June 29th: Arabba to Misurina

 The breakfast table was filled with pastries and sweets, as well as preserved fruits of all sorts. I ate as much as I could. I remembered Tre Croci as being a pass much easier than the 12% grade signs along it declared, but this would be my first time tackling it on a tandem and climbs that are no big deal on a single bike frequently turn into intense torturefests on the tandem. 

The descent down into Caprile and the following climb up Falzerago, however, was a delight. That's because two years ago, I was riding a triplet, and even with luggage, the tandem was far easier to handle and pedal. Once again, lots of cyclists were on the road, with folks passing us taking pictures or saying encouraging things like "Gut Vater." 

At a water fountain, we took on water and a follow vehicle for what looked like a club tour stopped to speak to Arturo in Italian. It turned out that they were doing much the same route was we were, only riding over Cima Bianche to Misurina instead of Tre Croci. I asked Arturo to see if they'd drop our luggage off at our hotel for us, but he resisted. "I want the full experience," he explained. "Try riding this on a tandem and tell me what the full experience is about." I retorted. "Good point." 

We rode through the final set of galleries and ended up at Passo Falzerago. "Hey, it keeps going up past here!" Arturo said. "Yeah, but we're going to Cortina. Passo Valpora is 100m up, but we have plenty more climbing today." We spotted the club van again and this time Arturo made an effort to ask if they'd take our luggage for us to the hotel, but they demurred, either not understanding what we were requesting, or didn't want to take on the responsibility for our luggage. 

Passo Falzerago was even more of a zoo than Passo Pordoi, and as we descended, we were stuck behind a couple of tour buses. At an opportune moment we overtook one, then the other, and finally had a clear highway in front of us. At full speed, a bicycle is more than capable of keeping up with auto traffic, and it wasn't until the intersection with Passo Giau that the two buses caught up and then passed us. 

The descent into Cortina d'Ampezzo is impressive and pretty as usual, but this time there was a lot of traffic, and the classic overlook of the city was full of motorcyclists so we declined to stop there and proceeded down to the city. There was a ton of traffic and half the city was blocked off. Arturo spotted a UMTB tent and realized that there was an ultra-marathon event going on. "That would explain why Cortina was so expensive!" We got instructions from a passer-by about where to get a supermarket and when we got there, we bought some fruits and then proceeded to try to get out of Cortina as quickly as possible, the town being hot and the outside of the supermarket being busy with traffic to the point of annoyance. 

Riding out without buying water was a mistake, however, as unlike other alpine towns, there was not a single roadside water fountain to be seen in Cortina as we headed up Tre Croci. The road was steep and the sun relentless to the point where when I finally rode by a house with an open door I stopped the bike, poked my head in, and asked the woman of the house if we could have our bottles refilled. She assented and we gratefully gave her our water bottles. She had to come back when she couldn't figure out how to open the Camelbak Podium bottles, but the water bottles were filled. 

We went around the corner and ate the rest of the food that Arturo had bought at the supermarket. By the time we were ready to go again, clouds had appeared, and the temperature cooled enough so that the ride no longer looked like it was going to be a torturefest. 

There was multiple 12% grade warning signs all the way up the climb, but my bike computer never showed anything steeper than 9%. Despite that, by the time with got to the ski lifts/gondola station we were ready for a long break. We took a break and ate quite abit of our emergency food though we were wary of long delays so did not order any food at the sit-down restaurant. The views were remarkable. 

Once we got back onto our bikes it was only a short climb to the summit of Tre Croci. "Garmin says there's 100m of additional climbing to Misurina." "In that case we should keep our cycling caps on." Indeed, the road did descend, but gently until the intersection with the road from Federavecchia whereupon it became climbing again, but never at as steep a grade as Tre Croci was.  

A hard push and we were over the lip onto Misurina, where the lake and the surrounding hotels loomed large. We took a few pictures and rode all the way up to the hotel, which was in the process of closing up lunch service. The hotel owner asked one of the staff to show us our apartment, and not only did he do so, but he also single handedly lifted the tandem up the staircase to the designated parking spot right outside our room! 

