July 15th: Shinjuku and Shibuya

We had 2 goals today, which was to buy a new camera and going to the pokemon center. After breakfast, we went to the local subway and bought subway tickets. We got up so early that Yodabashi Camera wasn’t opened yet, so we went to Shinjuku Chuo park and explored the park. Even so, we still ended up waiting about 15 minutes in front of the camera shop before it opened.

When the camera shop opened, I tested both the Sony A7C2 with the Sigma 20-200mm lens, along with the Nikon Z52 with its 24-120mm lens. The Nikon was a few hundred dollars cheaper than the Sony, but when I shot the cameras with my own SD card and then compared them in lightroom on my laptop, I decided that the extra 4mm of wide angle was more valuable than the nearly imperceptible difference in image quality as well as the longer reach at the 200mm end. The Sony A7C2 with the 20-200 was also lighter by about 276g, which is more than half a pound difference. The difference wasn’t magic—the Nikon 24-105 was an F4 constant aperture lens while the Sigma degraded quickly to F6.3, which is more than a stop and a half. However, modern cameras perform well even with the ISO set to 12000 (which would have been inconceivable on any of my now ancient cameras) so that was a wash. What really made an even bigger difference was that the A7C2 had a 33 megapixel resolution, which meant that I could crop out 50% of the photo (effectively extending the reach of the 200mm lens to 400mm) and still get an 16 mega pixel image! I got a quote from the salesman, and then we went to the video game section of Yodabashi camera to shop for video games while waiting for Map camera to open.

Yodabashi’s video game store was disappointing. Boen found Pokemon Pokopia at a good price, while I got a copy of Soras for the PS5 at a discount from USA prices, which I shouldn’t have because I later found used copies at even better prices. When Map camera opened we went in and indeed got a much cheaper quote from them, but then they told me they didn’t have international versions of the Sony A7C2! Disappointed, we went to Fuunji Shinjuku for their dipping ramen. There was a line out the door, but we finally figured out that what we had to do was to go into the store anyway, and use the machine to order food. When the food was ordered we’d get tickets to hand over to the servers. What this meant was that as soon as one party left, the next party was immediately seated and the food was already ready and served! That meant that while the line was long and the restaurant tiny, turnover was rapid and we were seated and eating within 30 minutes!

After lunch, I queried ChatGPT, detailing my disappointment with the prices at Yodabashi Camera. ChatGPT replied that BIC camera had a deal where the A7C2 (international version) bundled with the 28-60mm kit lens was on sale for less than Yodabashi’s body only price. In addition, there was a 5% coupon available online which would stack with the body and the Sigma 20-200mm so that the total package price made it not worth it to stop by Map camera for the lens and then walking over to BIC. It was already very warm when we got out of the restaurant, making Boen insist on buying an electric fan from Yodabashi camera on our way to BIC.

At BIC camera, the salesman walked me through all the steps to get the coupon, and helped me pick out a circular polarizer and a screen protector for the camera. The circular polarizer is the one last filter that you end up buying, useful for removing reflectance from vegetation as well as making rainbows look better. 81B warming filters are no longer required since you can just adjust the white balance in Lightroom. As a matter of curiosity, I asked how much the international version of the Nikon Z52 would be and he told me that Nikon Z52s in Japan never came with an English menu. What you would have to do was to buy the camera, and go to the Nikon service center and pay a fee to get the English firmware installed! That confirmed for me that my decision was the right one. I bought the camera, got out my passport and got an exemption from the sales tax right on the spot.

While we were there, Xiaoqin found some cosmetics at a good price, and we also bought floss for the kids—they’d forgotten to pack their floss. After that it was time to visit the Pokemon Center Shibuya. Boen, however, announced that he had lost his subway card! This was a big headache, and necessitated us visiting no more than 3 different places in the subway station before we found someone who could talk to the station manager to cancel the lost card and do all the paperwork so that we could buy a new one tomorrow! Boen’s card was special since it was a half priced card so unlike an adult card, same day replacement was not possible.

With that ordeal out of the way we visited the Pokemon Center. The place was a zoo! It was completely crowded. It’s clear that Pokemon was a global phenomenon and we could see lots of tourists browsing all sections of the store, and the checkout line was super long as well. Boen’s goal was to buy lots of stuffed animals and it took all our parental authority to not have him fill all of our carry on luggage with stuffed animals. We checked out and everyone was exhausted, so it was time to go back to our AirBnB.

Bowen wanted Sushi and we were done with subways. We ended up at Sushi Kaoru, which when it opened was not crowded. After dinner, we stopped by the supermarket to buy real supplies for breakfast, including dessert and ice cream and went back to the AirBnB to relax and get some sleep. The AirBnB was equipped with a washer but not a dryer, so what we had to do was to do laundry after showering, and then turn the shower room into a drying room since it had a vent and you could actually set it up to reduce humidity and then close the door.

July 13-14: San Francisco to Tokyo

Our flight from San Francisco was smooth, and since we had no baggage, we could walk through the temperature sensors, scan our passports through customs, and then get our Japanese landing visa. Surprisingly enough, despite them asking us how long we planned to be in Japan, they stamped our visa for the maximum days we were allowed to be in the country.

