Kekoa and I, with Piaw, Lisa, and Phil toured mostly the Swiss Alps in summer 2010. This is the first part of my trip report. The first few days were the most stressful bits, as we spent the first week trying to escape some nasty weather.
After that the trip report is mostly about riding and the pretty scenery.
This covers how we got from Munich to Bludenz, where I think we covered more miles via train than bike, along the way we were greeted by a lot of rain clouds, and cows.
This is part I of the trip report, you can find the other parts here.
June 16th - San Francisco to Munich
(Day 0: I knew travel days were stressful, but this stressful?!)
Travel days are generally tiring days, filled with crying babies on planes, kids kicking your seat, and navigational challenges at the destination city combined with jetlag. Then you end with arrival at your hotel, and promptly pass out. Mine was a bit more interesting, or disastrous, depending on your outlook of the world (I prefer disastrous, since I'm cynical and pessimistic).
Now onto our actual travels - For the flight to Munich, Kekoa and I had borrowed two Trico Iron Case hard cases (which worked beautifully), which we checked, plus we each carried a duffel bag plus a smaller bag onto the plane. After arriving at the destination airport and clearing customs, we had to get all this stuff to our hotel, which pretty much meant rolling/dragging the hard cases and carrying all the bags. First onto a train, and then a few blocks from the train station to our hotel. Let me just say now we packed the Trico cases very heavy - at around 60lbs each, lugging that around plus the 2 bags was extremely difficult.
It turns out that although the hotel and train station were only two or three blocks apart, we took a less efficient route, and we ended up having to take a break to get our bearings. Luckily, we had GPS to guide us! We stopped, stood up the bike cases, put down our bags, and took a look at where we needed to go... a-ha, we were only half a block away. So we continued on, got to the hotel, checked in, moved our stuff into our rooms, started to assemble the bikes, etc.
Then we realized we were missing my bag that contained all my gear minus bike (bike jerseys, the lovely spandex shorts, bike shoes, helmet, gloves, jacket, arm/leg warmers, lights, saddle bag, toiletries, underwear, contact lens, sunglasses...).
After thinking about it a bit, we realized we must have left it where we had stopped to consult the GPS. It had only been like half an hour, so we went back there, but of course the bag was now gone. We frantically checked the nearby shops to see if somebody had dropped the bag off, then we extended our search to the train station and it's (very hard-to-find) lost and found office. After more than an hour of searching, we decided the bag was not going to return itself to us.
At this point we contemplated just going home or touring Europe for 3 weeks, via trains, leaving the bike at the hotel... blah blah blah. I'm not sure what convinced me to go and buy a bunch of ill-fitting, extremely expensive replacements that could be passable for gear, but I did. In hindsight I'm glad that's what we did, but boy was I miserable (I admit to whining a lot, mostly to Kekoa about how the shit didn't fit as well, and shit was expensive (cycling gear is NOT cheap, especially in Munich), blah blah blah).
We managed to replace enough shit for me, Kekoa kindly let me have the remaining lighter Carradice bag and he put a heavy rack and panniers on his bike. In any event, although it was expensive, we ended up finding enough gear to allow us to actually begin the trip. That said, now that we are back home. I'm is still shopping for deals to replace some of the nicer (and better-fitting) stuff I lost. I did score some cheap Assos arm warmers tho.
A tidbit of interesting information, when we weighed the bikes at the end of the trip: Cynthia's bike fully loaded: 35lbs, Kekoa's bike fully loaded: 52lbs.
June 17th - Holzkirchen to Kreuth, Germany (~21mi/900ft)
(Day 1: Trying to out run the rain, episode 1)
Cute hotel in Kreuth - Gasthof Batzenhausl
Cute hotel in Kreuth
Before we left, we looked at the weather, and realized that Germany's side of the alps wass just going to have horrible weather for the first week. The forecast was for thunderstorms with lots of rain, not just 1-2mm but more in centimeters of forecasted rain. Piaw proposed a plan of trying to out run the rain and start from parts in Europe with less rain, which meant heading west via trains and only cycling on flat/low lands. Since wet descents didn't sound fun at all, I was all game.
We took the train to Holzkirchen, and took this path that included biking up a wet steep short section of grass. It was interesting trying to bike up wet grass... guess Garmin's definition of a road is a bit relaxed. The path from Holzkirchen was pretty nice, it was quiet, included a lot of cows, sans cowbells. We tried to moo at every herd of cows we passed, which got old pretty fast. We passed Tegernsee lake, and decided the town looked pretty big and touristy, so continued on to Kreuth.
Sad part was that it started thunderstorming, and we all got quite wet on the path to Kreuth. The first hotel we stopped at didn't have room. The lady took one look at the 5 of us sopping wet cyclists, took pity on us, and called a nearby hotel for us and made a reservation. It turned out to be an extremely cute little hotel - with a great view.
Dinner was awesomely huge, and Kekoa and I also learned that we like dunkel weissbeirs (dark wheat beers). Hmm Yum.
June 18th - Kreuth to Terfens to Innsbruck (~43miles/2000ft)
Achensee Panorama
Schloss Ambras (Ambras Castle)
Piaw and Lisa in cute picture frame
(Day 2: Still trying to out run the rain, episode 2)
We had an awesome breakfast to start with in the morning. Given the cuteness of the rooms and the ginormous breakfast, I was surprised how cheap the rooms were! Today we did our first pass in the Alps! It's a short tiny one - Achenpass, but, better some climbing than none. We also biked by a pretty lake (Achensee). Piaw also tried to introduce more rough stuff into the tour, where he prompted got vetoed by almost everyone (except Phil, because Phil never whines). The whole day it was drizzling, then pouring. By the time we stopped for lunch we were all quite wet and pitiful. At lunch everyone had a bowl of very warm soup and hot chocolate, but it didn't do much to warm me up.
We then had a steep and wet descent into Jenbach, and that's when I realized my bike shakes a bit on the descents. To this day I'm not sure what it was, the wet roads? the speed? the fenders? Nevertheless, it was scary.
Enroute to Innsbruck, by the time we got to Terfens we were sick of the headwinds, and the rain.
The three men were out voted by the two women and we hopped on the train to Innsbruck.
(Whine/Justification: at this point I still didn't have long fingered gloves. I was freezing).
June 19-20th - Innsbruck to Bludenz
(Day 3-4: STILL trying to out run the rain, last episodes 3-4)
Interesting Armor with special protection
Mr? Peacock at Schloss Ambras
After looking at the weather report, it was basically telling us there will be more pouring rain, and no one (except Kekoa, who is nuts and is still my favorite person in the whole world) expressed too much interest in climbing up to an elevation of over 2000m to greet the thunderstorms. Since in order to escape Innsbruck, we were stuck trying to climb over a pass, our first plan was to ride the train over it. Unfortunately the train lines were cut between exactly where the mountains were. I was feeling pretty discouraged. After the freezing rainy descent the day before, I was ready to put my bike on a train back to Munich and go home.
After some pow-wow (thanks guys), Piaw & Kekoa found a really cheap van rental that could fit the tandem, so they drove the bikes past where the train tracks were broken, then drove back to return the van, and then we all took the train/bus over the breakage (there were bus transfers over the breakage, but they bus wouldn't take bikes). Now we were finally setup for some riding...
During our time in Innsbruck we visited the Ambras Castle, and saw lots of pictures with chain armor, including one that had some special protection... We also walked around Innsbruck and took a few cute pictures.
Onwards to Meiringen! Where we will not see rain for many many days! And we get to actually ride! Yay!
