July 3rd: Kappl to Galtur

 

We made way too much breakfast and had a hard time eating it all. We had paid for our stay in cash the night before, so only had to leave our keys behind, put luggage on our bikes and tried to ride off. This was a short term failure as the way was blocked by a giant vehicle taking up the entire road. In fact, a neighbor had come to ask if the car in front of the house could be moved --- since it wasn't our car, there wasn't much we could do. 

We picked a route that would try to make use of our climb the day before, paralleling the main road as much as possible before dropping down to the main road to minimize elevation lost. This was just a conceit as the road went up and down in parallel to the main road so we gained nothing. Nevertheless, it was traffic free and the road dumped us out near Ischgl on a bike path! 

In Ischgl, the bike path ended and the road resumed its climb, bypassing many tunnels that were only used in winter. As we approached Galtur, however, I spotted rain in the distance. "That looks like rain, Arturo!" "No, that's humidity." As the sprinkles got denser we took shelter under a hotel's awning. "Look, Arturo, that car is soaked!" "It's just wet, not soaked!" Arturo was in denial. I started looking for lodging on booking.com as he looked at the satellite info. 

I looked at all the options and decided that if we were staying at Galtur, the place we stayed at last time (Vaya) was the right place and we probably would get a better deal just by showing up than by trying to mess around with booking.com. Arturo looked up from his phone and said: "It looks bad. Getting over the pass will be fine, but the other side is absolutely pouring and it'll be a miserable descent." With that, we gave up and rode up the hill to the central bus stop at Galtur. We parked out bikes outside and walked into the Vaya hotel, where I asked for a room for 3 with half pension. The receptionist was training a new employee, so she asked us to sit down while she came up with an offer letter. 

The best thing about that situation is that she probably trained him in the use of all the discount codes and situations, so when the offer letter came it was for 152 Euros for the 3 of us, dinner, lodging, and breakfast. Arturo couldn't believe it, and kept asking if it really included dinner. "Yup!" I said, pointing to the front of the letter. 

Our room wasn't ready, so we got out our rain gear, put it on, grabbed our backpacks and our bus pass (given to us by our previous stay) and went back out to the bus stop to try to hike around the Stausee Kops. Arturo had other suggestions but they were either all closed or too hard for a day with lots of rain. 

In fact, despite the decent weather at the hotel, by the time the bus dropped us off at Kops Stausee's campground it was raining. By the time we got to the lake proper our rain gear was being put to good use. We were headed for the cable car (which was also free with the pass), for a short hike. We saw hikers coming down a steep muddy path. "Did you come from the cable car?" "Yes. It's muddy though." "Is this the only way?" "It's the only way we know of." Arturo argued for the other path on Google maps, but we decided to go for the ones where people had obviously come down. 

The hike was steep, and the rain came and went. It turned out that both Arturo and I were right --- we saw the other (much less muddy and wider) trail connect to ours right before the cable car station). We got onto the cable car, and it dumped us out to within 40 minutes walk of the hotel, but we got to the bus stop 2 minutes before the bus was scheduled to show up so we waited for the bus and took it back. 

By the time we got back to the hotel the room was ready. Our key cards were already issued before the receptionist left for lunch, so the only question was how to get into the luggage locker to get our luggage. To our surprise, when we got into the room, there was already a luggage cart with our luggage in it! "Just for that, I'm willing to give the hotel 5 stars!" Arturo declared, "They actually thought about this and were anticipated that we'll get back before the receptionist opened." 

We looked at the room and while it had a kettle, it did not have a stove, but it did have a refrigerator. We decided to walk out to the supermarket to buy lunch. There was also a bakery on the way to the supermarket. We got to the supermarket and bought ramen, sugar free, caffeine free Coca Cola, and chcocolate and fruit. They had Weisswurst but since we didn't have a kitchen we couldn't buy it. We bought sandwiches and baked pastries at the bakery and went back to our room to boil water for ramen and eat what we bought. 

