June 24: Krimml to Mayrhofen

The hotel didn't come with breakfast, but was fortunately right across the street from a Spar that opened early, so Arturo and I went to the Spar and bought breakfast, and we all gathered in Arturo and Mark's room to eat. Having a kitchen meant we could fry eggs, make coffee, and have a filling breakfast after yesterday's efforts.

In the past, I'd always ridden from Wald im Pinzgau up Old Gerlos road rather than visit the Krimml waterfall. But given that the Krimml waterfall was a centerpiece of the Tauern National Park, I decided that we should place it on the visit list, and Arturo agreed. The "new" Gerlos pass road was also a toll road, and my experience with toll roads is that meant that traffic would be manageable even if it wasn't light. Our target for the day was set for Mayrhofen, where we wanted to do more hiking. Stephan said he was feeling the strain of so many riding days in a row, and we clearly needed a rest day to dry out our clothing as well, as nothing had dried fully overnight.

We rode down to the campground to dropped our bags at the RV. Then we rode down to the Krimml waterfall. Crossing a bridge, I found what looked like a gorgeous place, but it turned out to be the waterfall therapy location, and closed to visitors from 10:00am onwards. A placard at the location told us that the therapy sessions would go on for weeks.

Turning back, we found the actual location, where we bought tickets and did the hike up to various viewpoints along the waterfall as well as down below where we could enjoy our shower. The waterfalls themselves weren't very impressive, but it was definitely worth a visit. I can see why Jobst wouldn't bother with the waterfalls on subsequent visits though!

By the time we were done with the hiking it was lunch time, so we ate lunch at the waterfall cafe. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't outrageous either. After that, it was time to bike!  We rode back out to the main road and started climbing the Gerlos road. The road is a far cry from the Old Gerlos road with its 14-18% grades, but instead granted a steady 6-8% grade, working its way around the hill, granting us better and better views of the waterfalls as we rode. My front tire felt soft, so I had to stop to put air in the tires.

It being the afternoon, once we got out of the tree cover it got warm rapidly and Boen and I just poured power into the pedals and just got the climb over with. At the summit, there was a huge toll terminal, but bikes were free and so were the bathrooms! So we made use of the bathrooms, filled up our water bottles, and then walked over to the viewing platform to wait for the others to show up. Apparently we were not the only ones to have felt the impact of the afternoon heat, as the others slowly made their way to where we were, with Bowen bringing up the rear.

When we had all eaten our snacks, we started riding down. Not having ridden this road before, I had no intel to provide the others. The road quickly intersected with the old Gerlos road intersection with a descent, and then we were at the familiar Gerlos Stauseewhere we stopped for an ice cream. There were views of the reservoir (Speicher Durlassboden) as well as goats for the kids to feed and play with. We probably spent too much time there, but it was a short day. And then there was a short climb followed by a descent to the town of Gerlos itself.  We saw cable cars and what looked like a very wealthy town, and in the future it might be a better place to stop than Mayrhofen..There was a strong headwind through town, so we had to pedal.

Past Gerlos the road once again took a big dive and the headwind was no longer an issue. The descent finally terminated in a series of hairpin turns which dropped us into Zell am Ziller. Stephan was particularly impressed. "I'd driven this in the past, but had no idea that the road felt this good on the bike! And it's not even 3 hours from Munich!" He was moving to Munich in August and this trip had affirmed that the decision was going to be a good one for cycling.  In times past, we'd just ridden down towards Jenbach from there, but this time we went up the river towards Mayrhofen. Stephan's dad had found a campground in Laubichi, and I'd identified the Black Eagle Luxury Apartments as being reasonably priced and reasonably close to town.

The river bike path wasn't hard to find, and once we got on it, it switched between gravel and pavement. Since it was just a 6km ride we didn't bother looking for alternatives and just rode along until we found the campground. The campground entrance was surprisingly hard to find, and eventually we just got bags handed over to us over the fence while I struggled to do electronic registration for the apartments on a tiny smartphone screen. The apartments turned out to be one of those zero-contact places, and we would only get entry codes after registering all the guests AND paying the guest tax.

