We clearly needed a rest day, and visited the Bormio Therme Swimming pool. This pool was mostly indoors, and had but one water slide, but since we got in fairly early, we managed to get it to ourselves for about half an hour before the rest of the crowd showed up. The pool was relatively expensive, but had multiple pools and a Sauna Wellness region.

It even had hammocks in a pesudo-outdoor area where you could lie down and read.

By the time we were done with the pool, it was in the afternoon and I suggested we go to the Bormio civic museum. The place proved to be difficult to find, but we eventually figure out the non-obvious entrance and went in, where there were exhibits of historic stage-coaches that were used to go up the Stelvio, old muskets, and various artifcats from World War 1.

Boen made really good friends with the owner's dog, and we ate dinner with Bolognese sauce out of a glass jar which proved to be incredibly good.

June 22nd: Santa Maria to Bormio

 Uncharacteristically, I'd missed an announcement that breakfast was at 7:30am, and we came a bit late to breakfast after a party of motorcyclists had come. Nevertheless, Boen got his soft-boiled egg and enjoyed his breakfast. We got the bikes out and started riding up the Umbrail pass into glorious sunshine. The climb is a stiff 10-12% grade switchbacking up the mountain with a smooth surface that only the Swiss can perform.

It was not too hot in the lower area as the mountain itself shielded us from the sun. Past the hotel Alpenrose, the grade eases up a bit as the vistas began to appear, corner after corner, with the road winding along the contours bridging over streams. We would soon get a view of the Stelvio summit. The scenery in all directions were nothing short of superlative on a perfect day with just a small hint of clouds in the air.

At the Umbrail pass sign, there was a snowbank where Boen happily threw snowballs at the rest of us. There was a huge amount of traffic and we were to later find out that this was the first day the Stelvio was open. Nobody felt like climbing up to the Stelvio summit, and we started quickly down the descent towards Bormio.

The descent to Bormio always feels like a video game, with twists, turns, and sudden drops, along with tunnels with waterfalls in them. It being early and us having no more mountains to climb that day we took our descent in stages, stopping at every view point for photos and to just enjoy the beautiful day. The traffic was incessant, and other cyclists whom we spoke to told us that they had adjusted their schedule to do the ride today because the forecast for tomorrow was awful.

We dropped into Bormio where I almost missed a turn with Arturo yelling at me to stop. We found our apartment, which was run by a lady who lived upstairs so we got the basement. It being a Sunday we were worried that the supermarket would be closed but Bormio was a big enough town that there was one that was open. We walked there, passing the bike shop Stelvio Experience along the way, and bought enough breakfast for 3 days and a bunch of pasta, caffeine free coca-cola, and other snacks, anticipating a lot of rain the next day. We also stopped at a SIM card shop to get Boen a new sim card, his old one having been worn out by too many photo uploads.

Our plan was to take a zero day and visit the Bormio Therme Swimming Pool/Spa, which advertised having a waterslide!

June 21st: Zernez to Santa Maria

 

We woke up to cloudy skies that were at least not dropping rain on us. We took our breakfast with rapidity and got out on the road but barely got in 3km before it started raining. We had just passed a covered bridge so immediately turned around and stopped at the bridge to wait out the rain. Arturo checked the weather radar and declared that it wouldn’t take more than 20 minutes. We got pictures of a rainbow as the sun struggled to rise above the weather. 

Once the rain died down, we got back on the road again, and this time made decent time up to Ova Spin, the local maximum before the road dropped 200m to the Livigno tunnel intersection. We used the momentum from the descent to make it up the climb as much as possible, having no reason to stop. At Il Fourn, the National Park Hotel, we stopped for Arturo to take on water before the climb became steeper as it approached the Offenpass. The rain came again, but fortunately we were near a building that looked like it might be a private apartment that had a big porch we could shelter in. Arturo checked the weather radar again and declared that it too will blow over. 

Sure enough in 30 minutes the sun came out from behind the clouds and we could resume the climb. The pass gets steeper as it approaches the summit but we were up to the task and got our pass photo. I’m always unprepared for how fast and furious the descent from Ofenpass is. The road banks and turns in corner after corner in wild ribbons that look like the road had been thrown down from the heavens by an angry child. You speed along as the countryside passes you by in a blur. Any traffic coming down from behind you has to be patient as there’s no place for you to pull over. 