Getting to the Keisei Skyliner counter, we bought one way tickets to the Nippori station. The Keisei Skyliner looks like an old train and is just as rocky and rickety as an old train, but moves very fast, stopping only at a few stops and not even slowing down at all when passing through stations it is not scheduled to stop at.  While much of it was underground, there was an open air section where we looked out through (closed) windows into the night scene.

Arriving at Nippori, we got to the taxi stand and showed a taxi driver the address of our AirBnB. The ride wasn’t long, but the taxi driver actually had to circle around because he actually didn’t know where it was! We got into the AirBnB, turned on all the AC as the weather was decidedly tropical, and then walked out to the local convenience store (Family Mart) to buy some snacks for dinner and breakfast. Unlike California, Japan’s supermarkets do not open until a relatively late our (9-10am!), so they’re not a good source for breakfast food!

We expected an easy jet-lag experience because we were traveling West, but it was already quite late by the time we’d all taken showers so I took a melatonin extended release pill before going to bed.

2026 Tour of the Alps Conclusions and Thoughts

 This was a very warm year, and just like last year, we didn’t lose any traveling days to rain. Our plan to use the train to skip the hot flat sections of Italy worked out as I expected, and we got very lucky in that every road closure (other than the Col de Tende one --- and that was always a stretch goal anyway)was navigable with minimal losses to our schedule. What surprised me was how arriving in the French alps a little early was quite problematic. For instance, Col de la Madeline was pretty much devoid of any place to buy lunch except at the summit. Similarly, Isola 2000 had few places to stay. This is because European school schedules are quite late compared to California—they  don’t let kids out of school until August, when everyone in Europe appears to go on vacation at the same time. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, finding lodging seems to be quite hard—though in some cases I feel like we should have had faith—arriving in St Etienne de Tinee, for instance, we should have just looked for lodging there instead of pre-booking, as there were better places that would have been available if we had arrived early enough in the day.

Despite all that, we had a great time, and whenever I’m visiting some place that’s not the alps I still find myself asking why I’m not in the alps. I’m sad to see the effects of global warming on my favorite places in the world, but I’m afraid for now humans are saying: “you first”, when it comes to preserving the climate the species evolved in.

I’m completely sold on EVs as a result of our experience with the Volvo EX30 this trip. While charging was a pain on one occasion, most of the time it worked really well. Every time I descended a mountain on the EV I always felt happy that I was getting energy back rather than dissipating it all into the brakes. At home, charging wouldn’t be a pain since you could charge at home, and the convenience of never having to go to a gas station plus the feel good aspect of not contributing to climate change is a big plus.

July 7th: Epilogue

 We got up early, ate the breakfast we bought the day before, and then checked out of the hotel and prepared for the shuttle ride. Arriving at the airport, I found a cart and then we proceeded to roll the carts up to the departure floor in order to get checked in. The Aer Lingus checkin counter was a disaster. There was a line, but none of the counters were staffed. Eventually they started taking finally taking Dublin flight checkins at 7:30am, despite the policy being to take checkins at 7:10am.

After getting our bike boxes weighed and tagged, we still had to take them to the oversized baggage counter for their bigger X-ray machines to run over them. The good news was that this was the last time we needed to deal with the boxes until we got to San Francisco. We cleared passport control, which was no big deal this early in the morning, and then customs, giving us plenty of time to do more chocolate shopping before boarding the flight.

The flight was late, arriving in Dublin at 12:15pm, meaning that we had to rush through US passport control and customs and try to get onto the Dublin to San Francisco flight within 15 minutes. We walked fast and made it, only to realize at the gate that the flight to San Francisco was also late by about 30 minutes! There was no communications at all from the flight crew to us about any of this. Well, this gave us time to buy lunch. I wondered whether our bike boxes would make it, since this was a very tight connection.

Arriving jet-lagged and bleary back in SFO, the good news for us was that we had no customers or passport control to clear—having already done all that in Dublin. In fact, the Aer Lingus flight directly took you to the domestic terminal.

The bad news was that Xiaoqin’s bike was missing at the luggage claim oversized counter. All the other bikes had arrived, including Mark’s the tandem, and a couple of others that belonged to other cyclists. We filed a claim and then got picked up by Steve Wang.

Xiaoqin and I spent a couple of days worrying about her Ritchey Road logic, but 2 days later they finally delivered the final bike box to us. Aer Lingus continues to this day to deny our claims for compensation for the meals due to our delay imposed by them. We're still awaiting the results of an appeal to the Irish authorities, which can take as long as 6 months.

Review: A Life on Our Planet

 A Life on Our Planet is Sir David Attenborough's memoir and plea to humanity to not bollox up the planet any more for human life than it already has. The early part of the book is his memoir, detailing how he ended up being in front of the camera rather than just a producer. Unlike many TV people, Attenborough actually does have a background in science and has experience explaining the science to a lay audience.