Arriving in Mayrhofen, we found to our dismay that the apartments were right next to the main road. Fortunately, there was a well rated Smashburger place next door, so after parking our bikes and moving into the entirely adequate hotel (no AC though!) we could just walk next door and have dinner. Over dinner, I looked at our schedule and realized that we were ahead of schedule. I had originally intended to arrive in Mayrhofen on June 26th, but we'd somehow made it here on June 24th. That gave us another 6 days!

Arturo had found a panoramic hike using the cable car for the next day, and we were exhausted so after dinner we did laundry, hung up all the clothing, and went to bed, leaving tomorrow's choices till tomorrow.

June 23 2025: Heiligenblut to Krimml (with a train transfer from Zell am See to Mittersil)

The forecast for the day called for thunderstorms in the afternoon. While I was usually sanguine about rain and thunderstorms, Grossglockner is famous for bad weather. In 2008, I spent an entire Spring watching the forecast for Grossglockner every weekend to see if I could make an attempt to ride it, and the weather was so awful every weekend that I never actually made it!

Emphasizing to Bowen that he need to make every effort to reach the summit before noon, I made him drink a cup of cappuccino in the morning. Boen demurred, confident in his ability to catch his brother before the summit, despite giving him a head start, since we were stuck with delivering the luggage to Otto Senior's RV before starting the climb proper, giving us an extra 60 meters of climbing. Ben would decline the luggage service, as he had a scheduled to make today --- he needed to get to the train station at Zell Am See by 3:00pm in order to catch the train to Munich!)

We were all out of electrolytes so before starting the climb we stopped at the supermarket at the corner of the main highway (it was a Monday, so supermarkets were open again), and bought 3 tubes of electrolyte drinks. These would be sufficient to last us until the end of the trip. Two of these tubes were blackcurrant flavor, a flavor you'd never find in the USA. The other one was a green apple flavor, also another flavor never found in the USA.

Grossglockner consists of two passes, Hochtor (2504m) and Fuscher Torl (2428m), with a dip in between. The climb from Heglienblut to Hochtor is a fairly consistent 12% grade at altiitude, testing the lungs and legs of any cyclist. The good news, of course, was that the RV was carrying our luggage for us. After about 20 minutes Boen and I arrived at the toll gate, where instead of forking over cash, bicyclists get to pus a button and ride through the gate guarded by a swing arm.

From there, the scenery gets rapidly better and better, giving you grand views of the valley behind and ahead of you. At Baumstamm, we caught up with Xiaoqin, who had asked on the group chat if anyone else had seen Bowen. Fortunately, Ben had caught up to him and would ride with him to the summit. We stopped for some pictures, and then rode on, ignoring the turnoff to the Stausee. Arturo and Mark would do part of it before running out of time.

As the climb got higher the wind picked up and it stopped being hot. We came across some sheep grazing at the side of the road at a fortuitous rest stop, and Boen got off to pet the goats. At hairpin #19, there was a water fountain that let us refill our water bottles before the final push to the top of Hochtor. There, we stopped for the obligatory photos before riding through the summit tunnel, descending down to the Fuscher Lake, and then hammering up the last 200m climb to Fuscher Torl. Two corners before the Fuscher Torl, we saw Bowen, and that automatically made the engine in the back of the tandem turn up the power. We caught Bowen just before the final turn and rolled across the Fuscher Torl signpost. There, we stopped for photos, then ice cream, and then stood at the watch tower waiting for the Xiaoqin to arrive.

We had our fill of pictures, bathroom stops, and seeing the weather start to turn, decided not to wait for others, putting on our jackets.

I've always descended Grossglockner under time pressure, but this time I didn't feel very much pressure despite the rain drops. The clouds just didn't look very threatening, and I knew we could descend the road well before the thunderstorm. This time, I enjoyed looking around as we descended at speed --- great walls of mountains around us as the wind whipped past us at better than 40mph. We could have gone faster if I wasn't so impressed by the scenery that I kept stopping to take pictures! This was by far the most satisfying descent of the Grossglockner highway I'd done.

At the bottom, we rode the busy highway (which wasn't unpleasant to ride because we were just as fast as the cars!) down to Bruck, where we found a restaurant with a perfect rating on Google that served burgers. The burgers were great, but not really deserving of a 5 star rating. The others by this time had ridden down to Zell Am See, not having seen any of my signal messages to meet at the restaurant. No matter, as we made plans to rejoin them after lunch.

