June 22: Nikolsdorf to Heilgenblut

Breakfast at the hotel was great, with the owner personalizing the softboiled eggs with smiley faces for Boen. Otto Senior showed up early at our hotel so we could do a baggage drop., Stephan and Otto rode by and then we retraced our walk from the train station back to the Drautal bike path, heading towards Lienz. At the intersection leading to Dolsach we stopped to make sure that nobody missed the turnoff, and followed my laid long ago GPS track up to the Iselsberg highway.

It was cool to start but because the road was exposed we warmed up really quickly, and pretty soon we were sweating our way up the 10% grade towards Iselbergpass. I had ridden the road before, but was always coming from Lienz in the past, so this approach was new to me until I saw the city limit sign for Iselsberg. Boen and I were well ahead of everyone except Mark, and we arrived at the Iselsberg pass in time to take a photo.

There's nothing at the pass proper of note, and the next ice cream shop I knew was at Winklern, a town I'd stayed at in the past but had nothing to recommend it. Past Winklern I remembered the ride being relatively hot and unshaded, so an ice cream stop at Winklern was a necessity. There was a SPAR supermarket but it would be closed since it was a Sunday.

The descent from Iselsbergpass was fast, and we hit it at full speed without needing brakes, reaching 46mph. At the ice cream shop, we bought ice cream. By the time we finished, Stephan, Arturo and Ben had reached us. "Our first 70kph descent!" declared Stephan. Bowen was having a slow day, and Xiaoqin opted to stay back with him. Unfortunately, I'd not given her any cash and she would discover that the shops were only taking cash that day, so she'd eventually have to eat at a restaurant that accepted a credit card.

There's an official bike path along the Unter Stanach valley, but I'd always taken the road, since the bike path looked like it did gratuitous climbing. Ben and Mark would take the bike path and reported that it was wonderful. Bowen and Xiaoqin would benefit from their advice. It turned out that early on Sunday you'd get a lot of traffic on the main road. Arturo, with his 25mm tire also preferred the main road.

It being a Sunday there was plenty of lodging, so we'd shown up without reservations. Arturo and I debated various hotels for a while but the Pension Bergkristall had good reviews and was off the main road and close to town center. We rode up to it and negotiated with the owner, showing him the deal that booking.com was offering us. He first prevaricated saying that he couldn't beat the booking.com offer, but when we pointed out to him that we were taking up all the rooms had had left he eventually caved and gave us a discount. On a Sunday with clear weather the tourist has a lot of pricing power.

We left our bags and bikes at the Pension and went downstairs to Cafe-Bar Laterndl to have a pizza lunch. Stephan and Otto showed up and told us that the campground where Otto Sr was parked was at the bottom of the town, but Otto Sr was still out riding. When Otto Sr showed up, we took the bikes out and rode down to the campground to pick up luggage and ride back up and unpacked. Mark reported that the cable car was going to close within the hour, making the cable car visit not worth the money. Boen and I then went over to the National Park Information center for ice cream and to visit the free exhibits. We were just about done when I checked the maps and noticed that Bowen and Xiaoqin were just about to arrive.

We met them outside, took photos, and went back to the hotel to shower, do laundry and change. Dinner was at Casa Antica, a restaurant with the gorgeous views of the area. The crepuscular beams coming down from the sky kept interrupting our dinners as the photo opportunities kept presenting themselves.

After dinner we walked around town. If I'd read the booklets I'd gotten from the National Park Information center more carefully I would have noticed the hikes that were available from town. Nevertheless it was gorgeous and I know what to do the next time I'm in town.

Review: 4monster Day Hiking stowable backpack

 I've had good luck with the Sea-to-Summit waterproof backpack in the past, but this year, we were planning to have several big hiking days, so I wanted backpacks with waterbottle pockets for 4 people. We ended up with a pair of 4monster Day Hiking backpacks.

These are backpacks with no structure whatosever so they can stow into a thethered stuff sack that you can't lose. Because they have no structure, if they're empty they will flop and your water bottles will fall out. Fortunately, when hiking in the alps or dolomites you're almost always stuffing the backpacks with raingear, snacks, and other items.