After that it was still raining so we went for a swim in the hotel pool, making use of the sauna as well. By the time we were done with laundry and shower after, it was still raining so unless the towel hanger in the bathroom worked we were out lof luck for drying stuff. The reception was open so we went to ask about the towel hanger but they told us it should already be on if we turned the tap all the way to the right. Sure enough they were right! 

Dinner was the fixed menu and fortunately not Rabbit. We ate it all as well as the buffet salad bar which had a surprising amount of meat. Arturo ordered wine and to his surprise the next day that was included in the price of our stay! 

The forecast for the next day was for fabulous weather, so we were confident that we would make it over the pass and down to Buchs. Arturo debated what to do, and I showed him the video Xiaoqin shot of the Walensee route into Zurich and he decided that would be his goal. That meant he should take the train to Walenstadt while Boen and I would take the train to Glarus at the bottom of the Klausen pass so we could ride the Klausen pass the next day. After that we would decide either to visit Bowen and Xiaoqin in Bern or take the train to Goschenen and ride Sustens pass the next day. 

Review: Fast After 50

 Pierre, who's a much stronger and faster cyclist than I'll ever be (it takes him less than 5 days what it takes me 3 weeks of daily cycling to do) recommended Faster After 50 to me. I checked it out from the library.

The book's by Joe Friel, the author of the various editions of The Cyclist's Training Bible. Like that other book, the emphasis is on single day races rather than being able to sustain a steady pace of touring for 3 weeks, so it is of limited use for a touring cyclist.

For an aging cyclist, the emphasis in the book is on increasing intensity of training as the key to staving off the inevitable power and VO2 Max loss that comes about with the passing of years. The evidence and studies he cites is convincing and believable. It's obviously in defiance of the current trend of saying that zone 2 is best, or the niko niko running trend. Study after study cited by Friel in this book shows that long slow distance leads to weight gain, reduced VO2 Max and Strength, and correspondingly lowered quality of life.

Of course, the problem with aging is that increased intensity also brings about risk of injury, which can set you back far more than the less intense approach. In fact, near the end of the book Friel says that he adjusted his diet, and upped his intensity and dramatically improved his fitness only to crash and break bones and that set him back quite a bit.

Nevertheless, the book discusses what Friel considers to be a safe approach to increasing intensity with caution and a safety margin. It also mentions that runners end up cycling a lot as they age because of the reduced injuries associated with cycling vs running. (One contributor to the book mentioned that as much as 60% of her training time as a runner was spent cycling)

A small part of the book focuses on recovery (you need to sleep and stop using an alarm clock) and diet (less carbs, more protein is the recommendation). There's specific programs in the book on how to train for a specific set of events as well as how to adjust your training as life intervenes and derails you.

Hm... I might have summarized the book well enough for you to not need to read it. But it's not as bad as his other books would lead you to believe.

July 2nd: Mals to Kappl

 The morning was clear. Despite our plans to catch the 9:45am train, we were up way early, and had gotten ready by 8:00am. Rather than sit around at the apartment, we got the tandem down, left cash on the dining room table (after taking a picture), and then rode to the train station. Or rather, Boen and I rode to the train station, and there received a text message from Arturo that he had gotten a flat but rather than fix it, he would just walk/run to the train station. By the time he had arrived, we had bought train tickets to Mals from Merano for the 8:45am train, which happily took bikes. I never figured out why the train station had postings stating that the 9:45am train was the only one that took bikes. 

The train was already sitting on the track so we got in and took pictures, and then Arturo went about fixing his flat tire. I observed that his proposed replacement tube had been improperly patched, and sure enough, as soon as he started pumping up the tire, he could tell that the air wasn't staying in the tire. The second time, I helped him with my VAR tire lever tool and he replaced it with the TPU tube he'd gotten from me back in California and this time the tire held. "Darn. Your tire lever outperforms mine by a lot!" Alas, the VAR tyre lever is hard to find and even harder to keep in stock. I hang on to my precious few purchased years ago in bulk precisely because of the difficulties involved in acquiring one. 