The view from the hotel room was nothing short of remarkable and I was impressed. We decided to immediately take a walk around the lake before it rained. I'd always wanted to walk around the lake, especially in the crystal-clear calm mornings where we had frequently visited Misurina before.

There was a zipline playground where Boen did a couple of runs, and then he suddenly started to feel sick! "Oh yeah," Arturo said. "I'd felt quite sick before in the morning on the climb. But it went away after I drank a lot of water." Fortunately, I'd brought my water bottle on the hike and after Boen downed most of it he felt a lot better. 

We speculated about what it could be, as we'd all had the same thing for breakfast, and the only difference between us dinner last night was that I didn't have soup, which was unlikely to cause food poisoning. 

The walk around the lake was beautiful, and we finished at the supermarket where we bought pastries. When we were done, we also bought supplemental breakfast --- the hotel had warned us that breakfast was simply bread, instant coffee and tea. Apparently, when they served a full breakfast, their guests were packing parts of it into to-go bags and turning it into picnic lunches, so this was their way of enforcing quotas for guests. We bought instant noodles so we could have a hot breakfast. 

As we ate our pastries, we heard a group of hikers chatting --- they were in the area for 6 days of hiking, and said they had a great time. On the way back to our room we stopped at the restaurant and asked for a dinner reservation. 

After we got back to the room, we took a shower, did laundry, and stretched. The wind had gotten stronger, and it looked like it would rain overnight. Looking at the forecast, it looked like we'll have a good day tomorrow, but the next day looked horrible, and Grossglockner looked out of the question, with lots of rain and snow. That ruled out riding to Lienz, so our best bet was to ride over to Bolzano and Merano. The full ride would be 100 miles, but we could take the train from Bolzano to Merano which would save 20 miles. We decided that Merano was a good place to wait out the storm. Suite Seven wasn't available, so Arturo found a different apartment in the area (booking.com now hosts apartments) and booked it for 2 nights. 

Dinner was impressive. We were seated, the staff took our orders and came back with the food within 15 minutes. The steak was impressively good and everyone enjoyed their meals. When we were done, the bill was delivered, and we paid. We'd gotten in and out of the restaurant in under 45 minutes! "Just for that," Arturo said, "I'd review the hotel as 5 stars!" 

We got back to our room as the weather had turned sour and enjoyed the view from our room before turning in. The only sour note was getting awakened at 1am by a group who had decided to go hiking (loudly) in the middle of the night. 

 

June 28th: Vigo di Fassa to Arabba

 

Despite the late dinner, we woke up early enough to make it to the breakfast table by 7:20. Unlike other hotels, this one enforced its 7:30am opening hour, but unlike other hotels there wasn't a mad rush in the morning. We ate well before descending the last section to the valley. Once in the valley, we found the bike path that avoided the busy main road. To my surprise Boen decided not to do any of the zipline playgrounds that we found along the bike path, which quickly turned into dirt.

I finally got fed up with the bike path at a construction driven detour and decided to just ride the main road. While the main road was busy the traffic was relatively well behaved. At the turn off for Passo Pordoi we started the climb. At this point we started seeing lots of cyclists come up the road, mostly encouraging us as we were passing. In fact, one of the packs was some sort of professional team as they had a follow vehicle which shouted words of encouragement to us.

It being early in the day, it was too warm yet. Passo Pordoi grants you beautiful views of the surrounding dolomite peaks once you get above 1800m. The climb is never too steep, though the traffic at times is onerous. There were plenty of places to stop and rest, and we made good use of it. We were clearly in need of a half day.

At the top of Passo Pordoi it was a zoo as usual. Lots of cyclists, drivers, tour busses all vieing for pictures with the pass sign, the sculptures, and various other viewpoints. After we got in line and took several pictures, I asked Arturo if the Gondola was worth doing. He looked up a  few reviews and decided that yes it was and we had time to kill, so we paid the Gondola fees and got up the Gondola to the top.

We weren't quite equipped for the cold or the hiking, since the plateau was rocky and snow covered in spots, but the views were spectacular and Boen had fun playing with the snow. The restaurant at the top was very expensive for what we got but we had the nutella biscuits bought the day before and ate that!

