June 28: Trafoi to Livigno (with bus transfer from Santa Maria Val Mustair)

Late in the evening, Arturo had asked me what alternatives to Bolzano there were for getting back to Munich, as all the trains from there were booked on Sunday! I replied "Landeck", and he grabbed the last bike reservation from Innsbruck to Munich, as the train from Landeck back to Innsbruck didn't need bike reservations.

We got started at breakfast just as it opened. The breakfast was elegant and they even came by to ask us if we had egg orders. After that, we packed, delivered luggage to the RV, and began the climb to Hotel Franzenshohe where we would regroup for ice cream and snacks. The climb was beautiful and not very steep, but we would regret not starting earlier as it warmed up very quickly. We would later learn that this was the start of a big heat wave in Europe that would kill many people in the southern European countries.

Boen wasn't feeling as strong as he did yesterday, and at one point when I misjudged a corner I had to stop as another cyclist came down on the same side of the road we were on, and we had to walk. Bowen caught up to us and teased Boen for having to walk, turning the tables on their usual brotherly dynamic. Of course, Boen wasn't going to take that lying down and quickly poured on the power and distanced his brother.

At the 22nd hairpin we stopped at the Hotel Franzenshohe and had ice cream. I tried to persuade the others that the hiking trails behind the hotel were worth exploring but I got no takers. Both the heat and the remaining amount of climbing had taken their tolls on people's morale. I realized then that if you're going to schedule a hike during a bike ride, it is best to do it on the descent after the day's climbing was over. I would put this theory to the test later on in the trip.

The last 700m up to the summit was fairly straightforward, but not straight. The road zig-zags through 22 hairpins and the air got thin enough that even though we were acclimated slowed us down. But after the last hairpin the road actually becomes gentler and you get to ride that last half km in a euphoria and with lots of people cheering you on.

At the top, we got bad news. The road to Bormio was closed due to a landslide. We had seen no signs about this, and the website we consulted about it yesterday evening was updated at least a month ago. I was distressed because we had non-refundable hotel reservations in Isolaccia. After confirming that there was no way down to Bormio, we resigned ourselves. First, we ate lunch. Then, we would get our luggage from the RV. Before doing that, however, I realized that we were carrying a jersey that was too big for Boen that he never wanted to wear, so I bought a new Stelvio jersey for Boen and then we gave Stephan a bunch of equipment we weren't going to use for the rest of our tour to bring home. Otto Senior had had enough of driving steep, narrow mountain roads with an RV. Arturo had to return to Munich the next day, and Mark wanted to ride back to Zurich. This truly was the breaking of the fellowship. I had no plans other than to make it down to Santa Maria. Otto and Boen both said: "See, this wouldn't have happened if we'd chosen to ride the Silvretta instead!" We would later discover via Mark that Silvretta had a similar closure! Late spring rains really did a number on all the roads in the area.

We rode down the Stelvio to the Umbrail pass intersection, and rode down it. Unlike the last time I descended the road, I didn't have to stop to let the brakes cool, since the tandem only had the two of us on it. We stopped briefly at Hotel Alpenrose where we had stayed in 2022, and then back down to Santa Maria. At Santa Maria, we said goodbye to everyone else. Xiaoqin would observe that Boen looked unhappy, but after he saw everyone being happy and waving his social instincts took over and he calmed down instead of becoming upset.

It was 3:00pm, and Xiaoqin and I debated staying in Santa Maria. "But what's the plan tomorrow?" said Boen. "We climb over Ofenpass!" "No!" I then observed that we were right in front of a bus stop that would take us over Ofenpass to the Livigno tunnel. Livigno had a lot of lodging despite it being a Saturday, and would be higher and cooler than Santa Maria. It would also mean that the bus took us over Ofenpass. The only question was whether the bus would take our bike, including the tandem. I tried calling the postbus info line but it being a Saturday they weren't taking any calls. We had nothing to lose (there was plenty of lodging in Santa Maria), so we could just wait.

To our delight, the bus was towing a huge bike rack behind it, and the Roadini and Ritchey Road logic easily fit on it. The tandem wouldn't fit, but the bus driver calmly just opened up the bottom compartment of the bus and helped me slide the tandem into it. No decoupling. I'd never climbed Ofenpass from this direction before, and it was clear that it was much steeper and harder than from the other direction, indicating that Boen's instincts about not wanting to ride it was well founded. The scenery was nice though!