I love the part where he talks of how the baseline has shifted in how we perceive the option:

Records and reports even from just beyond living memory, back in the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, describe an ocean that we wouldn’t recognise. Old photographs show people thigh-deep in salmon. Reports from New England tell of fish shoals so vast and so close to shore, that locals would wade in to take them with their table forks. In Scotland, fishermen would haul in a line of 400 hooks and find flatfish on almost all of them.16 Our not so distant ancestors fished with nothing more complex than hooks and nets of cotton. We now struggle to catch something edible, with technology that would take their breath away...A shifting baseline has distorted our perception of all life on Earth. We have forgotten that once there were temperate forests that would take days to traverse, herds of bison that would take four hours to pass, and flocks of birds so vast and dense that they darkened the skies. Those things were normal only a few lifetimes ago. Not any more. We have become accustomed to an impoverished planet. (page 84, 100)

When you read passages like this, you do not wonder why Tolkein's words, for instance, are full of nostalgia and sadness. Living during the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene is a sad experience, with the Earth denuded and burnt, species driven to extinction, and of course, the planet overheating.

The second part of the book describes what we can do, and there's a lot of hope. For instance, I always thought that it was pointless to have "no fishing" zones since there are no boundaries in the sea and ocean. It turns out there are studies showing that's not true:

The Marine Protected Area of Cabo Pulmo lies at the tip of Baja California in Mexico. In the 1990s, this area of sea was extensively overfished, and the fishing community, desperate for a solution, agreed to suggestions from marine scientists to set aside over 7,000 hectares of their coast as a no-fish zone. The local people describe the years immediately after the MPA was opened in 1995 as the hardest years they had ever faced. The fishing families caught very little in the neighbouring waters and had to survive on food vouchers offered by the Mexican government. Fishermen could see growing shoals in the MPA, and were often tempted to break the ban. It was only the faith the community had in the marine scientists that kept their resolve. It was at about the ten-year point that sharks came back to Cabo Pulmo. The older fishermen remembered them from their childhood, and knew they were a sign of recovery. After only 15 years, the amount of marine life in the no-fish zone had increased by more than 400 per cent to a level similar to reefs that had never been fished at all, and the fish shoals began to spread into the neighbouring waters. The fishermen caught more fish than they had done in decades, and what is more, the community had a tourist attraction on their doorstep. The men and women of Cabo Pulmo found new sources of income–dive shops, guesthouses and restaurants (page 148)

It turns out that just a bit of restraint on the part of one coastal area is sufficient to allow marine life to recover to the point where the fishermen and their descendants are economically better off than back when they fished without restraint. Seems like a no-brainer, except of course we all know people who are into "free-dumb". One of the points of the book is that just talking about climate change is insufficient--to be maximally successful we have to preserve the biodiversity of the planet and prevent the extinctions that will continue unbated if things go on like they have been.

 I have one friend (and I'm sure most of you reading this have friends like this) who love to say things like: "The planet has been warmer before, and it has recovered." Attenborough is very careful to note that when the Earth had been warmer int he past, humans did not exist, and would have a very uncomfortable time living on that warm a planet:

We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves. With or without us, the wild will return. Evidence of this is no more dramatic than that to be seen in the ruins of Pripyat, the model city that had to be abandoned when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded. When you step outside the dark and empty corridors of one of its deserted apartment blocks, you are greeted by a most surprising sight. In the 34 years since the evacuation, a forest has taken over the deserted city. Shrubs have broken up the concrete and ivy pulled apart the bricks. Roofs sag under the weight of accumulating vegetation, and saplings of poplar and aspen have burst through the pavements. The gardens, the parks and the avenues are now shaded by the canopies of oaks, pines and maples, 20 feet above the ground. Beneath, there is a strange under-storey of unkempt ornamental roses and fruit trees. The football field, which 34 years ago served as a landing pad for military helicopters sent to evacuate the city’s inhabitants, is now covered by a thicket of young trees. The wild has reclaimed its territory...The living world has survived mass extinctions several times before. But we humans cannot assume that we will do the same. We have come as far as we have because we are the cleverest creatures to have ever lived on Earth. But if we are to continue to exist, we will require more than intelligence. We will require wisdom. (pg 219, 220)

The book provides a timeline projecting the horrors in our future if we stay on "business as usual", letting capitalism and greed run rampant. The book was written in 2020, but some of the forecasts have already come to pass, though there is some relief on at least one front, which is many countries now have reduced fertility which should help unload the Earth of some of its burdens.

I sincerely hope this book is successful in its goals. But judging from the 2024 election, a large number of people just don't care or actively wish to do more harm to the planet and its life support system. I guess humanity really will try everything else before turning to doing the right thing.

July 6th: Thonon-les-Bains to Hotel Movenpick Geneva Airport

 Xiaoqin and I got up early enough that breakfast wasn’t ready yet, so we took a walk in the morning back to the viewpoint we saw last night. After breakfast, we packed up, I unplugged the fully charged car and drove it back to the hotel’s loading zone, and we loaded up the car with all luggage before Boen and I got the tandem out along with Mark. The owner of the hotel came out and said: “Can I get a picture of you and your son on the bike? It’s such an inspiration. I didn’t even think it was possible.”

With that, we rode the bike down to the lake front and followed the signs around the lake, since from
Evian on, there was actually an official bike route! The relief from traffic didn’t last long, however, since within 5km we found ourselves back onto the main road again. Fortunately, we weren’t on the main road for more than a kilometer before we got to follow the signs towards Yvoire. The road around Lake Geneva wasn’t flat, but did undulate a bit. While occasionally we saw a bike path next to us, most of the time the traffic was light enough to just stay on the pavement. In Yvoire, we deviated from the designated route long enough to ride to the bottom of the village where we could touch the lake proper before turning around riding back up. Just at the entrance of the old town we ran into Bowen and Xiaoqin, who had just parked and walked over. We took some pictures and then rode on.