These packs also served as auxiliary stuff sacks for clothing when transfering equipment to and from the RV. I also used them several times when shopping for breakfast at 7 in the morning. To my surprise, these packs held up. They're not waterproof, but I used them in sprinkles a few times and they worked fine.

The packability is great, and I never had trouble stuffing these back into their stuff sacks at the end of the day (or start of the morning when packing). The price is right also. Recommended.

June 21: Untervellach to Nikolsdorf

In the morning, we discovered that some of our clothing wasn't dry. Fortunately, with a short day expected today, we expected to have time for everything to dry. Otto Senior drove the RV to Marienhof, and we proceeded to load it up with luggage and ride off along the Gail bike path. Following the bike path signs, the partly cloudy skies gave the backdrop a mythic look.

Despite the lack of direct sunlight the humdity was high and we found ourselves in need of a refill at a fountain in Wulfeniadorf, after which the bike path took us past a couple of impressive looking treehouses. By the time we got back to the Gail river, the sun had burnt off all the morning clouds and it was now quite warm in earnest. Looking for fortification before attempting the Plockenpass, we stopped at Zur Sage in Kotschach just because it had great reviews.

The place turned out to be a buffet place --- you didn't get a menu, you paid for your feed and then took as much salad, main dishes, and dessert as you like, but there was no choice. Arturo took one look at the menu and decided to visit a supermarket for lunch. The rest of us decided it was a good deal and ate up.

While the climb up Plockenpass was warm, we were climbing it from the gentler side, which topped out at 10% grade. We were pretty warm at the top and glad that we were done for the day. Descending into Oberdrauberg, we picked up our luggage at the campground and then rode over to town for ice cream. We then rolled the 6km to Nikolsdorf where more climbing awaited us before we found the Spiele-und-Buchhotel.

To our delight the hotel lived up to its name, and the tour the owner gave us was wonderful, showing us all the books and board games the hotel was filled with. "If you have any board games in mind that you can't find let me know and I'll put it from the basement!" They even had English books. Ben asked and we were also allowed use of the washing machine! We took showers, played a few games of Jenga, and then started the laundry.

There was a complication for dinner, however. It turned out that the only restaurant in town was fully booked! After having already showered and in the hot afternoon, I didn't feel like riding. However, it turned out that there was a train and with a single stop we could visit Oberdrauberg for dinner. It was a fairly long walk to the train station, and we discovered that the restuarant in town was right where we had ice cream earlier. Ben volunteered to ride because someone had to pull the laundry out of the washing machine and hang it up, and riding was the way he could make it to the train station on time.

While we were waiting for the train, I asked if I could test ride Ben's bike with a front load. He agreed and I rode it around and realized that Ben just liked the front loaded handling better than I did. I've tried front loads in the past and never liked how slow the steering of a bike felt.

The dinner took a while, as is usual for European restaurant, and by the time we finished it was nearly 8:00pm and we had to take the next train. Fortunately, the weather held and it was a cool walk back to the hotel. The next day would be the first half of the Grossglockner, and I knew I wanted to avoid staying in Winklern, but wanted to stay in Heglienblut, which I had seen from pass tours and thought would be a nice place to sleep, being relatively high and therefore much cooler than the valleys we had visited in the last two days.

June 20th: Bohjinska Bela to Untervellach

We'd coordinated the night before to meet at the Spar supermarket in Bled so we could do a luggage drop. The ride to Bled was easy, with a downhill through a tunnel along the lakeside, but the traffic was nasty. When we got to the supermarket Stephan was shopping, and it was warm enough that we started to put electrolytes into water bottles. Buying chocolate to stock up was out of the question, but we bought some bananas. The problem with having had a good breakfast in the morning is when you shop for a snack you can't imagine eating all that much the rest of the day, which is a mistake. Because it was a Friday, I'd booked a hotel at Untervellach. It was 60 miles away, but since the Gail valley had a train I figured the worst case scenario was that we would end up taking the train.

Leaving the Spar, the annoying traffic was mitigated by a bike path, and once we got into Spodnje Gorje thwe worst of the traffic died away as we entered the Radovna valley, which was a part of the Triglav National Park. The park was gorgeous, following a river along a singletrack road for a while. Traffic became practically non existent while we saw plenty of cyclists and occasional groups of hikers.

