June 21st: Zernez to Santa Maria

 

We woke up to cloudy skies that were at least not dropping rain on us. We took our breakfast with rapidity and got out on the road but barely got in 3km before it started raining. We had just passed a covered bridge so immediately turned around and stopped at the bridge to wait out the rain. Arturo checked the weather radar and declared that it wouldn’t take more than 20 minutes. We got pictures of a rainbow as the sun struggled to rise above the weather. 

Once the rain died down, we got back on the road again, and this time made decent time up to Ova Spin, the local maximum before the road dropped 200m to the Livigno tunnel intersection. We used the momentum from the descent to make it up the climb as much as possible, having no reason to stop. At Il Fourn, the National Park Hotel, we stopped for Arturo to take on water before the climb became steeper as it approached the Offenpass. The rain came again, but fortunately we were near a building that looked like it might be a private apartment that had a big porch we could shelter in. Arturo checked the weather radar again and declared that it too will blow over. 

Sure enough in 30 minutes the sun came out from behind the clouds and we could resume the climb. The pass gets steeper as it approaches the summit but we were up to the task and got our pass photo. I’m always unprepared for how fast and furious the descent from Ofenpass is. The road banks and turns in corner after corner in wild ribbons that look like the road had been thrown down from the heavens by an angry child. You speed along as the countryside passes you by in a blur. Any traffic coming down from behind you has to be patient as there’s no place for you to pull over. 

Then suddenly there’s a lull as the road flattens out and you feel the full force of any headwind coming up from the valley and you suddenly have to pedal with your stiff legs. Then the road rolls past a ledge and suddenly you’re in full on descent mode again. This repeats 3 times, each time with the Italian border getting closer until suddenly you’re in Santa Maria and there’s a bottlenecked road where two cars cannot possibly pass each other but somehow Swiss drivers are polite enough to stop for each other at places before the bottleneck and give priority to the post bus which miraculously does not scrape it. 

Arriving at the Hotel Alpina significantly before Arturo, I waxed the chain while waiting. When he arrived I asked if we were going to stay here or commit to climbing the Umbrail. It was just past noon, but the unsettled weather meant that talking the party into a climb up 4km to Hotel Alpenrose was a futile proposition. We walked into the Hotel Alpina and met the proprietor Vanessa. We asked about the half pension and she looked at our booking and declared that it didn’t include meals. 

“Wait a minute, we have full cancellation with no penalty? Why don’t we cancel and we pretend that we just showed up and you give us the half pension?” Vanessa looked at us in disbelief. “If I cancel, I have to pay a penalty.” “But we can cancel without penalty!” She said, “Do it!” “Arturo, you sure you want to stay here and not ride up to Hotel Alpenrose?” Vanessa interjected, “That’s my mom’s hotel!” We laughed and I pushed the cancel button on my phone. When it cleared Vanessa’s hotel management system she immediately booked us into a triple room at a half pension at a great price.

 

We checked in, got out of our wet clothes and took showers. We then did laundry while Arturo looked up what to do in town. It turned out that the recommended hikes to a waterfall would take far too long and take us out of public transit range, a bad idea in unsettled weather. We opted for a much more straightforward if potentially more boring walk to the town of Mustair where there was a famous church. 

The walk was not the most exciting in the world, paralleling the main road, but the slow pace was actually not bad for showing us local farms with goats, lambs, and even a curious cat. Every so often we’d feel a rain drop or see a rain cloud dumping on a hillside or faraway town. What took getting used to was the constant sound of gunfire. Arturo explained that every Swiss male had to serve in the military, and after the mandatory service once a year they still had to take a shooting test. The consequence of failing the shooting test is more time spent taking a refresher class on shooting, so the folks who were supposed to be tested soon were now in a practice frenzy. Being from the US hiking while listening to gunfire is pretty normal, but this was the first time I’d experienced it in Europe. Upon getting to town we’d just missed a bus so that made the church visit mandatory. 

The church museum was OK, but nothing special to my eyes though there was a surprising crowd in the museum and store! By the time we were done it was too late to hike back up to the central bus stop with its neighboring cafes. Besides, rain was starting so we just waited for the bus at the church and took it back to Santa Maria where we walked to the supermarket for ice cream and a drink I’d never seen before and so felt compelled to try. To justify our stay in Santa Maria right after I finished the drink and got back the bottle deposit from the supermarket it started raining and we made it back to the hotel just in time to watch the heavens open up! 

Dinner was passable if not terribly exciting, and after dinner the rain let up enough for us to walk around some more around town. But by the time we were done we felt we’d explored the limits of what Santa Maria had to offer. A look at the forecast showed that while Sunday was a lost cause everywhere the weather would turn for the better after that meaning a visit to Bormio would be in order. 

We booked a 3 night stay at an apartment in Bormio and made plans to be there. So Sunday would be a rest day but after the efforts of the past few days we all could use a rest. 

 

Reread: A Fire Upon The Deep

 After Vernor Vinge died I resolved to read A Fire Upon the Deep to Boen as his next bedtime book. During the bike tour this summer I made him read 20 minutes a day in the morning, and to my surprise he finished the last one third of the book by himself because he enjoyed it so much.

The book's great. It's got humans in a cosmopolitan galaxy-spanning internet-type civilization. It's even got the same snarky trolls you find on the internet. It's got an alien pack-mind race that's unique and different. It's got transcendental intelligences and hostile AIs, and it's even got FTL existing in a universe where some parts of the galaxy have to follow relativistic laws.