From Yvoire, we rode along at a distance from the lake. The towns were still cute, but none were as pretty as Yvoire, and lake views were no longer common, being blocked by either houses and other buildings or rows of trees. Finally, the road dipped all of a sudden and I immediately felt a change in the road surface. “We must be in Switzerland now!” I told Boen. And indeed, we had just ridden over the border in Herrance. The road in France up to that point wasn’t rough, but the minute you get into Switzerland you feel it because the road feels freshly paved, and suddenly everything looks neater. The bus stops look cleaner, the streets look freshly swept, and even the flowerpots outside houses look freshly tended.

Soon, the road descended all the way to the lake shore again, and we could spy off in the distance, the grand fountain at the outlet of the lake where the Rhone continued. We’d last seen it a month ago, and it felt like we had been gone a long time. From the bridge over the Rhone, we started the climb back towards the airport, following bike paths that were now well signed. We dodged street cars and arrived at the hotel at 11:00am.

I went to the reception and showed them our left luggage tickets and they helped me get out the bike boxes. I started packing the tandem, taking things apart, and Xiaoqin arrived after an hour when I was done with as much as I could without more tools that were in the car. I checked into the hotel, getting keys and so forth (they didn’t try to charge me an early checkin fee), and after taking most of the luggage out of the car, kept packing the bikes until they were all done.

It was about 1:00pm when Mark dropped by to pick up his luggage. I then drove the car to the airport rental return, which was very little hassle, and then walked back to the hotel. The hotel gave us free city passes, which meant all the tram rides were free! We walked to the tram station with Boen’s carry on luggage and proceeded to go to downtown. To my surprise, downtown Geneva had all sorts of Tour de France pennants and posters as well, even though as far as I knew it wasn’t on this year’s route! I would investigate later and then was told that those pennants were for the Tour de France Femmes, the less predictable women’s race.

We bought quick lunches at Coop and visited the Sprungli shop in downtown Geneva. To our surprise, the Sprungli shop wasn’t a café—it only sold chocolate and you were expected to eat it at home or outside. “We only have a café at the Zurich airport and downtown Zurich,” explained the cashier. We found a shaded place to eat and drink. While we bought some Sprungli chocolate, it was all for eating while we were in Switzerland. The kids wanted to visit the Lindt store, so we walked over to the Lindt store. We explored what they have but didn’t want to commit to buying until we were ready to leave downtown. It was so warm that there was a chance the chocolate would melt in the luggage!

Walking out of the Lindt chocolate place who did we run into but Mark! He was up for an early dinner, so we went to an Asian restaurant that advertised duck. It wasn’t great but had one redeeming feature that made up for the relatively poor food: it had AC! Mark had skipped lunch and was hungry.

After dinner, we went back to the Lindt store, bought chocolate, and then took it back to the hotel. We’d already reserved places on the 6:40am shuttle to the airport so we wouldn’t be in any danger of missing the flight. We were all packed and ready for our ordeal back to the USA with Aer Lingus.

Review: Game Wizards

 Game Wizards is the history of TSR from the conception of the classic RPG as a collaboration between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, to the founding of the company until the ouster of Gary Gygax from the company it founded. It includes several pictures and important documents from that era, including internal memos, newsletter quotations, and of course, beautiful illustrations from Dave Sutherland.

As a kid growing up, I remember hearing about the disputes between Gygax and Arneson about the origins of the game. What I didn't know was that there was a massive lawsuit between Arneson and TSR. This book does a lot to explain what was going on behind the scenes.  Dave Arneson does not come off well. Apparently, he did convert chainmail into an RPG, but the guy was uninterested in writing down rules, editing, or publishing. As a result, other people did most of the work while he sat back and collected royalties.

Gygax, of course, had his different foibles. He easily antagonized fans and other industry luminaries, was egotistical, and in the end really lost interest in managing his company, preferring to live the high life in Hollywood trying to turn D&D into a media franchise rather than dealing with the nitty gritty of running a business. As a result, TSR started losing money despite growing revenues, and ended up with lots of debt. Even then, he could have salvaged his ownership stake in TSR and ignored his right to purchase shares from his business partners until it was too late. Lorraine Williams swept in and bought up the shares and then ousted him from the company he founded.

If you ever think that management doesn't matter in a running business, this story of TSR is your antidote. Good management matters a lot. One of the points the book makes repeatedly is that when Gygax and Arneson drew up their partnership, nobody thought D&D was worth more than about $300. 2 broke guys doing something for the love of hobby weren't going to engage a lawyer to draw up the contract properly, and to be honest, TSR did far more than was legally necessary to compensate Arneson. Most people at this point know that you cannot copyright game mechanics and ideas, just actual writing, so a meaner version of TSR would have been justified in deleting Arneson's name from the basic set, which was written by Eric Holmes. But then again, remember that neither Gygax nor Arneson ever had a corporate job. Gygax never even had so much as a high school diploma.