When the road left the river I knew we were going to start a climb over into the Sava valley. The climb was steep, with markings for a 18% grade, but it was short and the descent into Mojstrana where we found a supermarket and had a picnic lunch at a local park. It was warm, but the park had taps for water and shade for eating the Burek/Borek, Slovenian meat pies.

After that, we quickly found the bike path which took us through gorgeous vistas including markings for many places to go hiking, or to go visit a waterfall. I made a note to stay in the area if I ever passed through the next time for more hiking, but with 60 miles to go today we had to limit our stops. In Kranjska Gora we found what looked like a ski resort town, very fancy, and we had an ice cream as well as the Slovenian Cream Cake, fortifying ourselves for the 18% grade of the Wurzenpass separating Slovenia from Austria.

The traffic on the Wurzenpass was annoying, coupled with the exposure to the hot sun and the grade. Rather than stay together we just all rode at our own pace until we got to the border which was actually a few hundred meters away from the pass where we waited. There, we met Ben Kochie, an ex-Googler who was invited by Mark Brody. He was originally planning to meet us at Lake Bled but we were ahead of schedule so he redirected his efforts to joining us here. He told us that the road was steeper (and longer) on the Austrian side. Ben rode a custom Seven touring bike with both front and rear panniers.

When we were all together we rode down the Wurzenpass into the Gail valley where to our delight we found a tailwind that just swept us along at speed! The magic of following a Jobst route is that you know he'd had many years to perfect his routes and knew where the tailwinds were. We rode along the bike path until a descent caught us up and we took the main road instead to take full advantage of our gathered potential energy. The pace was incredible.

Stephan was told by his dad where the campervan was and we followed him to the camper van in Presseggen where we picked up the rest of the luggage before riding to Marienhof, the hotel in Untervellach. When we got to the Marienhof the folks at the hotel were nonplussed that we were a family of 4 and a group of 2. "We set up 2 3-bedroom rooms!" "Do you have a 4 bedroom room?" "No!" Well, we had no choice. Xiaoqin would have to share an apartment with both Bowen and Boen while I'd sleep with Mark and Arturo in their room. Luckily Mark and Arturo had sufficient room in their chargers so both Mark and I could plug in our CPAP machines.

Fortunately, the hotel had dinner even though it didn't have a half pension, and we filled our stomachs, especially Bowen for whom this was his longest ride. The next day was a Saturday and I had intended to stay at Oberdrauberg, which was where Jobst had previously stopped but discovered to my dismay that all hotels there were full, according to booking.com. The village one stop over, Nikolsdorf, however, had a hotel with rooms. A check on their website indicated that booking directly through the hotel was cheaper than through booking.com, so we booked the hotel through their website.

At dinner, Ben asked, "Is there a designated laundry day?" "No. We just do laundry every day, that's how we've been traveling so light!" We'd arrived late but with the wind even a little bit of rain wouldn't stop our clothing from drying overnight.

Review: dwndpump Electric Pump

 I wanted Xiaoqin's bike to be as light as possible, and one of the heaviest items in your kit is your frame pump. While there are small and light mini pumps, what I've noticed is that most of them have a wide barrel, which is a no-no. You want a narrow barrel so you can reach high pressure and each stroke volume wouldn't be insanely high.

Brad Silverberg recommended the Fumpa pump, but that was too expensive. I found the dwndpump mini pump which was $33 on sale. There are many competing pumps in the market at various price points and with various features (such as a gauge), but this was the one that was the cheapest. For an emergency pump, you care about 2 items, maximum pressure, and battery stability. I say battery stability because a pump that loses its charge and won't pump during an emergency is useless. I care a bit less about battery life, because an Anker Nano battery bank is light and will recharge this pump at least 6 times. The total weight of this pump and the anker nano is still lighter than my go-to manual pump, the Topeak Road Morph Mini G. More importantly, the size of the two will fit into an underseat saddlebag, eliminating the need for the mounting clip on the manual pump, which in the case of my Roadini, takes up the space of a water bottle cage.