Once we'd had our fill, we descended the Gondola and then rode down to Arabba where we showed up at the Hotel Portavescovo where we had stayed at 2 years ago. In fact, for the first half of the next day we would be following the same route to Cortina d'Ampezzo via Passo Falzerago.

Without reservations (but backed with a booking.com quote) we got a good price for the half pension. We took a shower and did laundry and got everything charging before heading out for the Pizzaria where we shared a Pizza for a late lunch before visiting the DeSpar where we stocked up on Chinotto after being unable to find Decaf-No-Sugar Coke. A swim in the pool interrupted occasionally by visits to the Sauna finished off the day.

Dinner to my disappointment was once again rabbit, though prepared differently enough that I wasn't too unhappy about the whole thing.

June 27th: Merano to Vigo di Fassa

 Breakfast at Suite Seven lived up to the reviews, with excellent servings of bread, meat, and they even specially made Boen his soft-boiled eggs when he asked. The checkout was straightforward, but we were delayed when we discovered that Boen had lost his sunglasses. Fortunately, the bike shop was just next door and Boen's new sunglasses were a lot cheaper than the price Arturo had paid for his in Disentis.

Following the Garmin navigation directions out of Merano, we got onto the bike path to Bolzano and immediately met Thomas from Germany, who was out to climb Passo Mendola that day. After we introduced ourselves, he was more than happy to paceline us all the way to the Bolzano intersection, with us sitting behind his wheel. This time, Arturo showed up in short order, having found his own paceline to draft.

From there, we followed the bike path to the Steinegg intersection, where we turned on our lights and braved ourselves for the 4km tunnel, which was every bit as nerve-wracking and painful as I remembered. The tunnel climbs uphill, has no shoulders for bike paths, and cycling in a tunnel is easily one of the least pleasant ways to spend time on the bike.

After that first set of tunnels, we found the bike path that avoided tunnels for the rest of the ride to Nova Levante, though we had a longish stop at the first ice cream shop to sooth our nerves. The day had warmed up, and the grade increased as we got to the town center of Nova Levante, where I pulled into the primary bus stop at the bottom of a ski lift. I remembered that the exit from Nova Levanted was a stiff 20% grade. On a single this was manageable but on a tandem with a touring load I had my doubts as to whether it was doable even when we were fresh, especially given the heavy traffic.

I took apart the tandem and when the bus arrived the driver didn't even blink an eye as we loaded up the bus, with Arturo's bike hanging off the bike rack behind and me filling the stroller area on the bus. When Arturo tried to pay, the bus driver waved him off --- the credit card scanner was broken on the bus so our ride (which would have been cheap since we were only riding the bus for one stop) was free!

At the Karasee bus stop, we got off the bus and put together our tandem and Arturo had to mount is luggage. The lake was mirror-still as it usually was, unusual in the afternoon, and we parked our bikes and walked a little bit around the lake, capturing the reflections behind us. We then rode the now gentle grade up to Passo Costalunga. At Costalunga we felt rain drops, and pulling out the phone,we decided to book a hotel in Vigo di Fassa that offered a great deal for dinner breakfast and lodging.

Rain drops got a little more frequent  as we made the descent, but it never developed to even a light drizzle. The descent became smooth and fast, and the GPS guided us directlky to the hotel where before we could even check in, the receptionist told us that we should just take in the light snack that was being served at 4:00pm.

Not having had lunch we dug in! There was sandwiches, chocolate drizzle cakes, and other desserts. It turned out that this was a family focused hotel, and they served a light snack as dinner wasn't until 7pm!

We ate until we were satisfied and then checked in with the hotel, whereupon we were told where to park our bikes. We unloaded, showered, and did laundry and then walked over to the closest supermarket to buy emergency snacks the next day. Enough rain came down that we could take pictures of rainbows as we walked.

I looked at my plan for the trip and realized that we were an entire week behind schedule at this point, making our plan to ride to Slovenia in jeopardy unless there were ways to take a train back from Lake Bled to Switzerland.