I would love a follow up on how TSR was handled post Gygax, and the rescue of TSR by Wizards of the Coast. I don't know why Lorraine Williams was so hated by the D&D community, and obviously I'd love the inside scoop on what happened when Wizards swooped in. This book is very much worth reading.

July 5th: Col des Mosses to Thonon-les-Bains

 Breakfast at the hotel was surprisingly good despite my low expectations. The food was plentiful and of reasonable quality. We did not see any other cyclists, probably because we got to breakfast late. By the time we checked out it was already 8:45, and we immediately descended down to the intersection where the route said to turn off the road to Aigle. This quickly led to another road with a construction sign, and then a “no entry” barrier which we proceeded to ignore on the basis that it was a weekend day and the construction crew was likely to be off. I have great faith in the European work ethic.

Indeed, at one point we had to walk around some construction, but we soon found other cyclists going our way as well as the other way, indicating that the construction was fairly short and that we’d get to descend more soon enough. Indeed, the descent to Ormont-Dessus soon took over and we had an easy descent. From the center of town, Mark would start his climb to Col du Pillon while we rode up the Col de la Croix pass. There was a cable car in town, but  it wasn’t running yet this early in the morning.

Col de la Croix is a minor pass, mostly wooded and while there was traffic on a Sunday we were still early enough that it didn’t bother us at all. The road was a steady 7.4% grade, and being relatively fresh we were both somewhat surprised when we reached the summit. “That’s all?” asked Boen. “Yup!” We ate the last of our cycling food, took pass photos, and hiked a trail to see a view of Mont Blanc that was underwhelming.

A bus took off from the summit and went down the hill. We gave it a few minutes before we noticed that the traffic was getting denser, so decided to descend. It didn’t take long before we caught up with the bus. The danger of doing that on a tandem is that the bus forces you to ride the brakes instead of letting the tandem roll, but fortunately at that point we were in Villars-Sur-Ollon and the bus had to stop. We overtook the bus and then let the tandem rip. From Villars to Ollon is a series of switch backs and corners. The traffic was dense but since we were moving at least as fast as car traffic were weren’t disturbed.

In Ollon, the route took us towards Aigle, where we found a café that was open and ate lunch. After lunch, we rode across the Rhone and entered the bike path. The bike path would have groups of cyclists in pacelines, riding in the opposite direction from us, occasionally with motorcycle escorts! Even more interestingly, at one point on the bike path we saw that the bike path went past the UCI World Cycling center! The event turned out to be the Portes du Soleil Cyclosportive.

Once the bike path hit the coast of Lake Geneva, the bike path disappeared and we ended up on the main road. The road was still pretty, and there was a bike lane all the way until the French border at Saint-Gingolph, where we stopped for a photo only to find that Mark had caught up to us and was right behind us! We all took pictures together, and descended down to the beach to celebrate before climbing back up to the main road and then found the dedicated bike path leading out of the city.

The bike path took us away from the main road and went up and down granting us long distance views of the lake. Lake Geneva is big enough that you couldn’t see the other side when you’re standing on the coast, so it felt almost like being next to an Ocean. The bike path dumped us back onto the main road at Locum, where we had to share the road with relentless traffic. I could see why the tourism agencies didn’t want inexperienced riding this road, but if you’ve been cycling in California you deal with traffic like this all the time. Furthermore, we knew that this traffic had a limit. We had a left turn coming up in 3km.

When  the bike computer beeped and signaled the turn, however, I saw that the road had a sign that said: “No left turn.” Well, I didn’t care. We signaled to traffic, waited for a break, and zipped across onto Route du Champ Poirier, which immediately started climbing. The day was warm and we were in the sun, but the traffic relief was immediate. There were no cars in either direction and we could use the width of the road to zig zag up the hill.

Rather than a coaset highway, this road took us through little towns that were just offset from the coast and on a ridgeline, before dropping us off at Evian-les-Bains, where of course we had to stop at the Source Cachat, the spring fed fountain that’s the bottled source of Evian water! “This tastes just like ordinary water,” said Boen, after he’d had a taste. The water was cool, it tasted good, but yeah, it’s amazing the power of marketing to get people to buy bottled water that’s just ordinary. Xiaoqin and Bowen parked nearby and showed up in time to see a guy carry a cart full of glass bottles and just fill every bottle up while folks lined up behind him.

When it came time to leave we rode down to the lake shore highway, and I noticed a big arch with a “Departee” sign on it! Without knowing it, we had ridden through what would be the start line of the Stage 16 time trial of the 2026 Tour de France! We then started noticing Tour de France pennants and sign posts all over the town. If we had known about this we might have downloaded the route and ridden the 26.1km time trial course from Evian to Thonon, but it was already warm and we had already done one pass (or in the case of Mark, two passes!) for the day, so we opted instead to ride the official bike path to Thonon-les-Bains, which took us past the Evian factory before heading back to the coast and then climbing to the center of town where we were staying at the Hotel Thonon Le Comte Rouge.

The hotel looked like a castle on booking.com, but in reality is was just a small hotel run by an Indian family. They happily parked us inside the lobby, gave us the room keys, and when we asked where to park they told us that the Place des Arts parking lot had overnight parking for 5 Euros a day, and had charging stations to boot. After confirming that the rooms had AC that could be turned on, I walked down to the parking lot and to my surprise, the lot manager confirmed that yes, it was only 5 Euros per night, and the charging stations could be occupied even when the car had finished charging, so there was no need to move the car in the middle of the night!