At the Livigno tunnel, we got off and stood behind some other cyclists for the Livigno tunnel bus, but when the designated time came the bus did not show up! One of the cyclists had stayed in Livigno for the past 2 weeks and we asked him if it was frequently late and he said "No, it'd always been on time." Another pair of cyclists were also caught up in the Bormio closure and were hoping to ride all the way to Bormio that evening.

Fortunately, Swiss bus drivers are a lot more reliable than Italian ones, so at the designated time, the Swiss postbus arrived and we boarded with our bikes. Once on the bus and assured that we could get to Livigno I booked an apartment near the bus stop for 2 nights.  The kids were tired so rather than made them ride all the way to Livigno I paid the absurd bus fare to go all the way downtown, reasoning that we'd get to ride to the tunnel 2 days later if the forecasts were correct.

Once downtown, however, we had to ride uphill to get registered with the apartment management company who then checked us in and released payment to the apartment owner and then we had to ride back to just past the bus stop. The apartment building was freshly built and they were still painting the garage. We were let in and showed the facilities which included a good sized kitchen. We were told that the supermarkets actually closed pretty late (at 8:00pm) and the apartment washing machine was available for us to use. So we walked out to dinner at a nearby restaurant and shopped for breakfast after placing our orders.

The kids were exhausted and it was clearly time for another rest day. I had decided that we should visit Pontresina to do their panaromic walk. Pontresina was so expensive that the money we saved by staying in Livigno would more than pay for the expensive bus + mountain funicular + cable car ride to Pontresina. The town of Livigno also had all shops open on Sunday, unlike Pontresina where no supermarket could be had. That meant we could cook dinner tomorrow night, saving us even more money. This cushioned the blow of losing our non-refundable lodging fee.

The others safely arrived at their respective lodging half way back up the climb to the Reschensee.

Review: Novelist as a Vocation

 I enjoyed Norwegian Wood enough to check out what Haruki Murakami thought about his career as a novelist. Novelist as a Vocation is an original, unique work on the topic. Murakami is humble enough not to prescribe his working style to anyone else, and his unique life means that he has a lot to offer in his thoughts.

The early essays focus on his start as a novelist, and how one day he decided to write a novel, hand-wrote a manuscript over a few months, and then decided it was trash. He then gave up pen and paper and got out a typewriter and rewrote the story in English, not his native language. He claimed that this experience forced him to use simplified language and short words, and after he was done he translated the chapter(s) into Japanese and finished the novel that way, winning a literary price. What a unique experience and insight! By the way, this probably explains why Norwegian Wood didn't feel very much like a Japanese novel. The guy is completely steeped in Western literature, music, and even culture!

His thinking about writing a novel is that a novel is a uniquely inefficient way to get a message across:

Someone whose message is clearly formed has no need to go through the many steps it would take to transpose that message into a story. All he has to do is put it directly into words—it’s much faster and can be easily communicated to an audience. A message or concept that might take six months to turn into a novel can thus be fully developed in a mere three days. Or in ten minutes, if the writer has a microphone and can spit it out as it comes to him. Quick thinkers are capable of that kind of thing. The listener will slap his knee and marvel, “Why didn’t I think of that?!” In the final analysis, that’s what being smart is really all about. (kindle loc 225)

I love that rather than the moaning and groaning about how hard writing is, he talks about how writing was never hard for him. He basically works on the side as a translator of English books, and only writes when the urge consumes him:

 I never write unless I really want to, unless the desire to write is overwhelming. When I feel that desire, I sit down and set to work. When I don’t feel it, I usually turn to translating from English. Since translation is essentially a technical operation, I can pursue it on a daily basis, quite separate from my creative desire; yet at the same time it is a good way to hone my writing skills—were I not a translator, I’m sure I would have found another related pursuit. If I am in the mood, I may also turn to writing essays. “What the heck,” I defiantly tell myself as I peck away at those other projects. “Not writing novels isn’t going to kill me.” (kindle 956)

There are some interesting things that betray Murakami's protestations about his character. Early on in the book he has an entire chapter devoted to how he was glad he didn't win this prestigious prize for upcoming new writers. Later, he writes about how the Japanese criticism of his work led him to leave Japan to write Norwegian Wood so that he didn't have to listen to the critics while he was writing. Clearly the guy is much more sensitive to criticism than he lets on.

