July 1st: Merano Rest Day

 We ate our breakfast, put our swimsuits and towels into our backpack, and then walked over to the Merano Therme, where they told us that we qualified for the family rate, which was cheaper than the 2 or 3 hour ticket we had planned to buy. We walked in, changed, and got swimming.

The Merano pool has multiple different pools of varying temperatures. The highlight for us, however, was the outdoor 'natural' pool, which instead of chlorination, used a series of gravel "natural" sand filters to clean the water. The result was that you could swim in the water without goggles but your eyes still wouldn't sting.

The air was clear and even the sun came out, making us question the wisdom of taking a zero day, but then I remembered that we'd just done a century the day before and wouldn't have much oomph left for climbing anyway.

We switched between the various pools and even tried the sauna for a bit. When we were ready to leave we went back to the natural pool one more time. This time, however, Boen lost his watch in the pool! With a pair of goggles finding it wouldn't be a problem, but neither and Arturo had one. Arturo ran off to try to borrow a pair. A few other kind folks joined in the search in vain. Thunder pealed, and I worried that the pool would close before Arturo came back, but the pool managers at Merano were made out of stern stuff and the pool stayed open. As predicted, once Arturo came back with a pair of goggles he'd borrowed from a lifeguard, he found the watch in minutes, sitting far from where we thought he'd dropped it.

We finished a couple of laps and then left the pool, going to our favorite tapas place for a bruschetta lunch, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We then walked over to the Merano train station and were assured that the train did ran and would indeed take bikes, but had special bike cars at 9:45am. Arturo once again tried to get our bus tickets refunded but was directed elsewhere.

I'd gotten fed up with the light on my Amazon basics USB-C charger keeping me up at night, so while Arturo went to try to get the bus tickets refunded I walked into the bike shop to try to get some black tape. We used that to tape various lights on the various chargers so that the blinking wouldn't keep us up at night.

The rain resumed as we made dinner, did laundry using the washing machine, and took showers. We went to sleep hoping everything would dry despite the humidity, and hoping for a good day tomorrow.

Review: Review: Favero Assioma MX-1 Power Meter Pedals

 I got fed up of constantly moving the Garmin Power Meter Pedals between bikes, so when Favero Assioma MX-1 was launched I got into the pre-order mailing list and bought a pair. At $499, these are considerably cheaper than the Garmins. The box comes with cleats and chargers, but of course these are single-sided, though there's an option to upgrade to dual sided if you wish.

Installing the pedals is easy, though charging is not. Basically, I resorted to using a power bank so that I didn't have to park the bike next to an outlet or remove the pedal just so you can charge it. (I have no idea how people who own Shimano electronic shifters deal with the need to park your bike next to a power outlet)

The power meter is reliable and works well. It provides pedaling dynamics output as well (though obviously only on one side). The battery life is much worse than the Garmin option. Basically, the Garmin will work for 3 months of cycling, and my 3 week summer tour this year didn't even come close to depleting the battery. On the Favero Assioma you can expect to go about a month between charging the device. Having said that, it's easier to charge the battery if you have a power bank around than to replace the Garmin's non-chargeable batteries, so the whole thing is a wash. Having said that, however, I'd be confident doing a 3 week tour in Europe without carrying spare batteries on the Garmin, while I wouldn't be able to do so without carrying the Favero Assioma's chargers. Is that worth paying $700 for the Garmin? Probably not. But if you can find the Garmins for $550 or so, I'd say that $50 is well worth the extra battery life.

Needless to say, power meter pedals are a superior solution to crank based meters. I can recommend these.

June 30th: Lake Misurina to Merano

 We got up early, taking pictures of the breath-taking view from the hotel window. The storm the night before had churned up the waters, taking away any motivation for another morning loop around the lake. We ate our breakfast, which was surprisingly good given that none of it was hot, and supplemented with the instant noodles we had bought the day before. We got the tandem safely down the stairs and then proceeded to ride out. 

At the intersection with the main road, we rolled down quickly with little traffic. On descents like these, the Cats Ears helmet accessory more than pays for themselves, quieting the wind noise and allowing you to hear the birdsound. 

At the intersection with the Cima Bianche highway, we rolled down towards Toblach. It being early with light traffic and the overnight rains likely having mired the bike path into a muddy mess, we stayed on the main road and zoomed down it at speed, stopping only for a few classic photos of Tre Cime Laverado. 

At Lake Toblach we did a detour to see where we had lunch 2 years ago, but Boen wanted to stay on the highway so we went back to the highway and followed the car path to Toblach and then followed the signs to Brixen. We finally rejoined the bike path at Frau Emma Strasse, where the traffic had started getting busy, and followed the bike path from thereon into Olang. 

In Olang, our ride was interrupted by a religious procession. We took a few photos and videos and then rode on down to Bruneck. Past Bruneck, we stopped at a playground for to eat and refill water, and then proceeded towards Fortezza. At this point, the bike path goes from being a downhill stroll to becoming a series of steep up and down climbs. 

After a dirt section, Arturo texted me that he had a flat. We waited for him for about half an hour while he fixed it. The cause of the flat was unknown as Arturo couldn't find anything in the tire, but his fix appeared to hold. 

The climax comes in the town of Mulbach where I once again made a wrong turn and only realized it after doing a steep climb. We returned to the bike path and then followed along another (different) steep climb. We saw a family of 4 riding the bike path. They were obviously on rental bikes but their youngest daughter was struggling with the grade. We would see them again at lunch. 