When Bowen and Xiaoqin arrived, we moved the luggage up to the apartments and I drove the car down (there were 6 charging spots, only one of which was taken), and parked the car and plugged it in. Other than the free charging in Bourg St Maurice, this was the cheapest charging for the entire trip, and we needed it too, because the rental contract stipulated that we were to return the car with at least 75% charge.

After we were all showered, we went out to dinner—once at Pizza Fresca, where we didn’t actually order Pizza, and once at Ni Hao Sushi, where Boen insisted on eating despite us telling him that with a name like that it was going to be run by Chinese, not Japanese. We didn’t need to do laundry that day, so we could buy ice cream and walk down to Funiculair Amont, which had beautiful views of Lake Geneva from high up. Thonon, being the finish line of the same time trial that was going to start in Evian, was as full of Tour de France decorations pennants and so on

To our surprise, the Funicular was free, so we walked down the path to the lake shore, which was a much happening place than downtown itself. It got a lake breeze which was cooler, and all the restaurants here were much busier than the ones near downtown. Of course, it also looked like it would take much longer to get service or even a single ice cream as well.

After exploring the coast line, we took the Funicular back up and walked back to the hotel. The next day was an easy ride back to our Geneva airport hotel—only 20 miles via the direct route, though Xiaoqin and I discussed meeting up in Yvoire to see one of the prettier towns on Lake Geneva. Mark didn’t have 3 bikes to pack and a rental car to return, so he was going to a ride up in the hills above Geneva before riding back to his hotel.

July 4th: Lauterbrunnen to Col des Mosses

By the time we’d eaten breakfast, finished drying all the laundry that needed drying, and loaded up the car, it was 8:30. We rolled down the main road, eschewing the bike path completely. By the time we got into the outskirts of Wildersil, there was a bike lane. After that, we climbed along an overpass and then a back road took us to the shores of Thunersee.

From outside Darlingen to Faulensee, the bike path stays more or less next to the lake, granting us pretty views. We didn’t stop for long anywhere, because we knew we had a very long day to ride, and while we had already done 30km, the climbing for the day was back loaded.

Near Spiez, we suddenly started seeing big groups of hikers, all looking very serious (hiking sticks, running vests). We would later figure out that this was Vom See zum Berg, a hiking event that took you from Spiez to the top of Schynige Platte. It sounded like a lot of walking but the amount of support you got was substantial as well.

In Spiez, we started climbing along the bike path, which took us towards the Simmental. At first, the bike path maintained a reasonable separation from the main road, but in Erlenbach, it intersected the main road and hit what looked like a bottleneck. We had to squeeze into car traffic that was practically at a standstill, and were relieved when the bike route signs steered us almost immediately off onto a side road that had signs telling automobiles that they were forbidden.

The day had warmed up rapidly, but for a good half hour we were mostly in shade which protected us from the worst of it. After Boltigen, however, the bike path really separated from the highway and began to turn into single track in places, meandering amongst farm roads and other gravel pavement. I should have taken this as a sign to look for an alternate route, but the bottleneck earlier had convinced me that traffic on any sort of main road would have been a nightmare.

Despite it being a Saturday, the farmers were out in force working hard, making lots of hay bales. Luckily none of our allergies tripped up. In any case, the heat and the random undulations of the road were our biggest challenges. We stopped in Zweisimmen for lunch at a Migros. We had gotten separated from Mark but he was at a store next to the train station. We saw lots of traffic going in the other direction but not that much traffic heading up the road. At this point I should have just decided to ride up the main road, but after joining Mark we followed the signed bike route instead.

This was fine all the way up till Oeschseite, but after that the old road did some pretty insane stuff resulting in a 20+% grade which forced Boen and I to get off and walk! This burnt all of our matches. By the time we got to Saanenmoser we were pretty beat. There wasn’t even a pass marker!

From Saanenmoser it was a gentle descent into Gstaad where we found the bike path but started riding on the road instead because the traffic seemed more preferable than the bike route we had just ridden. In Chateau d’Oex, we stopped at the Coop to buy ice cream but Mark had chosen to keep going. It was very warm and I was dreading the idea of climbing to Col des Mosses, even though it was only a 534m climb. We ate the rest of our cycling food and convinced ourselves to keep going because it was the last climb of the entire tour, or so we thought!

The start of the climb was as horrible as I thought it was going to be. It wasn’t a difficult grade, but it was completely exposed, and what traffic there was felt pretty unpleasant. Past the intersection where the turn off for Les Moulins was, however, the traffic quickly diminished and to my surprise we started getting shade! We were still pretty tired but the grade was gentle enough that we could keep pedaling, and we were not tempted by any bike path signs to do anything but stay on the main road.

After La Lecherette, the road took a quick dip and we could almost convince ourselves that we were at the summit, except that we knew that the hotel was right at the summit proper. Col des Mosses unfortunately wasn’t high enough for us to get a strong summit breeze, but we did get relief from the oppressive heat we had faced getting out of Chateau d’Oex.