I love that his writing habits is to do a certain number of pages a day, and then stop. No more and no less. He also has a devotion to physical fitness, having run an hour a day for almost his entire working life. This of course disturbs the common image of a writer:

I have the sense that no one is hoping that a writer lives in a quiet suburb, lives a healthy early-to-bed-early-to-rise lifestyle, goes jogging without fail every day, likes to make healthful vegetable salads, and holes up in his study for a set period every day to work. I have the anxious sense that all I’m doing is throwing a damper on people’s sense of the romantic. (kindle loc 1624)

Finally there's a great implicit criticism of Japanese academic approach to schools and teaching. Murakmi always refers to himself as being a mediocre student who effectively dropped out of school (he did finish his degree but over a period of years) to start a Jazz cafe. His criticism of Japanese schools will give you much to think about if you were to apply it to the Bay Area parenting hothouse culture:

There were lots of kids who had better grades on English tests than me, but as far as I could tell, none of them could read a book in English from cover to cover. Yet I could easily plow through an entire book. Then why were my grades in English class so mediocre? The conclusion I came to was that the goal of English classes in Japanese high schools was not to get students to use actual, living English. Then what was the goal? There was only one: for students to get high marks on the English section of the college entrance exams. At least for the teachers in the public high school I attended, being able to read books in English or have ordinary conversations with foreigners was beside the point... This goes beyond English, or the study of foreign languages. I can’t help thinking that in almost every subject, Japan’s educational system fundamentally fails to consider how to motivate each individual to improve their potential. Even now the system seems intent on going by the book to cram in facts and teach test-taking techniques. And teachers and parents live and die by how many of their students and children get into various universities. It’s all kind of sad. When I was in school my parents and teachers always warned me, “You’ve got to study as hard as you can while you’re in school. Otherwise when you grow up you’ll regret not having studied more when you were young.” But after I left school I never thought that, not even once. For me it was more regret that I hadn’t done more things I enjoyed doing. Being forced to do that kind of rote memorization, I felt, wasted my life. (kindle loc 1774-1798)

All in all, the book is short, but full of stuff worth reading. I certainly found it more enlightening or maybe even enjoyable than his fiction!

 

June 27: Pfunds to Trafoi

 

It was clear and beautiful in the morning, perfect for our climb up from Pfunds. We rode up the road a bit and then descended to the Pfunds campground to drop off our bags. After that, it was a ride on the bike path until Voderrauth, where we rejoined the main road rather than staying on the bike path.  The bike path there would take you along a series of unnecessary climbs while the road on a Friday morning had relatively little traffic.

After a few galleries, we crossed into the Swiss border and the road got appreciably smoother as it went through a series of galleries before descending down to the river at Martina. At Martina, we stopped at the water fountain to refill our water bottles and then crossed the border back into Austria to begin climbing Nobbertspass. This was my third time climbing it and it was by far the easiest, having started when fresh and on a relatively cool day.

At the top, we regrouped. Xiaoqin's power meter had drained, and with Bowen's Edge 830 broken, we just moved the battery from his power meter onto hers. My power meter battery had also drained yesterday, but I had replaced it last night. Boen's power meter battery was also drained, but I hadn't brought the charger for that power meter so it was going to stay dead the rest of the trip.

When everyone had arrived, we descended to Nauders and bought lunch at the Mpreis supermarket. We didn't eat there, however, as it was still early and I knew the perfect place for a picnic. Following the bike path towards Reschenpass, we noted big displays that indicated that there was huge cycling event soon to happen. Then I remembered that Nauders was famous for the Night Race that was happening tonight! It was a good thing we weren't planning to stay in town that evening as there was likely to be no lodging available!

Part of the bike path was closed so we backtracked a bit and then rode towards the Italian border, where we stopped to take the obligatory picture at the zero kilometer marker designating the start of the Alto Aldige bike path that could take you all the way to Lake Garda, Verona and Venice if you were so inclined.

The weird thing about the border is that the climbing doesn't stop! It keeps going uphill until just before the Reschensee. Once we hit the Reschensee, a right turn took you to a playground with a zipline, a shaded park bench, and a water fountain, ideal ingredients for a picnic lunch. Of course we had lunch there, and took turns on the zipline as well.

The ride along the Reschensee bike path is gorgeous. It's not flat, but undulates enough to grant you dramatic views of the famous half-buried church tower designating the town that was drowned when the dam was constructed, as well as the lake proper. It is truly one of the prettiest bike paths you can use and it dumps you right on top of the hydro-electric dam that created the lake. From there, it's a series of fast and furious descents starting with the Lago della Muta Haldersee and then dropping all the way to Clusio, then Laudes. The bike path has been re-routed in recent years and now there are no longer any wacky turns to unwanted places but drops you directly into Glorenza.

