Europe 2013: OMG SO MUCH PRETTY

September 7, 2013

I rode through the Alps today. Can you tell?

But, to start at the beginning. I was up around sunrise (amazing how sleeping in a light-colored tent pretty much makes you sync up with the sun). I had camped right at the edge of the water, and the air was hovering around 110% humidity, apparently, because the instant I put the rain fly up, it was already damp. On the inside. So this morning involved a lot of shaking off the water (not very successful) and leaving the fly out in the sun (more successful).

Even so, I managed to leave the campground and get on the road around 9:45. I saw on my way out that I'd missed the donkeys and the pigmy horse/pony just outside the campground, but decided I needed to be moving more than I needed to pet/photograph a tiny horse.

My route, according to the GPS, would land me in Altstaetten at 3:30 or so. I knew that was a big fat dirty lie, so I told Juerg 6, and didn't end up being far off. My route was from the campground near Rosenheim, through Innsbruck, and across to Altstaetten. There are two ways to do it: on the autobahn, or on landstrassen, following almosst exactly the same track. No question: landstrassen. If I'd just stuck to the freeway, I would have arrived around 2, but I also wouldn't have had the opportunity to stop for all the cool pictures.

So many cool pictures.

You know that thing, where you order your favorite food, and it arrives, and you contemplate it for a moment, and then let your inner five-year-old through, and devour it like Cookie Monster going through a Girl Scout troop? That's what this ride was like, but for pictures. I doubled back to get pictures, I pulled off to the side of the road where there was no side of the road to pull off onto, I stopped more frequently than I have so far, with the possible exception of Scotland.

A thing that "saved" me was that the sun was frequently in the wrong direction, so I wasn't even looking at the good views (though I did frequently crane my neck around to see what the view behind me or far to the side was like). If the sun had been different, it would have taken me even longer.

One of the things that I tried to capture, but was only partially successful at, was the startling rise of the Alps from the valley floor. It goes from perfectly flat farmland to 60-90% slope instantaneously. There were houses built right up to the slope, which looked so disconcerting: adorable farmhouse, LOOMING DEADLY CLIFF. There were churches built on top of the cliffs. There were houses climbing up a green hill until the sharp mountainside made building impossible. It was shockingly beautiful.

The bits of the Alps that I rode through today mostly consisted of floodplain valley floor in a narrow channel through the mountains. Everything was green, with ridiculously verdant grass on the valley floor, and prodigious scrappy trees and bushes running up to the top of the mountains. There was no snow at this time of year, but I could see how these mountains would be a completely different kind of heart-stopping gorgeous when covered with snow.

Riding the landstrasse meant that I was primarily riding through villages rather than the 100 km/h open stretches, which is part of why it took so long to traverse 315 km. There was village upon village in this valley leading to Innsbruck, and then village upon village out of the city and up to the pass. The pass I took (the name of which escapes me at the moment) was thick with ski resorts, looking a bit dusty and barren without their "correct" snowy surroundings.

The valley, particularly after Innsbruck and before the pass, was so very narrow that the landstrasse, the railroad tracks, and the autobahn all had to jockey for position, frequently crossing over or under each other. They were literally following the same path, because there was no other possible path to follow.

Because I was on the landstrasse rather than the autobahn, I got to see the actual pass, rather than the tunnel they built to make the autobahn easier to maintain when it snows. It was actually quite the non-event, without even a sign or any indication the peak of the road was behind me, except that the slope tended downward instead of upward now. I've always enjoyed posing with pass signs, so I was a little disappoined I didn't get to this time. Perhaps on my way through/out of Switzerland, I'll have an opportunity.

There was very little musing on this trip, since I was spending so much time gawking at the picture-book beauty around me, arrayed in the green grass and trees, the white houses, and the red roofs. I was vaguely aware that my butt hurt like it always does, but it seemed a lot less important today. I even found a solution to one of the zippers on my suit, which has been un-meshing itself after being zipped up. Things were just generally going really well, at least in part because all I could think about was the scenery, and where could I next safely pull over to take more photos.

The far side of the pass brought me into a much broader valley, much less closed-in feeling, although still ringed on all sides by very tall peaks. This led, slowly, to the Swiss border, where I drove past a completely unattentive customs officer who didn't even bother to wave me through, he just ignored all the traffic going past. Switzerland is, naturally, not part of the EU, so I am looking forward to goofy adventures with Swiss Francs, and they have an actual attended border, unlike the EU countries, where the only notice given to national borders is to occasionally put up a sign. Sometimes the road surface changes a little bit.

I did have one problem today, which has me puzzled. I had stopped to take a picture of a really lovely road bordered by a regular row of trees on each side, and when I got back on the bike and hit the starter button, nothing happened. No click, no dimming of indicator lights, nothing. It's like I hadn't even pressed the switch. I shuffled all the controls around and made sure everything was set right, but no luck. The bike was inert. Fortunately, with a bit of huffing and puffing and broiling myself in my suit, and I got it push-started, and continued on my way, considerably less merry than before.

I tried the starter button at a stoplight, and thought I heard it spinning, but couldn't be sure (the starter on a motorcycle typically runs through a clutch, which means you can engage the starter while the engine is running without causing any harm). I finally figured out that I could kill the motor once I was rolling and didn't have anyone behind me, then try starting it with the starter. If it didn't work, I had a couple hundred thousand Joules of kinetic energy on hand to re-start the motor by dropping the clutch. After one failed attempt (where I think I didn't try correctly, rather than there still being a problem with the starter), it started perfectly every time. No further recurrence of the problem, either.

In an ideal world, what has happened should not be possible. Unfortunately, in the real world, it could be one of about seventeen different things, and I have no idea which one it might be. I guess if it doesn't happen again, I won't worry about it, since there's nothing I can do to diagnose a problem that isn't there.

Still. Disturbing.

Interesting side-note: the running on one cylinder problem I noted in England has never come back. I can only conclude it was water in the gas, either as provided from the pump, or leaking into the tank during the rainstorm. It's the most likely answer.

I arrived at Juerg's house, which is modern and spacious and pretty awesome, just before 6:30. Dinner was served shortly thereafter, and I got to meet his wife Suzanne, and his kids, whose names have not yet been etched in my memory. All during dinner, I sat mesmerized by the views from his back yard. It's very pretty here. We talked a bit about what we should do tomorrow, and it's disconcerting to think that it's a short drive to a mountaintop, or to the Bodensee (aka Lake Konstanz), and even that Lake Como in Italy is a mere 2.5 hour drive from here. I also have a very interesting (and pretty much no-wrong-answer) choice to make for how I depart from here, and head for France on Monday.

But for now, I'm having a hard time even keeping my eyes open, so it must be time for bed. Tomorrow: Swiss adventures.