At the summit sign, there was no sign of Mark so we took our summit photo without him. It would turn out that he thought there wasn’t one, and he would get his summit photo during the after dinner walk. We got to the hotel and there was Mark, who’d just finished some food. We parked our bikes and went and checked in. They first gave us directions for us to tell Xiaoqin not to park across the street since there would be a morning market there tomorrow. They then showed us to the bike locker, where a bunch of Swiss cyclists had also showed up! They were locals, having ridden from Lausuanne, and enthusiastically told us that we were on the wrong pass and should be headed to the Swiss side of Lake Geneva until I told them that the lodging was expensive and had no AC. Since they were locals, they had no need of lodging on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva and weren’t even aware of the pricing and AC differences!

We were given our room keys and we managed to get started stretching and so forth before noticing that the bathroom door didn’t close! Talking to the hotel management got them to come up and fix that before Xiaoqin and Bowen showed up. We moved in, got dressed and showered and then had dinner a la carte at the hotel restaurant before going for an after dinner walk.

Mark pointed out to me that since tomorrow was a short day, we could do another pass before riding down to Lake Geneva! His plan would have us ride to Les Diablerets and then climb Col de la Croix before dropping into Villars Sur-Ollon and descending into Aigle. It was additional climbing but not too much and would ensure we wouldn’t get to Thonon les Bains too early. Mark was feeling so good that he was going to climb to Col du Pillon as well as an out and back.

To my surprise, Boen agreed to do this, so we loaded the route onto our GPS units before going to bed.

Review: GPUTEK Mini Electric Bike Pump

 My previous pick for an electric mini pump had one fatal flaw, which was that it didn't have a pressure gauge and auto-shutoff. Those were in the $70-90 range, but then I found the GPUTEK. Contrary to its name, it doesn't have a GPU in it, but it's a small mini pump that has a gauge. It has 3 buttons, a power button (push once to turn it on, hold it down to turn it off), a + button (increase pressure) a minus button (decrease pressure, double-tap to switch between PSI and BAR). It comes with a pin to pump up basketballs or soccer balls, a hose, and 2 screw heads, one for Presta (red) and one for Schraeder (white). The hose is in case you have a plastic valve stem inner tube, so you would screw the hose into the pump and one of the heads into the pump instead, so that the pump head doesn't overheat the valve stem and melt it!

The claimed weight is 104g, which is very believable and light enough for touring use, even if you're a weight weenie. The weight of one of these pumps along with a Energizer slim powerbank will weigh less than a regular Topeak Road Morph pump. The slim powerbank doubles as a battery backup for both the pump (it's good for 2 pumps from empty) and your phone when touring, so it serves a useful function even if you never use the pump.

To use it, you first turn it on, and then use the plus and minus button to adjust to your preferred pressure in 1psi increments. This requires some patience because if you accidentally push too often the device thinks it's a double tap and switches units instead. Then you double-tap the power button to start pumping. You can also double-tap the power button to the to turn it off. Of course, the pump shuts off when it detects the correct pressure, so I never turn it off manually, allowing it to detect the pressure before shutting down. The pump is noisy compared with my luxury Silca Super Pista, but I never even considered bringing that along on tour. The way pumps work, you can either have a big compressor that's quiet and moves slowly, or you can have a small compressor that spins fast and hence makes a very loud noise. Guess what? On tour, small and light is a premium and so you put up with the noise.

All through this year's tour, we used it to top up the bike tires every other day. In the past I never bothered doing this, but this year we kept the tandem's tire pressure on the low side as recommended by the Rene Herse tire pressure calculator, and when you do that you really should top up the tire every couple of days, especially with the temperature variation and altitude changes. I probably would never bother if I had a manual pump, but with this one it was easy so I just did it. By being more diligent than usual, the pump also detected a slow leak which I verified with a bucket of water after the tour was over. (It turned out to be a manufacturing defect in a TPU tube)

I'm slowly replacing all other pumps in the house with this one. It's cost effective, light, and so far very reliable.

July 3rd: North Face Trail to Stechelberg

 After breakfast, we piled into the car (which after paying for parking would still be cheaper than a bus ticket for all of us) and drove to Stechelberg, where the cable car stations for Gimmelwald and Murren would be. Xiaoqin and I were planning on doing the North Face walk, which we had happy memories of doing during past visits to Murren. Once in Murren, however, Boen decided that he’d had enough hiking, and elected to wait at Murren for us.

The North Face trail doesn’t go over the North Face of any mountain. What it does is to give you a view of all the North Face peaks that are visible from the Murren/Gimmelwald ridgeline. In the past when staying at Murren, we’d just hop onto the Almendhubel Funicular to get to the start, but since we weren’t actually staying at Murren, and none of us had a half tax card except for Mark, that funicular wasn’t free so we opted to hike.

Leaving the village (which at this point was big enough to really be called a town—so furious is the construction of new hotels), we walked along a steep road that advertised real Murren based beef and milk and cheese, and then once above the village successfully navigated the signs towards the playground, passing a couple with kids who admitted after chatting with us that they had thought the hike to the playground was supposed to be easy. I told them that the hiking times indicated on the Swiss trails were based on a fit 25 year old park ranger that never stopped for photos, didn’t need food or water, and was fully acclimated to the altitude. Arturo, Mark, or I if we were determined and well equipped (i.e., camelback) could probably match or beat those times, but if the scenery was any good at all we wouldn’t be motivated to.