There was a night train from Lake Bled to Zurich which would have been ideal but it did not take bikes! No other alternatives were available. In a single day we had gone from excited that we'd rescued a day by taking a bus to being dejected. I looked at the map and decided that we could ride to Arraba the next day instead, then make our way to Cortina and Misurina the day after that. From there, depending on the weather we could ride the Grossglockner, Timmelsjoch or Reschen pass and so could salvage the rest of the trip.

Dinner started at 7pm, but it began with a long introduction of the staff --- apparently most people stayed at the hotel for a week, and this was the last night for most of the families staying at the hotel. Service was incredibly slow and we weren't done with dinner until well after 9:30pm. The main entree was rabbit, which I'm not a particular fan of, but I was hungry at this point I just ate it like a starving man.

 

Review: Slow Productivity

 I usually enjoy Cal Newport's books, even when I disagree with them. Slow Productivity is no exception. I learned a lot. For instance, despite Virginia's Woolf's depiction of Jane Austen writing in her sitting room in between visitors, Newport reveals that her literary output during that time was next to nothing. She only got a chance to write her great novels when her family came into money and deliberately went into social seclusion so she could write!

Effectively, individuals in creative fields (scientists, writers, artists) should take the long view of their work. For instance, he mentions that Madam Curie immediately after her insight that the radioactive potash she was studying likely contained a new element, went for a summer break of hiking and other outdoor activities with her family. (Instantly, this debunks the famous linkedin/social media meme that the ideal vacation is only a week long and anything more is wasted)

Now, one issue with the book is that so many of the case studies and examples are from people who were already effectively independently wealthy. (Not surprisingly, most great scientists in the 16th to 19th centuries were effectively independently wealthy because only the independently wealthy could spend their time studying something with no immediate payback!) Da Vinci might not have been independently wealthy but he also had many wealthy patrons that bankrolled him or commissioned work that did not have to be delivered for years.

One modern example is Andrew Wiles, who as a tenured professor had the luxury of minimizing his teaching load and was already working on related work when he realized that he might be the person most suited to proving Fermat's Last Theorem. I enjoyed the example but the rarity of Wiles' position as a tenured professor would make your heart sink.

Another example was the musician Jewel Kilcher, who deliberately negotiated her million dollar advance down so that her record label wouldn't lose patience with her if her first album wasn't an immediate breakout success. That's great, but it's just a reminder of how much less patient the commercial music business has been since the days of Fleetwood Mac, whose first 17 albums failed to make any impression before they produced Rumors.

Finally, the book is largely directed at individual contributors (so for instance there's no mention of Fleetwood Mac). That's as it should be, since Newport as a Professor has probably never had to manage an industrial sized project to completion. I suspect that one big facet of industrial creativity in output has to be secrecy. It's much easier to fail fast and fail frequently if your failures are private rather than public, and to do so as part of a large enterprise you cannot expose all your bets to the public. On the other hand, many have observed that most of Google's experimental projects have completely failed with nothing to show for it and no institutional learning, so it's quite clear that it's not simply having unlimited resources will help you achieve big, long term success.

I learned quite a bit from this book. I think you should read it. But if there's one lesson I had to distill from this book is that you should be patient with yourself. It takes many years for even the smartest most successful people to achieve their careers. Don't expect to be an overnight success.

June 26th: Livigno to Merano

 In the morning we ate a quick but thorough breakfast before riding out towards the Livigno tunnel. Boen discovered to his surprise as he tried to roll the tandem out of the garage without panniers that he could not even make it up the little ramp from the garage back to the road!

As anticipated, right at the lake, a fast paceline caught us and Boen and I immediately jumped into the middle of the group and got towed along at 20-25mph, with the paceline occasionallky pogoing as we went in and out of galleries, around traffic islands, or tackled a gentle turn. Both Boen and I were pedaling much too hard to even consider taking pictures, but we knew this was much faster and easier than riding on our own.

Arriving at the tunnel, we were quite a bit ahead of the designated 9:45am start time for the crossing. The van with its trailer for bikes were there, and so was the driver. He looked at our tandem and commented that he'd have to stow it inside the van. Arturo showed up about 15 minutes later. "I was taking a photo and by the time I got my phone back in my pocket it was too late to catch the paceline!" 2 more cyclists showed up.