I bought this pump in March charged it up, stowed it in my wife's Lynskey's saddlebag, and forgot about it until after we got back from our tour in July and went for a gravel ride. After the dirt section, I took out the pump, and inflated our tires from about 20psi to 40psi on both bikes before riding home. The tire valves get hot, so you need to take the admonition not to use this pump with a TPU tube with a plastic valve stem seriously. But it did the job and I have no doubt that as advertised, it will take a tube from 0 to 33 psi twice on a 38mm tire.

After this experience I went and bought another one for my Roadini as well as a bottle cage that will make use of the slot freed up by the pump. Call me a convert to this new style of bike pump.

June 19: Lake Bled Rest Day

Waking up early enough to get to the supermarket just as it opened, I finally felt like I was over the jet-lag. I bought eggs, butter, cereal, lactose free milk, some fruit. It felt like a lot of money at 32 Euros but that’s what it takes to feed 6 hungry cyclists.

Returning to the apartment, we made and ate breakfast. Getting out our stowable day packs we put everything we needed in the packs – towels, water bottles, snacks for the day (though not too much --- we expected to be able to buy ice cream)

We walked down to the bus stop and when the bus showed up took it 2 stops by accident even though we only paid for one. No one called us out for it and we walked out towards the lake, hoping to be able to rent paddle boards on the lake rather than renting one near the bus stop and then having to cart it down to the lake and back.

We soon came across a swimming platform where you had to pay to get access to their changing rooms, showers, and swimming area. The price seemed high so we declined. Walking on, however, we discovered one after another paddle boarding rental business closed Another 10 minutes of walking revealed why: there was the world rowing competitions happening on the Lake and at least half of it was fenced off, disrupting normal businesses.

Disappointed, we walked on and found a boatman who would take us to the island in the middle of the lake He made us wait a long time while he tried to get more customers but finally we were in the middle of that island on the lake. The centerpiece turned out to be a church with an entry free. Mark thought it was a tourist trap and declined, but the rest of us  walked in after paying the fee and found the special lucky bell ringer that if you did a good job and managed to ring the bell 3 times your wish would come true. This turned out to be quite hard as the inertial of the pulley system would tend to keep eell ringing. A huge arty of Indian tourists showed up and despite us being there first rudely shoved us aside and demanded that we line up behind them!

Rather than fight about it we left the church and walked up the bell tower, which had preserved the original geared mechanism that maintained the church clock. Then we walked around the island to find our boatman. One of the other tourists onboard asked to try rowing. Our boatman revealed that he was a former Olympian, representing the country in various rowing events. Indeed, while he made the rowing look easy, it wasn’t, as neither the other tourists nor Xiaoqin could even keep the oars in the designated brackets while applying power.

Back ashore, we bought a supermarket lunch of various local pastries known as “bureks” and ate them on the grass. Spotted a sign pointing to he Mala Osojnic trailhead Determining that it was a relatively short walk, we hiked up it to the first viewpoint despite the afternoon heat. The viewpoint was just as pretty as promised, and crowded with visitors, but we still managed to get photos.

Returning to the Lake, we finally came across a paddle board rental place that was open! We paid for an hour of rental paddle board. I took the first lap around the island, and after coming back, Boen hopped onboard and took it for a short hop. Having satisfied himself that he could still do it, he turned around and picked up his older brother and proceeded to paddle him all around the island!

In the mean time, Stephan had showed up on the tandem with Otto in tow, having ridden from their campgrond on their rest day. It turned out that the paddleboard rental place was just next to a long boardwalk that served as a swimming platform which was free. Bowen and Boen were skeptical of swimming in the lake, especially Bowen who was still concerned about his wound, but once Mark, myself, Stephan, and Otto were in the water he joined in the fun, as did Xiaoqin.

One the swimming was over, we started to look for a place for dinner On Google, there was a hotel with a restaurant with an almost perfect reviews. A call received an enthusiastic response from the resturant indicating that they would serve us. Indeed, when we arrived they had setup an outside table for us We all ordered one of the fixed menus except for Boen who ordered a single dish to save room for dessert. We would later all agree that this was one of the best meals of the trip.