In Glorenza, there's a hotdog stand that Arturo has waxed lyrical about for years, having missed it last year when it was closed as we were headed down to Merano. This year it was open and he bought everyone who wanted a hotdog one! What was new to me was the fresh strawberry vending machine next to the hot dog stand, and we bought berries from there too. From here, it was a hop, skip, and a jump to get to Prato Allo Stelvio, where we filled our water bottles before starting the climb of the East side of the Stelvio in the afternoon heat.

Fortunately, this afternoon wasn't that hot, and to my surprise, since the last time we came by this way, the Italians had finished building the bike path from the bottom of the climb to the first bridge, the most annoying section of the Stelvio. This separated bike path not only granted peace and quiet to a cyclist climbing at a low speed compared with the prevailing motor traffic, but was also right next to the river, for maximum cooling effect and scenic beauty! So the climb was very pleasant, and Boen and I took advantage of it before it disappeared just before the first gallery marking the final ascent to the village of Gomogoi.

From Gomogoi to Trafoi was steep, with a short section at 12% grade, but it was also high enough that the worst of the heat was behind us. Boen and I had long gotten rid of our helmets for maximum climbing pleasure, and we arrived at Trafoi in due course at the Hotel Madatsch. At the hotel, however, we realized that Otto Senior had been riding, and wouldn't be back for a while --- it turned out that we had missed him coming the other way!

When he did arrive, we rode with him to the campground and picked up the luggage, then rode back to the hotel to check in. After we checked in, we went back just as Bowen and Xiaoqin arrived with Stephan and Otto. We got settled in. The hotel was fancy, but we'd booked cheap rooms and hence the view was better outside the hotel than from inside the room. But the room was big and the elevator worked, and there was even a balcony where we could dry our clothing!

A fancy hotel like this even had free snacks, potato chips, pop corn, etc. As we were starving, we grabbed the free stuff and sat outside to enjoy the scenery. Dinner was great, and we were starving so everything tasted good. I made multiple rounds to the salad bar, which in Italian fashion was never really refilled so the good stuff disappeared early.

After dinner, we walked up the street and discovered that the road was blocked! Arturo spoke to the manned blockade and we were told that this was the Stelvio Night event, where only bicycles, pedestrians, and so forth were allowed on the mountain until 8am! If we hadn't already paid for the hotel we might have been tempted to ride it. Well, not really, we'd already done plenty of riding that day! A glorious alpenglow surrounded us on our walk and we felt ourselves fortunate.

June 26: Mayrhofen to Pfunds (with train transfer from Jenbach to Landeck)

 

We got up, ate our Weisswurst, and got the bikes packed and ready to roll at 8:00am. The sun was shining and the bike path was easy rolling but Bowen was lagging. It took nearly two and a half hours to ride to Jenbach even though it was downhill though with a light headwind. By the time we got to the Jenbach train station, Stephan and Otto had already been cooling their heels for an hour while we bought train tickets and organized ourselves for when the train came. Otto rode along with us on the train so he wouldn't miss the experience of riding the Austrian trains.

The train to Landeck goes through Innsbruck, where we had to do a train transfer. Fortunately, that train transfer was relatively easy, and there were no other cyclists competing with us for bike parking space. On the way to Landeck, however, we could see the weather steadily getting worse and worse, with clouds first appearing and then becoming gradually darker as we approached Landeck. Stephan and Otto Sr, driving the RV on the freeway, got held up behind traffic, but that didn't matter as when the train arrived at Landeck the skies opened up and a thunderstorm blew through, necessitating that we stay at the train station for lunch to wait it out.

Arturo had a weather radar app on his phone, so he pulled it out while we had lunch. "It looks like there's a clear window of a few hours." Sure enough, by the time we finished lunch the rain had stopped, and Stephan and Otto Sr arrived. We mounted our bikes and loaded up our luggage so that we wouldn't have to depend on rendezvousing with the RV if it started raining. That way, we could just find lodging and figure it out.

The tandem led the way, with Xiaoqin and Bowen following behind but the others mysteriously fell back. I was determined to make as much headway as possible before the inevitable thunderstorm came back. Following the signs along the road I found the bike path leading out of town towards Pfunds, and it turned out to be quite pleasant and uncontested by cars. I would later discover that the others ended up on the car road and had to ride through the tunnel.

The bike path follows the Inn river, crossing it and following alongside it on the opposite side of the river from the main road. It grants you views of the power dams before dumping you out onto Prutz. Boen and Bowen had both played at the zipline playground behind Prutz but this time when we arrived it started raining. We hid under some shelters (one kindly resident even opened up his garage for Mark Brody), and soon when the rain stopped we kept going again.