Lunch was at a roadside truck-stop kinda place, the only location that looked open. The line was long but moved at a decent clip. I noticed that they had Weisswurst on the menu and proceeded to order 3. "That's all?" the cashier asked. Arturo jumped in and said, "Yup." "Wait, you're not going to have anything?" "What? You ordered 3 Weisswurst." "I was planning to eat 2!" We had happily avoided having being off by one when it came to food. 

After lunch, we followed the bike path which had been extended to follow along the main road for a while, but at one point we saw that the bike path turned right to do some crazy bike path thing and we opted to get onto the main road, being as fast as motor traffic and zipped down into Brixen. Once there, I was redirected to the bike path since the alternative was a tunnel with a huge "no bikes" sign, and we continued down towards Bolzano, traversing the Adige river multiple times and passing through multiple tunnels that must have used to be railroad rights of way back when the bike path was part of a railroad. 

Near Bolzano I made the executive decision to ride to the main train station, where we could get human help for buying train tickets. We saw that the train was about to leave and blindly bought tickets from a machine, only to be told that the train was out of service for a month! What we had bought were bus tickets and the bus did not take bikes! Arturo tried to get a refund for the tickets we had bought but he was denied, the customer service station being closed on a Sunday. 

Many people have low expectations of kids. When you explain something like this to a kid, you don't usually get a temper tantrum. Boen simply said: "I guess we're going to get to do a century today!" We got on the bikes and got rolling. The 20km between Merano and Bolzano is flat, and we actually started getting a light tailwind. While not enough to make a big difference it was a morale boost for sore butts. We notified the apartment owner that we would get to Merano around 5:30pm. 

We made it to Merano, and while waiting for him to show up, Arturo found the building, which was strangely enough through a passage that hosted a restaurant. The front door to the apartment building was unlocked and he went up the stairs to find the apartment door was open. Boen needed to poop so he went upstairs while I unloaded the bike and waxed the chain. 

When the owner arrived he told me I could lock the bike outside, but I pointed out that it was going to rain tomorrow. He said, "there's plenty of room in the apartment if you can get it up there." After he gave the keys to Arturo, Arturo moved all the decorative pieces in the stairwell (which had 2 sharp corners) and then helped me lift the bike up 2 stories to the apartment, where we parked the bike. The owner had complained that Arturo had booked the room for 2 but 3 had showed up so we agreed to pay him the overage in cash.

 

It being late, we walked out immediately to get food. Our favorite tapas place was closed, but we found a supermarket that was open and went there and bought groceries for dinner and breakfast. We even found more Weiss wurst and bout a couple of packs. Boen had ran out of floss but we couldn't find kid's floss in the supermarket. It turned out that when I had told Boen to count out floss for the trip he had decided to be lazy and just grabbed a random amount of floss! Fortunately there was an open pharmacy in the same building as the supermarket and they sold kid's floss. 

Back at the apartment, we made a pasta dinner. The bolognese sauce wasn't as good as last time. "I couldn't find the same brand we had last time!" That explained everything. 

Our ordeal of a day wasn't over. While taking a shower Boen discovered the hot water would turn off. It turned out that the control for the shower was on a hair trigger. Too much demand for hot water and the pilot light would turn off. Too little demand and it would also turn off. We learned to take showers with the control panel open so we could reset the pilot light, but it was just another series of annoyanaces. 

We did laundry and hung it up. We heard thunder.Arturo noted that I'd been waxing the chain every night. "When did you last wax your chain?" "Before the trip." "You know, oil lubrication interval is about 400 miles. You're way past the limit!" Sure enough, Arturo's chain was squeaky and balky. He took it out to the balcony (which couldn'tbe used for drying clothes on account of the rain) and oiled the chain. 

Of course, once we had already done the laundry by hand we discovered that there was a washing machine in the other bathroom! We would make full use of that the next day. 

We debated what to do. We knew we had a zero day the next day, but the day after that we had the choice to either ride the train to Mals and ride over Reschen pass to Silvretta, or we could do Timmelsjoch. The forecast supported doing both but Timmelsjoch was a lot more climbing, and if the weather was bad the day after we would not be able to ride the Silvretta.  

Arturo looked up the Merano baths and it looked good though it didn't have water slides. We'd definitely make use of that! I suggested that we also walk to the train station to make sure we didn't have another fisaco like what we had today with the train not actually being operational. We had seen the train running the last time we'd come the other way, but I was taking no chances. Timmelsjoch would be a much better pass to ride if the train wasn't running. 

 

Re-read: The Big Sleep

 After re-reading Altered Carbon I started reading Broken Angels but ended up thinking, "Why settle for a facsimile of Raymond Chandler when I can have to real thing?" So I pulled out The Big Sleep and started reading that instead.

The Big Sleep was Chandler's breakthrough novel and I'm always impressed by the sheer style and readability of his language. The voice is authentic, a cynical, world weary private investigator who nevertheless is still un-bribable. All the other PI novel series (Sue Grafton, Robert B Parker) are pale imitations of Chandler's Philip Marlowe, who in this novel just goes through nearly every trope that are then reflected in other novelists' rendition of similar stories.

But none of them have Chandler's ear for language, use of metaphor, and ability to bring your point of view so neatly in sync with his protagonist's. The richness of the imagery, foreshadowing, and character just rings true, even though on this re-reading it's quite clear that he tried to telegraph the name of the villain.

The ending also rings with sadness, but that's in character with the genre, and if there's a lot of cynicism it's still not as bleak as Richard Morgan's.