By the time the meal was over it was past the bus’s scheduled stop, and it was just as fast to walk back to our apartment as to wait for the next bus. The walk itself was an adventure, but not in a scenic way, We made it back to the apartment and took turns doing showers and laundry. Arturo would later put “rest day” in quotes because we had all done so much!

Review: Supergirl - Woman of Tomorrow

 No, I still haven't seen the new Superman movie yet (I'll wait to see it in streaming video), but I read enough James Gunn interviews that when he mentioned that he fast-tracked Supergirl because it had a great script based on Woman of Tomorrow, I checked it out of the library despite my not liking Tom King's work in previous comics.

I still don't like Tom King's work. To be fair, when writing about any of the Super-characters, it's a difficult job since they have so many powers and are rarely in any real danger, even ignoring the meta-narrative that a comic book series can never kill off its title character. What I don't like about his work is that he doesn't have a good understanding of visual story-telling, so his writing has a lot of excessive verbiage even when the illustrations could do a far better job of telling the story than his mediocre writing.

In this particular story, King decides to use the device of having a non-super character narrate the story. The narrator has a particularly verbose style (though I suspect it's because King doesn't have the discipline to write a tight story), and Supergirl somehow takes a liking to her and takes her on several adventures. She does get put in real danger and the setup is stupid (Supergirl visits a planet under a red sun for her birthday so she can feel vulnerable). There are a few interesting situations (a green sun that makes Supergirl vulnerable, kryptonite weapons, etc), and we get to see Krypto and Super-horse (!!).

The device doesn't quite work, and while we get a glimpse of how super Supergirl is, I suspect the movie based on this story will have to be highly modified for it to be anything resembling a "terrific" script. This will be one of those few stories where the movie has got to be better than the book because the book is so bad!

June 18th: Rifugio Pian dei Ciclamani to Bohinskja Bela

Riding up over the pass after a generous breakfast, we discovered that the pass was labelled in both Slovenian and Italian, indicating how close to the bother we were. Indeed, after a quick descent we found the border, a bridge overlooking a river, with passport controls and customs buildings nearby, both obviously no longer used. We took photos to commemorate crossing our first border by bicycle before heading down the exhilarating descent to the market at Zaga, where we stopped for ice cream.

The next section until Trinova ab Soci was harrowing, with heavy traffic including big rig trucks and huge tour busses passing us. From there, the Komoot driven path descends to the river where a very pleasant bike path began. The ride was fast, especially with Mark Brody going to the front and pulling the tandems at speeds exceeding what the typical e-bike was legally allowed to provide assistance for.

We passed hordes of other tourists on this descent until we got to Tolmin, somehow passing Otto Sr in the process without noticing it was he had driven to Most na Soci and was riding towards us.

At Tomlin, we found a supermarket and bought a picnic lunch before riding down to the Soci river.

After lunch, we debated what to do. Stephan had had found memories of the Soci river and wanted to stay in the area, but we’d gotten there at 1:00pm and it was hot! I wanted to just hop onto the train to Bled and ride the loop to the upper Bohjinkska lake before dinner. The RV couldn’t take the tunnel train anyway and would have to drive the long way around, so we decided not to compromise.

We followed Otto Sr on his e-bike back to the RV where he had parked, grabbed our luggage, and made our way to the train station, where we had time to buy tickets for ourselves but couldn’ figure out how to work the machine to dispense bike tickets. We were not worried as other cyclists started showing up and told us to just board and let the conductor sell us bike tickets.

While waiting we looked at booking.com and booked 2 nights at an apartment at Bohjinkska Bela, the closest we could get to Lake Bled without having to pay 1000EUR/night prices. The kids were looking forward to their promised rest day, and Arturo and I were very happy to snag 2 nights at Lake Bled in the middle of the week from Wednesday to Friday rather than having to pay weekend prices.

The tunnel train that Jobst alluded to in his trip reports turned out to be really ancient, and getting the tandem aboard required that I remove my seatpost from the bike, which was still much less onerous than a coupler disassembly. Once aboard, the conductor sold us the bike tickets. The prices were all very reasonable and the train ride gave us a mild respite from the afternoon heat, despite the train not being air conditioned.