I had my eyes on the Vaya hotel in Pfunds, which looked really good. It being a Thursday I didn't bother making a reservation. Past Prutz, the bike path follows a pattern where it would hit a climb, then descend into the next town before rolling on flat terrain for a bit before repeating all the way up the river to Pfunds. We made it to St Christina before it started raining again, but coincidentally we found a tunnel on the bike path just as the rain started so we had shelter right there!

Once again, the rain stopped but we could feel our luck running out. By the time we hit Mariastein it had started raining again in earnest, but we were already committed --- it was Pfunds or bust! We kept riding even though the sky was really opening up at this point and our socks were wet. But the scenery was still gorgeous. Arturo posted on Strava later that he thoroughly enjoyed it.

Arriving in Pfunds we discovered that the Vaya was full in between when I saw it had availability and our arrival someone else must have booked up the remaining rooms! Looking on booking.com we found Pension Grein, but when we got there there was no staff there. Fortunately, we had our phones and Arturo called the owner and settled us in for the evening. We parked our bikes in the garage, waxed all our chains, and then took showers. After that, the sky cleared a bit and we could walk to dinner in a light drizzle. It was an adventure and our clothing likely wouldn't dry, but that's why you always bring a set of spare cycling clothes.

At dinner, I looked for lodging for Friday. My favorite hotel, the hotel Frenzenshohe was full, but I noticed that Trafoi had an opening at the hotel Madatsch, a great location with a half pension. Arturo checked and the place was cheaper on the website directly for a half pension, so we booked it! That would place us at 1400m high, granting us a 1500m climb on Saturday, which was reasonable.

Review: Norwegian Wood

 I will confess to having bounced off prior attempts to read Haruki Murakami books, but hope springs eternal, so somehow Norwegian Wood found its way into my library queue and this time I actually read it.

Of all the Japanese novels I've read, this one feels the least Japanese. Other novels, I've read, for instance, would make references to Japanese books not available in English translation, but darn near every music/pop culture reference to this book refers to English music or American music, and nearly every book reference is steeped in English or American literature.

The book revolves around a young man who starts college a couple of years after one of his best friends commits suicide. The book has a lot of people committing suicide, making me wonder how come Japan's subways were so packed in the 1970s. Besides the aboved mentioned best friend, the best friend's girlfriend, the protagnist's new best friend's girlfriend and quite possibly another person I'd forgotten about also commit suicide.

The book's theme isn't suicide, however. It's about relationships. Again, the point of view character lives a pretty unbelievable life, but maybe college was cheap in the 1960s. Apparently despite being from a family that's not rich, he pays for his expenses solely with a part time job at a record store, and never has to be accountable to his parents, so he would skip out on classes and go on trips, etc., and still has plenty of money to go on dates, buy drinks and bullet train tickets, etc. I guess when you write fiction you don't have to be realistic.

In any case, the point of view character makes all the dumb mistakes a young adult male can make. I won't fault the author for those --- as a former young adult male I made many of the same mistakes, though not with the same wild profligarate spending (not being rich) and not having the kind of major that would have no consequences if I skipped out on them for weeks at a time.

In the end, the author makes the correct decision, but not before making a lot of questionable ones. I'm not sure I learned a lot about Japanese culture from this novel, but the novel must have rung a lot of resonances because it was apparently very popular both in Japan and elsewhere.

June 25: Mayrhofen Panoramaweg

Arturo, Mark and I got out of the apartment at 6:50am, walking to the nearest supermarket. When you visit Europe, you're used to very indifferent customer service. Some service workers even seem to think that customers are a nuisance. This store, despite being part of a chain, was tiny and had the most enthusiastic customer service agent in Europe I'd ever met. We started by buying bread and eggs, and then I spotted Weiss wurst. We bought two packets of 6, reasoning that would be two each. The customer service agent immediately reached back behind her and grabbed the special mustard that goes with Weisswurst proactively!

We then visited the other grocery store for more pedestrian needs. We also bought more sunscreen, having ran out. The kids would forever complain about the icky sunscreen, since they were much more used than our brush on sunblock which we'd successfully used for years.