Riding to meet them, Boen realized he forgot his gloves and we doubled back to pick them up. By the time we'd met up with everyone else, the thunderstorm was starting to blow. That decided things for me: if we're going to wait out a thunderstorm we should do it by train, not inside a hotel. I quickly made the decision that we should ride the train to Krimml, and spend the night there. We took our luggage from Otto Senior's RV, and rode to the train station with raindrops coming down sporadically.

At the train station, we bought tickets via the app to Krimml, then booked a hotel there. Rain came down in sheets, and we saw lightning. When the rain cleared for a minute we walked over to the train platform, and there we were told that the train now only went to Mittersil, despite us having been sold bike tickets all the way to Krimml. The non-cyclists could take the bus from Mittersil to Krimml, but the bus wouldn't take bikes! This was a big change from the last time Arturo and I were here, as back then the train took us all the way to Wald im Pinzgau, just one town away from Krimml. "I can't believe the app sold us bike tickets for Krimml when the train wouldn't go there!" declared Mark. The train had a dedicated bike car, and the tandem even got its own spot, lying down on its side in the bike car!

On the train, we coordinated with Stephan, since we were quite tired and the extra 20 miles of riding wasn't going to be good with luggage. They were going to be slower than the train, so we told them not to try to meet us at the train station. Since everyone had live tracking on their phones and GPS units, we figured meeting up on the fly was feasible.

Getting off the train station in Mittersil, we picked up the Tauern Radweg, the famous bike path from the Krimml waterfall to Salzburg.  The bike path was most frequently ridden in the other direction, from Krimml downriver all the way to Salzburg, but with the broken trainline and the rain we didn't see very many cyclists at all. It was overcast and gloomy, maybe even threatening, but the rain only sprinkled on us here and there, and after half an hour, it stopped and the sun even came out, enabling us to doff our raingear.

In Neukirchen, Stephan stopped and we coordinated the luggage handoff and with our reduced load and the better weather we started making good time. The bike path detoured to and fro compared with the main road, but our stint in Neukirchen told us that the main road had so much traffic it was best avoided.

Arriving in Krimml during the golden hour, we were so late that we decided to eat dinner at the restaurant before it closed. "That last 2km felt harder than Grossglockner," said Arturo, reflecting the weariness we all had at this unexpected ride. Ordering my meals and eating quickly, I let the others get their desert while I rode to the campground to pick up our luggage and bring it to the hotel. Once the hotel had checked me in and opened up the garage, I waxed all the chains on all the bikes before we settled in for the night. Nothing we washed was going to dry (despite the hotel having the best sink to date for handwashing our laundry), but we had salvaged a day and was ahead of schedule!

Review: Camelbak Steel Podium Bottle

 Pierre Moreels told me that the best insulated water bottles are the stainless steel podiums. During this year's hot summer tour (people actually died in places like Italy and France, where AC is not commonly available), I discovered that our regular insulated podium bottles didn't keep water cool for more than a couple of hours. When I found these bottles for about $30 each, I decided to buy 2 to give them a try.

These look just like the regular insulated ones, except that they're made from stainless steel. They're much heavier than regular bottles, at 354g each. The flow rate on these bottles are great, due to a straw in the middle of the cap which allows air to enter the bottle. You can't squeeze these bottles to get more water, but I have no issues with them.

Here's how incredibly well they work: I filled them one quarter with ice, and then the rest with cold powerade. 24 hours later, they still had some ice left! In fact, your biggest danger with this bottle is that if you treat it like a regular water bottle and fill it with ice and water, after 3 hours you'll run out of water because you still have too much ice left in the bottle!

The biggest con with this bottle is that being made out of steel, unless it's a perfect fit, any metal bottle cages are going to give some rattling with this. Actually, even without a metal cage, if you have ice in the bottle you'll hear some rattling sound from the ice in the bottle! Having a plastic/carbon cage does alleviate the problem.

On cool days, I will take the trouble to switch out to regular insulated bottles or even uninsulated bottles. But on a hot summer day, these bottles are the bee's knees. Highly recommended.

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!