What's fun is that the book's got great characters who develop and change, which rarely happens in science fiction. There's good reason that the book won its Hugo and Nebula awards, and still remains a classic 33years later.

Recommended.

June 20th: Lenzerheide to Zernez

 The morning’s breakfast was excellent, and the staff present made me realize that the restaurant we’d eaten at the night before shared the same staff as the hotel breakfast, so the two places were affiliated. After breakfast, we quickly descended down towards the main road, where we linked up with signs to Davos and Albula. The road actually climbs quite a bit before dropping down towards Filisur and the Albula pass. The climb up to Bergun (another town I’d always wanted to stay at but never did for one reason or another) was steep but in the morning cool with fresh legs it was more than doable. Past the lip into the valley we dropped into the center of town with its fountain. There was a Vogl supermarket but also a bakery. Boen had learned that supermarkets provided much faster service for ice cream, so opted for the supermarket, where I bought bananas and chocolate. I couldn’t resist the bakery, however, so we went in as well and bought some pastries to eat outside. It was clearly too early to stop here for the night. We did another weather check and decided we could at least make Zernez that day given how early we were. 

Riding up the pass road, the grade was a manageable 10%. We felt a few rain drops here and there but after the sweltering heat of yesterday it was actually welcome and made me feel like we would make a better pace than expected. The views improved and we even passed the place where Bowen and I stopped for a view of the lake but Boen did not feel like stopping. 

As we turned the corner and started to see the power line pylons leading over the pass (despite the area being a National Park!) the rain started coming down harder. We stopped to put on rain gear, being too committed to stop now. The good news was that with the rain, traffic dwindled to a trickle and by the time we reached the hospiz summit there was no traffic to speak of. Despite signs warning us that the summit hospize was closed there were clearly people inside and services were being rendered. But the rain showed no signs of stopping and I didn’t want to be stuck there, so after a brief stop for a summit picture Boen and I mounted the tandem and rode down the pass. 

I have no pictures of the descent since with rain gear on there was no chance I could reach my phone and nor was I inclined to stop for photos. Many electrons have been spilled and wasted on the virtues of disc brakes for wet mountain descents. In reality, however, sidepull caliper rim brakes work far better in the rain than most relatively new cyclists give them credit for. With Kool-stop salmon brake pads, all you need to do is pulse the brakes once in a while in the rain and the brakes will quickly clear the water on the rim and start grabbing. You won’t stop as quickly as when it’s dry but with good judgement I’ve frequently over-taken disc-brake equipped cyclists in the rain. 

Of course, traffic on the Albula today was non-existent since rain was coming down in excess of 15mm, so I had no one in front of me to overtake. We zipped down the 12% grade, a little too cold and traveling a bit too fast to enjoy the views. The sensation of speed was definitely present, but the rain drops were also striking my face fast enough for me to feel them. 

At the bottom of the pass I went straight into the town of La Punt and stopped at the first hotel on the right. We parked the bike outside, heedless of the rain pouring down on it and walked into the hotel. The hotel inside was nice and warm --- it was clearly a high end hotel, and despite our dripping all over their nice hardwood floor, the hostess immediately asked to take our jackets and seat us down in their drawing room and asked if she could bring us something warm to drink. We ordered tea. I asked if the hotel had any vacancy, and the response was that “There’s an event in town so all the hotels are fully booked.”  It looked like Zernez was our only choice. 

Arturo arrived and looked at the weather radar. It looked like the storm would dissipate after an hour. There was no question that we would stop in Zernez. Wet shoes and socks  meant that a climb up Ova Spin to Il Fourn would be unpleasant even if the rain stopped. Arturo was skeptical even about Zernez, since Google maps claimed there was significant climbing between La Punta and Zernez. I pointed out that Google Maps assumed you wouold take the bike route. “The bike route does dummy lamb things. Just take the main road. It’ll be a very fast descent.” 

Indeed, when the rain turned into drizzle and a light sprinkle an hour later, we got back on the road after paying for tea and headed straight for Zernez along the main road. There was a little bit of climbing, but it was relatively minor. At a construction traffic control light we had a postbus behind us but I wasn’t going to be stuck behind a bus if I could help it. As soon as the light changed Boen and I sprinted and stayed in front of the bus for at least 3 kilometers before there was a stretch straight enough for it to over take us. But the spell of the storm had been broken. We were now warm and flying like the wind, the tribulations of the past behind us. We made Zernez is short order, stopping at the hotel we’d picked out earlier but had made no reservations at. When they quoted us a higher price we showed them the booking.com offer and they immediately revised their price to match. 

Their restaurant was closed for the evening so we walked out to a nearby pizza place and had a pretty large meal to make up for the non-existent lunch we had that day because of the rain. We debated what to do about the next day. The weather forecast had called for increasingly poor weather but it kept being revised on what seemed like an hourly basis. If the weather was going to be bad then going to Bormio would isolate us from the train network that’s the last refuge of a touring cyclist. But I was loathe to give up on Bormio because there were two rides I wanted to do: the Motirolo pass and the Cancano Lakes rough stuff traverse that Sean Kendall had told me about. We agreed that there was no need to make a decision there and then, we would ride up over Ova Spin and Ofenpass and we could make the decision in Santa Maria. If we were worn out we could even stay the night in Santa Maria and make the decision the next morning. I did notice however that the Hotel Alpina had a triple room at a good price in Santa Maria with an unlimited cancellation policy, so we booked it.