The kids hadn't had Weisswurst at all on this trip before, and so they chowed down like crazy. Boen ate 3, as did Bowen. "Boen has got to be half weisswurst by now!" remarked Mark. We then got water bottles filled and got ready to visit the cable car for the Mayrhofen Panaromic walk, which Arturo had identified and confirmed with Stephan was a good one. Stephan had spent time in Mayrhofen before, so he decided to take the day off and work remotely instead. I asked him to ponder on whether he wanted to do the Stelvio or Silvretta instead. Boen got Otto to start pushing for Silvretta, since he thought that Silvretta + Klausen was much prettier than the Stelvio. Xiaoqin speculated that Stelvio would end up being their preference because it was just much more famous than Silvretta.

We walked over to the Penkenbahn cable car station and bought tickets (I bought the wrong ticket which cost a bit more) and then took the cable car up. It is a measure of the spectacular nature of the places we were going that our initial impressions were of being underwhelmed. The place was pretty, no doubt about it. It just didn't stand up to Secada or Tre Cime. I was glad we chose to stay for only 2 nights instead of doing more hiking in the area --- the location wasn't high enough anyway to stay cool, though the apartment we stayed at was cool enough even without AC.

The hike did grant us views all the way into the Italian Border, on the other side of the St Jakob/San Giacomo pass laid Sterzing, the town where we had started so many days ago. We walked past several artificial lakes and visited a mountain top church before doubling back and hiking down to the lower cable car station and riding it back to town, where we bought quick snack lunches at the supermarket before going back to the apartment to relax, get hydrated, do laundry, change into swimming trunks and then walk to the swimming pool.

The Mayrhofen swimming pool offered special rates after 3:30pm, so we bought passes and then proceeded to talk our way into the indoor area where the water slides were. There were two water slides which were on a timed schedule. One would open, then there'd be a 10 minute pause, then there would be another that would open. It was because there was insufficient staff to keep both slides open at the same time.

One of them, dubbed crazy river was the oddest water slide I'd ever seen. It had a couple of intermediate stops almost designed to stop you so you have to stand up and get onto the next stage of the slide. This looked like it was guaranteed to cause one slide user to crash into another if the previous one was slow. This was probably of no consequence if you were a kid and light, but I didn't want to be the adult responsible for slamming into a kid at high speed in a water slide like this one so after trying it once I stopped using it.

The other slide was much better designed, a fully enclosed tube that sloshed you around from side to side at high speed. If you weren't careful water would get up your nose. We all enjoyed that one thoroughly and couldn't get enough.

Arturo noticed that the supermarket closed at 6:00pm, so we had to leave earlier than expected to buy dinner and breakfast. We bought Weisswurst, for breakfast, and prepared to make Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner. We also got word that Otto Senior was excited about driving the Stelvio on the RV, so we started looking at train schedules and forecasts.

The forecast for the next day was for pleasant morning and a thunderstorm in the afternoon. We could take the train to Jenbach and then to Landeck where the climb to Reschen pass started, but that would forfeit riding in good weather. I decided to split the difference and proposed riding to Jenbach first thing in the morning, and then taking the train to Landeck and then riding up towards Reschenpass as high as possible. My preferred goal was to make Nauders, but Pfunds was also plausible. Nobody disagreed, but Stephan had a complication which was that Otto Jr really wanted to ride the train while he and his dad would do the drive to Landeck. He would have to meet us at the train station on our unpredictable schedule and then entrust his 7-year-old to the bad influence of our 13 and 10 year olds.

While dinner was being made, I checked the flat tire on the front. 

Review: Kaisnvxs SIM card for Europe

 I've always found the e-sim providers to be disappointing, with low speeds similar to T-mobile's European performance. This year, :Bowen was going to be riding his own single, which made having a phone with a data plan and voice call capability non-optional., making most data-only e-sim services not worth considering Of course, once I gave him a SIM card, Boen would be mad if I didn't give him one two, so I bought both of them the Kaisnvxs SIM card from Amazon.

12GB for $23 grants you less data than buying a SIM card locally in Italy, but on the other hand, I didn't expect to be able to buy SIM cards in Misurina, and didn't want to waste time in Bruneck or Sterzing looking for one. So this was a reasonable compromise. Having unlimited calls or SMS was also a big plus.

The SIM card activates on first use after you install it into your unlocked smartphone. That piece worked perfectly. So did the data plan --- though the kids weren't very careful with the data plans and the plans started throttling 20 days into the trip. The voice calls worked fine in Italy and Austria, but by the time we got into Switzerland it stopped working and I switched to using my T-mobile SIM card instead.

The SIM card was good value, but obviously I wasn't happy with it not lasting the 30 days as promised, and I would try a different card next year.

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.