The train took us past villages we'd ridden past just 4 days ago, yet it seemed a long time ago, since so much had happened. One of the best things about cycle touring is that days are so eventful, scenery changes so meaningful that your brain has no way to compress all those events and so even asking what you had 2 days ago for breakfast makes you look back and think "that was so long ago!" 

At Mals, we got off the train and immediately started riding up the pass towards Reschen pass. At the train station a couple on heavily loaded bicycles looked at us and told us they were going to hop on the train to Nauders. I saw no reason to do so, since the bus was slow and taking the tandem apart was an ordeal, so we rode on. 

I remembered the descent as full of steep grades, but with the rest day behind us, the grades weren't nearly as bad as I remembered and soon we were pedaling alongside the Reschensee, reading the placard at the side that informed us that the dam had been completed but no one in the drowned village had been informed. "A clear case of malicious intent" Arturo declared. 

The ride around the various lakes around Reschen is great. It's a lot of fun and there were many locations that looked stunning. You can't speed through it, but even in the uphill direction it wasn't very challenging after the climb up from Mals. Once at the end of the lake we stopped at the lakeside playground where Boen did several runs on the zipline. When he was finished we ate chocolate chip cookies and proceeded to the pass itself, which was drawn at the Italian border, but actually reached its apex just past the lake. 

At the border we stopped for a picture, and then rode down to Nauders for lunch at the Migros. Post lunch I set a course on the GPS for Landeck and then proceeded to take the car road instead of the bike route, confident that we could keep up with cars on the descent to Prutz. I wasn't wrong. While the climb up to Nauders used Nobbert's pass to get minimal traffic, on the descent we were as fast as car traffic and could zip down the various tunnels and gallery at speed. Obviously at this speed we couldn't get any photos but saved a ton of time and let us use the momentum to traverse multiple miles that otherwise could be a slog. 

How much of a slog became obvious at Prutz, where we pulled off the highway to join the bike path at a sign that looked like it meant "no bicycles" but we would later on figure out to mean "no mopeds."  From here on, we're on the Inn river bike path/Claudia Augusta. The bike path mostly goes downhill, but there were several climbs until as we neared Landeck the bike path rejoins the main road into town. Once on the main road, the descent is again fast and there's no need to return to the bike path. 

In Landeck it was only 2:30pm, so we made the decision to keep riding to Silvretta. The highway to get to the Silvretta turnoff is annoying with lots of traffic to share the road with. The climb is slow and the late afternoon heat made it quite annoying. Nevertheless, it's a short 8km so by the time we turned off it was 3:30pm and the initial descent was nice and cool, followed by some galleries that shielded us from the worst of the heat. 

The initial part of Silvretta is almost flat and the traffic while constant wasn't aggressive.  At the town of See we pulled off to check on the lodging nearby, and were about to book an apartment right there when we noticed the cleaning fee being as much as the cost to stay for the night! We looked further and settled on Kappl. If we'd known how much climbing Kappl was (it's off the main road) we would have kept on going to Ischgl. I remembered one of those 2 towns was uphill off the road from taking the bus 2 years ago but misremembered which one. 

When we got to Kappl I looked in dismay as we had to climb 150m in 2km. It was a tough grind but Boen was up to it after a rest day. The apartment was hard to find but we eventually found it. Unfortunately, no one was home. A call to the owner turned up the fact that she hadn't even check the booking we had made. She let us in by giving us her door code anyway, and promised to show up in half an hour. When she showed up she told us that it was her late mom's house and no one else was living in it, and we could park our bikes (tandem and all) in the kitchen at the lower level. 

We quickly got our backpack out and went to the supermarket before it closed for the night and bought about 60 EUR worth of food. We then made dinner and ate it all before taking a shower. Arturo went for a walk but quickly got rained on. The forecast looked good for the next day but given that it wasn't supposed to rain today I kept my expectations in check.