At the playground, we took some pictures and reminisced about how Bowen had use to sit in those kiddie swings and we had to push him. Now he was too much of a teenager to even want to swing!

With that, we started on the hike proper, which on a sunny day was glorious, even in drought-stricken Switzerland. Every so often there would be a placard explaining what peak was in front of you, who first climbed it, how many attempts were made, and a short write up. But to be honest you weren’t doing the hike for the placards. The views were simply amazing.

The trail had plenty of people, but it was never enough to be bothersome, and there were plenty of mountain inns where you could stop for refreshments or breaks, but we were early enough that some of them were closed and we didn’t feel the need to stop for snacks—the weather and views were too nice not to take photo breaks!

After the Schiltbach crossing, we turned off the North Face trail, following signs for Sprutz. This was Xiaoqin and Mark’s first time visiting Sprutz, which I had taken Bowen to back in 2012. Of course, he wasn’t even a year old at that time so he would have no memories of the hike or waterfall, but I remember enjoying the waterfall. The approach was a pain, since it would go down steeply on to come back up, but I wanted a photo of Bowen at the same waterfall I had carried him to when he was 1!

This visit was a far cry from the 2012 visit—not only was it sunny and warm (though in the forest surrounding the waterfall, but the shade also provided plenty of protection from the sun). Of course, those conditions also meant that the waterfall drew a lot more visitors than just Bowen and I! In fact, some of them even brought towels and swim gear and proceeded to take a shower at the waterfall! What makes Sprutz special is that just like the Staubbach falls in Lauterbrunnen, the hiking trail takes you behind the waterfall!

Past the waterfall, we had a choice—hike to Gimmelwald, or hike to Murren. I wanted to hike to Gimmelwald, since I’d never actually been to Gimmelwald, but Xiaoqin was worried about Boen being all alone at Murren, so she elected to hike to Murren to pick him up. The two villages are connected by a cable car so it would have been a short ride by cable car anyway.

The hike down to Gimmelwald was steep but manageable, though once out of the tree and exposed to the full sun it became a lot less pleasant than the waterfall hike had been. I worried that there wouldn’t be any food, since Google didn’t identify any restaurants or supermarket there, but I figured that Murren would have food even as a last resort.

I needn’t have worried. While heading towards the cable car station we spied The Honesty Shop. Next to it was Pension Gimmelwald, which advertised a lunch and also bragged about its unique Schwarz Monch beer. The backyard terrace where meals were served also had fantastic views. We sat down, ordered, and texted a picture to Xiaoqin, who had met up with Boen and after seeing the photo, talked Boen into walking from Murren to Gimmelwald! I ordered the beer, breaking my “no alcohol” rule. I reasoned that by the time I went to bed, the alcohol would have been metabolized and I would have rehydrated enough to the point where I wouldn’t be awake at 2am. I wasn’t confident enough to order the flight of beers as a tasting platter, but Mark did, and reported that all the beers were good!

Boen and Xiaoqin arrived (I’d ordered food for them while they were enroute), and had their meal. Boen refused to hike back down to Stechelberg, which the rest of us were planning to do, so we walked him to the cable car station, bought a download ticket for him, and sent him off.

We then hiked down to Stechelberg following the signs. I had low expectations for this hike, but to my surprise after an initial boring wooded section the hike walked us past waterfall after waterfall along the Lutschine river (which gave the train station ZweiLutschinen its name!), more than justifying the effort.  Mark was still frisky, and went on ahead. At the bottom, we followed signs for the Schilthorn Bahn, which was the name for the Stechelberg cable car, but I had neglected to tell Mark about this and so he missed the turn and ended up walking on the main road back to the cable car station.

The trail then gave us one last waterfall before crossing the bridge and then had us hike on the shadowed side of the valley, shielding us from the sun. At this point, the trail became wide and paved, and there were plenty of people on rented bicycles, some of whom asked us to take photos of them.

When we got back to the car, Mark and Boen were there and it was only 4:00pm. On the way back to the AirBnB, I spotted Staubbach falls and decided we should stop there and walk up. There was quite a bit of drama figuring out how to pay for parking, but pay I did, and then when I walked up I was shocked. The drought had diminished the water flow on Staubbach falls to the point where at the end of the trail where you normally looked out onto the valley through a veil of streaming water, you saw the entire village free and clear, not a drop of water to be seen. The drought had taken its toll on the most iconic of Lauterbrunnen’s attractions.

After that disappointment, we drove to the Coop to buy dinner and breakfast, but the parking lot was full. We dropped off Xiaoqin and Bowen and then parked next to the train station, and then went back to pick them up when they were done shopping.

We had dinner and did a final round of laundry before going for our after dinner walk, hiking up the road that the car was parked at which would lead to the Winteregg train station. That train line was closed for infrastructure upgrades until July 10^th, which meant we couldn’t use it, which was why we were forced into the Schilthorn cable car instead. Evening in Lauterbrunnen cooled down quickly from the afternoon heat, but we could see high up on the opposite wall Mannlichen was still bathed in sunshine.