Then suddenly there’s a lull as the road flattens out and you feel the full force of any headwind coming up from the valley and you suddenly have to pedal with your stiff legs. Then the road rolls past a ledge and suddenly you’re in full on descent mode again. This repeats 3 times, each time with the Italian border getting closer until suddenly you’re in Santa Maria and there’s a bottlenecked road where two cars cannot possibly pass each other but somehow Swiss drivers are polite enough to stop for each other at places before the bottleneck and give priority to the post bus which miraculously does not scrape it. 

Arriving at the Hotel Alpina significantly before Arturo, I waxed the chain while waiting. When he arrived I asked if we were going to stay here or commit to climbing the Umbrail. It was just past noon, but the unsettled weather meant that talking the party into a climb up 4km to Hotel Alpenrose was a futile proposition. We walked into the Hotel Alpina and met the proprietor Vanessa. We asked about the half pension and she looked at our booking and declared that it didn’t include meals. 

“Wait a minute, we have full cancellation with no penalty? Why don’t we cancel and we pretend that we just showed up and you give us the half pension?” Vanessa looked at us in disbelief. “If I cancel, I have to pay a penalty.” “But we can cancel without penalty!” She said, “Do it!” “Arturo, you sure you want to stay here and not ride up to Hotel Alpenrose?” Vanessa interjected, “That’s my mom’s hotel!” We laughed and I pushed the cancel button on my phone. When it cleared Vanessa’s hotel management system she immediately booked us into a triple room at a half pension at a great price.

 

We checked in, got out of our wet clothes and took showers. We then did laundry while Arturo looked up what to do in town. It turned out that the recommended hikes to a waterfall would take far too long and take us out of public transit range, a bad idea in unsettled weather. We opted for a much more straightforward if potentially more boring walk to the town of Mustair where there was a famous church. 

The walk was not the most exciting in the world, paralleling the main road, but the slow pace was actually not bad for showing us local farms with goats, lambs, and even a curious cat. Every so often we’d feel a rain drop or see a rain cloud dumping on a hillside or faraway town. What took getting used to was the constant sound of gunfire. Arturo explained that every Swiss male had to serve in the military, and after the mandatory service once a year they still had to take a shooting test. The consequence of failing the shooting test is more time spent taking a refresher class on shooting, so the folks who were supposed to be tested soon were now in a practice frenzy. Being from the US hiking while listening to gunfire is pretty normal, but this was the first time I’d experienced it in Europe. Upon getting to town we’d just missed a bus so that made the church visit mandatory. 

The church museum was OK, but nothing special to my eyes though there was a surprising crowd in the museum and store! By the time we were done it was too late to hike back up to the central bus stop with its neighboring cafes. Besides, rain was starting so we just waited for the bus at the church and took it back to Santa Maria where we walked to the supermarket for ice cream and a drink I’d never seen before and so felt compelled to try. To justify our stay in Santa Maria right after I finished the drink and got back the bottle deposit from the supermarket it started raining and we made it back to the hotel just in time to watch the heavens open up! 

Dinner was passable if not terribly exciting, and after dinner the rain let up enough for us to walk around some more around town. But by the time we were done we felt we’d explored the limits of what Santa Maria had to offer. A look at the forecast showed that while Sunday was a lost cause everywhere the weather would turn for the better after that meaning a visit to Bormio would be in order. 

We booked a 3 night stay at an apartment in Bormio and made plans to be there. So Sunday would be a rest day but after the efforts of the past few days we all could use a rest. 

 

Reread: A Fire Upon The Deep

 After Vernor Vinge died I resolved to read A Fire Upon the Deep to Boen as his next bedtime book. During the bike tour this summer I made him read 20 minutes a day in the morning, and to my surprise he finished the last one third of the book by himself because he enjoyed it so much.

The book's great. It's got humans in a cosmopolitan galaxy-spanning internet-type civilization. It's even got the same snarky trolls you find on the internet. It's got an alien pack-mind race that's unique and different. It's got transcendental intelligences and hostile AIs, and it's even got FTL existing in a universe where some parts of the galaxy have to follow relativistic laws.

What's fun is that the book's got great characters who develop and change, which rarely happens in science fiction. There's good reason that the book won its Hugo and Nebula awards, and still remains a classic 33years later.

Recommended.