At the designated time, the driver loaded up all the bikes onto the trailer and proceeded to charge us 6 Euros each for driving a bike through the tunnel, with the tandem counting as one bike.

Once on the other side, we once again had to climb Ofenpass but this time in weather that wasn't as rainy. At the top of Ofenpass we took another quick picture and then quickly rode down the other side, past Santa Maria and then onto Mustair, whether tbe border was. In the past, I've ridden onto the dirt bike path immediately on the Italian side, but this time I told Arturo that in the interest of time, we should stay on the road until the bike path turned into pavement.

Once at Laudes we followed the instructions onto a short climb before intersecting with the bike path the Merano and proceeded quicky down the bike path towards Glorenza. At Glorenza we saw the hot dog stand but unfortunately it was closed! I'd hope to stop there for lunch, but this was not to be. Instead we kept rolling down the bike path, stopping at a lake with ducks where we ate the food we had bought the previous day, with Boen feeding the leftover bread to the ducks.

"It feels strange to roll past the Prato Allo Stelvio exit and not ride it!" I declaimed to Arturo.  As we kept going past Prato Allo Stelvio, the bike path would alternate between dirt and pavement. Arturo wasn't as confident as we were on the dirt so we soon left him behind, only for him to catch back up to us when we finally stopped for ice cream at the road side stand.

We debated to ride on to Bolzano or stay in Merano but as we rode into Merano the weather started to turn. I'd spotted SuiteSeven on Booking.com as having a nice air conditioned apartment at a good price. I pushed for us to just show up and ask, but when the directions got us to the location we discovered that the location had no reception. Everything was done virtually. Well, I'd paid for a month of Skype unlimited for good reason so I called the number. The virtual receptionist told us that they had to call and see if staff was available to make up the room and asked for a number for callback. We gave her Boen's Italian sim card phone number and she called us back 5 minutes later with the affirmative, even remotely unlocking the lock box for us so we could retrieve the key!

Fascinatingly, the bike storage was the common bathroom on the second floor, which was guaded by the card key we were given, so we left our bikes in there and moved in. We turned on the AC, took showers and did laundry and the staff showed up to deliver a 3rd bed. We then went out to have an early dinner at the Tapas place around the corner and ice cream next door to it. The price was good and the food very good. We could also find open supermarkets easily and buy fruits and additional snacks. At the supermarket we tried to find sugar-free/caffeine free coke but couldn't --- instead we found this odd drink called Chinotto, which had neither sugar nor caffeine. We would try it and it would taste like chinese medicine. The funny thing was that as awful as it tasted we still kept drinking it until the bottle was empty by morning.

Walking around Merano in between rain storms I was impressed by how nice it was. I realized that it was a mistake on previous trips to just head on to Bolazno directly instead of staying at Merano.

June 25th: Bormio to Livigno via Laghi Cancano

 

We woke up early, got our bikes and panniers out, and rode out of Bormio with our new lights flashing on our bikes. It was cloudy and ominous, but the forecast said that it wouldn't really start raining until 2:00pm. I had laid out a route on Garmin Connect the night before, but instructed Arturo to just stay on the main road and follow signs for Laghi Cancano so as to avoid whatever hijinks Garmin Connect chose for us.

Sure enough, we ended up ignoring the Garmin generated route all the way until the signs for Laghi Cancano, but there was a sign announcing a road closure. Fortunately, the road closure only applied to direct route to Degola and Pedenosso, and the official route stayed higher. There was not much traffic in the morning, though we saw signs that someone had camped out on the road the night before --- their tent was still present.

We hit the switchbacks and rain drops started to be felt.  We kept going, however, and sure enough at the tunnel, the sky turned blue and we had an outstanding view of the switchbacks from whence we had come. Past the tunnel, the road flattened out and we got gorgeous views of the first lake. It turned out that there were 3 lakes, with two of them being part of the power generation system and the third was just a pond and not often mentioned or even remembered.

At the first of the major lakes the road turned into gravel but the scenery got better! As we rode on the dam at the end of the second lake we were treated to glorious views of the surrounding mountains. At the far end of these was a Refugio and a bus stop. From here on out there would be no way to bail out. We saw a waterfall coming out of a culvert followed by an abandoned village with a church that looked like it was in good condition.