Once we got off the train at the upper Bohinjska lake, Arturo and I realized that we’d made a mistake booking near Lake Bled instead of at the upper lake. There was plenty of lodging, lots of activities, and access to Bled would have been easy by train! Well, what’ done is done. First, we made an ice cream stop, trying their local Slovenian flavors which we agreed were great. “We’re no longer in gelato country!” said Bowen with just a twinge of disappointment.

From there, we rode to the upper Lake along a series of increasingly narrow roads until we got to the one lane bridge crossing the lake outlet. There, we stopped the bikes and went down to the water for photos. Folks were out swimming, paddle boarding, boating. This was clearly a great nature destination, quite capable of supporting a couple of days of exploration all by itself. But the day was getting long, and we rode towards the main road to get to our lodging.

I was completely unprepared for the road to get even more scenic, but it did, with that narrow road leading us to cute picturesque villages where two small cars would have to negotiate passages too close for more than one car to pass. Imagine my astonishment as just before we rejoined the main road, our route took a sudden dive into a gorge. Spray filled the air from the river that had carved the gorge, providing a shock to our heat-drenched bodies and then a swift descent!

The last 8km on the main road to Bohinsjka Bela were a chore. Not only were we weary, but the road was boring with platoons of cars and trucks harassing us as we rode on the nearly level road which even occasionally climbed instead of descending as was our just due after all our work so far.

We made it to the bike path and then looked at our phone in dismay as we realized that one of two restaurants were closed, and it was the better rated one that was closer. Having no choice and depressed in spirit, we rode to the second one, which had the virtue that at least it was within 100m of our apartment. Finding it right next to a supermarket and fairly crowded, we sat down and found to our delight that the single proprietor was customer service oriented and fast.

We ordered pizza, the local sausages, and various dishes that were new to us. While the food didn’t blow us away, we were hungry and capable of eating it all. While waiting for food, I checked my phone and discovered that the apartment was one of the contactless management places. We did our registration online and they would text us instructions on how to get into the apartment.

The apartment, as might be expected, was only 100m but that 100m was entirely uphill, and when we found it we were relived. We unlocked the place, and then moved all the luggage and bikes up the narrow staircase, the latter operation requiring once again the removal of my seatpost.

Staying two nights at a place is a luxury when touring. It means that any laundry you do will have a full day to dry. All your electronics will get a chance to charge to full, and you’ll get to know the place well enough to optimize your experience.

We took showers, did laundry. Unfortunately, whie handling his bike computer Bowen dropped his Edge 830 and broke it into 2 pieces. The Edge 830 had a history of delaminating in the wet and cold and what we had put his unit through was too much.

We went to sleep, having noticed that the supermarket would be open the next morning. We made plans to visit Bled via bus and spend the day hiking, paddle boarding, and swimming. Rain swept in while we slept but was all gone by the time we woke up.

June 17: Barcis to Rifugio Pian Dei Ciclamani

Last year, while planning the 2024 Tour I created a few routes on Komoot to take us from Selva di Cardore into Slovenia based on reading Jobst’s ride reports. What makes his trip reports so special compared to many random ride reports you might find on various other websites is that Jobst provides in some extremely terse language sufficient information to replicate the routes of his tours While his reasoning for picking a route can be puzzling at times, over the years I picked up on the principles that he used: first, to climb the steep side of passes while descending the gentler sides for maximum flow during descents. Secondly, he favors roads with scenery over roads where in his words, you would ride just for exercise value. This meant that if a route was difficult you could be assured that the effort was worth it for the views. Finally, Jobst had done so much riding over the years that he knew which routes attracted a tailwind under most conditions. You would reverse a Jobst route at your own peril!

Leaving Barcis after the baggage dropoff, we immediately found a series of shorter tunnels before the 4.5km tunnel. In the early morning, the traffic was not disturbing and having been prepared for the tunnels we had our lights on and pacelined through the tunnels, which were flat or slightly downhill.

After that tunnel, we regrouped with Stephan and Otto. Of course, what did we find but almost immediately another tunnel! “I’m so glad we didn’t miss all the tunnels!” said Otto. From there on, we had a fantastic descent down to Manago, where we rode past a Spar. “Don’t ride past a supermarket!” I told Mark. “I didn’t even see it!” I’d forgotten how long it takes a new tourist to start noticing important details to a cycling group. I remember years ago when another companion didn’t notice a water fountain right across the street before I pointed it out to her!