Following Sean's directions we found a sign for Passo Di Valle Alpisella. From here on the road got steeper and more rugged until we had to get off and push the bike! Or rather, I pushed the bike while Boen entertained us. The lakes were at 1950m and the pass was at 2292m, which meant that we had to climb more than 300m. I estimate that we spent at least 45 minutes intermittently riding and walking the bikes. Each time we saw a lake we would be hopeful that we would reach the summit, only to have our hopes dashed when the road relentlessly marched upwards. We saw a number of mountain bikers but nearly all of them had electric motors mounted. Two SUVs passed us.

Nevertheless, after the first couple of lakes we became able to ride on a more consistent basis and sure enough we were soon at the summit. There we took pictures and put on our jackets. The sign said 2km to Livigno. "Those must be Italian kilometers. That's 400m of descent!" I was wrong about the distance the road descended steeply, with occasional culverts and diversionary reinforcement on the road so that it wouldn't get washed out by the next rain. It was steep enough that I was hanging on to my brakes the whole time going at walking speed. That's safe because at walking speed you're not building up enough heat to blow out the tandem's tires.

Past the first kilometer the road (some might call it a hiking trail, but it was much wider than a single-track) flattened out a bit and I could now take the road at a decently fast speed. The culverts got deeper and deeper, however, until we clipped a pedal and would have crashed if I hadn't had so much practice doing crazy things on a tandem.

Arriving safely at the bottom we felt rain drops and started riding to the hotel but only made it to the hiking trail's parking lot when it started coming down hard. We sheltered under a closed hotel until it stopped raining. We booked a hotel and when the rain let up we rode on wet roads.  I was pretty exhausted at this point, and as we went under an underpass I suggested walking our bikes up the steep grade on the other side. "No way!" declared Boen. Sure enough, he pushed hard on the pedals and we got up the grade and made it to our hotel.

It took a while to find a receptionist to check us in. But as we moved in, did laundry, and walked out to dinner we considered it a very satisfying day. We'd achieved our goals, defied the odds, and showed ourselves to be great bike handlers.

Review: Rene Herse Stampede Pass Tires

 I was going to execute the 2024 Bike Tour using the Vittoria Corsa NEXT 34mm tires. But after just 2000 miles on the front I noticed that the rubber was already getting thin, which didn't bode well for a tour where I'd be carrying luggage. I'd had enough Continental GP5000 sidewall failures that I didn't want to use it if I could help it.

I'd bought through second hand sources a number of Rene Herse Stampede Pass tires. All of their tires are the same except that they choose to use names instead of numbers to designate tire width. The extralight editions run about $100/tire and are too rich for my blood but when you buy them second hand you can usually get a substantial discount. In my case that's 50% off which makes the tires palatable.

My previous experience with Panaracer tires were iffy. The Fairweather by Traveler tires (also 700x32) didn't last 1000 miles on the tandem (unloaded). But we mounted the tires and took them up Bohlman Road and they didn't come back with appreciable wear, so I thought they would survive the tour. I gave Arturo the Vittoria Corsa NEXT 34mm to carry as a spare just in case, figuring that if we got 500 miles out of the tire the Vittoria would survive long enough to finish.

I was a little disappointed when after 4 days of touring in the alps the tread pattern was gone. In retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised. The tread pattern was always a thin layer and there just for marketing purposes (there are claims about interlocking with the road, but when it wears out after 4 days you might as well start the tire off slick).

What did impress Arturo about these tires was that my tandem stopped faster than his single on all the descents! Basically, tires a big part of the braking system --- the brake pads don't really stop you. It's the traction of the tire on the road that does, and despite our heavier load these tires stopped. By the time we finished the tour the tires were clearly worn (they wouldn't have survived another 3 weeks of touring), but they held up and didn't flat.

Would I pay full price ($96) for these tires? Probably not. At that price I'll put up with the Vittoria or the GP5000. But if money is no object and you're riding these (or maybe you're not on a tandem so the tires will last forever), then I can recommend these tires. They have good traction, last long enough, and despite their reputation don't seem to flat more often than other similar tires.