The route Komoot picked out for us turned out to be fantastic, however, transitioning from farm country bike path to minor climbs along a gorge which granted us brief but fun descents. Judging from the various bike route signs along the way we were a long some well established bikeway that I hadn’t known about but obviously Komoot had picked out. There was even some gravel, a low overhead tunnel, and we ended up having lunch at a place that advertised that they only opened for cyclists!

The early clouds in the day warmed up and by the time we got to Tarcento to meet Otto Sr who pointed us at an ice cream spot that was satisfying, it was warm. It was warm enough that despite our weariness that I pushed hard to stay higher up on the pass, at Rifugio Dei Pian Ciclamani, which had awesome reviews. Stephan prevaricated about spending the night there, but I immediately picked up the phone and made a reservation for the 6 of us. “I trust that you are coming. I don’t need a credit card. I save the space for you,” came the voice from the other side of the phone.

Stephan had broken his Pixel 6a, which was already on its last legs at the start of the trip, so he had to find a phone shop in Tarcento before heading up to the Rifugio. Stores in Tarcento closed for a long lunch break only to re-open at 3:00pm, which was coincidentally the time at which we finished our ice cream.

We grabbed our luggage from the RV, just enough to spend the night, then headed up the road that would lead us to Slovenia. Jobst describes it as a pleasant road and to our delight it exceeded our expectations. It was shaded in all the right places, following Canyon walls and with grades that never exceeded 8% but were usually in the 6% range, so even with luggage we could spin up the pass with ease.

The Rifugio was actually 1.2km from the pass, and when we got there, Mark had already visited the pass and come back. Boen and I chose not to do it reasoning that we would get to climb that last bit in the morning. Instead we got checked in, got shown our rooms (which were much better than the dormitory-style hostel we expected), and ordered the half pension. By the time Xiaoqin and Bowen had arrived we were all settled in with devices starting to charge and Boen had already taken a shower. The sun was strong and we had a balcony with which to dry out our laundry.

We were about to sit down for dinner when we spotted Otto Sr in the parking lot with the RV having a beer. Who knew how long he had been there! We invited him to sit down with us but he demurred saying that Stephan and Otto will be here soon.

Indeed we were in the middle of dinner when Stephan and Otto showed up, delighted by the very pleasant climb and with the former brandishing a newly purchased Pixel 9a.

We finished dinner and took a walk through the nature display. Boen had a mishap where he crashed while walking, crying like he had lost a leg but when we looked at the wounds they were all surface scratches and he would be more than ready to ride hard again the next day.

Review: Everything is Tuberculosis

 Everything is Tuberculosis got great reviews from everyone so I checked it out of the library to read it. The author, John Green, wrote The Fault in Our Stars, which was a famous novel which got made into a movie, and it shows that his passion isn't in non-fiction or science, but in drama and people.

Tuberculosis has frequently been described as "Ebola with Wings." It's well deserved, and has killed a more people than any other disease in history. However, it's also eminently curable with today's antibiotics. Except what has happened is that a lot of patients who got the antibiotics would stop taking them once they felt better, which led to the rise of antibiotic resistant strains of the virus. That resulted in the rise of direct observed therapy in 3rd world countries to assuage first world donors' concerns.

John Green observed "a 2007 study found that Africans were more likely to adhere to HIV/AIDS treatment regimens than North Americans." (kindle loc 2085). Again, that had nothing to do with Tuberculosis, since as far as I know, there haven't arisen versions of HIV that have become multi-drug resistant.

The book is full of such frustrating statements where you would draw the wrong conclusions if you'd taken what Green wrote at face value. I cannot tell whether Green is making arguments in bad faith, or whether he truly doesn't understand the epidemiology. I appreciate his repeated sentiment that Tuberculosis is curable and no one has to die of it today, it's just that health infrastructure isn't equitably distributed. But that problem cannot be solved through technology, but has to be solved through politics.

I thought the amount of attention given to this book would probably be better devoted to a book written by a scientist, doctor, or epidemiologist. But hey, any attention is better than no attention to such a dreaded and horrible disease.