Alps 2024 – The Wind Down and The Return

The main event is complete, but there’s still plenty of stuff to resolve. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m at a vacation rental in Rablà (Italy). My flight back to the US leaves from Munich (Germany) on Wednesday morning. So what to do with all of that time?

Saturday

First things first.

And then we made dinner in a real kitchen, which was quite enjoyable!

Sunday

After a good night’s sleep, we decided to explore the area a bit. First we stopped by the early edition of the town festival in Parcines, which had us taking a bus up the mountainside. We stopped for a beer, listened to some local music (decidedly oom-pah-pah), discussed the intricacies of lederhosen, and then took our leave. Next on the agenda was to take the gondola up the mountain and do a bit of hiking. The weather forecast was good for the morning, but afternoon showers were a possibility.

Because the gondola took us many hundreds of meters up the mountain, our hike was “lateral” with just a bit of up and down, but mostly a flat trajectory. We were heading to a rest house about an hour away which had a full restaurant and also accommodations for hikers with bigger plans than ours.

We were enjoying our relaxing lunch, but all of the sudden we heard the telltale “boom” of thunder. This lit a fire under our butts and we started to head back to the gondola station. All of the careful planning and packing for the bike trip, but did we take our raincoats on this hike? Nope. Lucky for us the rain stayed away until we could get back to our home base. The weather was warm so even if it had rained, it would have been refreshing.

Monday

In the morning, I began my solo trek to Munich. Harald and Nicole were continuing their vacation and then eventually returning to Stuttgart later in the week. The first leg of my journey would involve a bike ride from Rablà to Bolzano, about two hours at a nice easy pace. The morning was beautiful and it was mostly downhill. Plus, it was fun to revisit Bolzano from a new direction. As I approached the city, I could see the long hillside that we had descended along some 6-7 days earlier, plus the Brenner Pass valley that we had ascended that same day. It was cool to build the mental map and connect these places from various angles, all reached via bicycle!

I was headed to Bolzano to catch the bus to Munich and I had tickets for me and my bike. I was ahead of schedule, so I just hung around the bus station and watched people and buses come and go. Then I started getting messages about the bus being delayed and I started to get nervous. I chatted with other people and nobody else was headed to Munich, which made me more nervous. Strangely, there were a lot of people headed to Monaco, which is a very small enclave/country in the south of France. It seemed an odd destination for a bus in northern Italy, but who was I to second-guess. Well to skip over a bunch of ‘learnins’, it turns out that Munich in Italian is Monaco, so all of these people headed to Monaco were actually headed to Munich. That was a relief! Thanks to Harald for pointing that out over WhatsApp!

The bus eventually arrived, about 90 minutes late. Unfortunately, it lacked bike racks so my bike ended up getting tossed on top of another bike under the bus for the five hour journey. At that point, I was anxious to continue and wasn’t precious at all about my bike. Also, I was supposed to have a reserved seat, but apparently with the different bus came a free-for-all seating arrangement. Oh well, go with the flow!

The bus ride was long with plenty of traffic due to construction and other stops, such as an intense passport check as we entered Germany. So much for open borders!

We eventually arrived in Munich (several hours late) and I collected my bike and rode off to find my hotel, only a few blocks away. Well, the first hotel I went to was, in fact, the wrong hotel but it was sister-property to my hotel which was only a few blocks away. Dodged that bullet!

Waiting for my in my hotel room was my bike bag with some extra clothes, tools, and everything else I needed to pack up my bike for transport in a couple days. Harald’s parents had been very helpful and kind and shipped the bike bag from Welzheim to my hotel, which saved me an immense amount of hassle!

Then I took a quick walk to the craziest Lidl grocery store I’d ever seen, where I bought dinner supplies. Finally, I collapsed into my private little hotel room for a good night’s sleep and CNN International, in English. Ahhh.

Tuesday

Originally I wasn’t sure what my bike shipping plan was going to be, so I had budgeted an entire day to potentially find a bike box from a local bike shop, and pack the bike. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do this because I had the reusable bike bag. So I had most of a day available for sightseeing!

Except that I didn’t, because it turns out, in some cosmic twist of fate, that a bunch of riders from the Transcontinental Race no 10 would be passing through Munich during the day, including some that Liz and I have been following for years!

Earlier this year, Liz and I did a bikepacking race called Race around the Netherlands. Similar in form to the TCRno10, but smaller in scope and different in one major way: The TCR route is largely freeform, with riders free to navigate from Roubaix, France to Istanbul, Türkiye using any route they like. There are a few required “parcours” along the way in Slovenia, but at the early stage of the race there were riders spread all over Germany, Switzerland, Austria. But yes, a bunch would head through Munich and I spent all day trying to predict when and where they would show up and cheer them on. Without a fixed route, I had to learn the best bike routes in my little area of Munich and guess what route they would take. I had a few early flubs: I missed Christoph Strasser (last year’s winner of the TCRno9) by one block! All told, I saw seven riders come through including Sherry Cardona, who is one of the Youtube personalities that got Liz and I interested in the sport. It was a very cool day for me!

In between catching TCR racers, I explored a small corner of Munich, including a bit of Olympic Park. But honestly, most of my attention was on the TCR racers!

I bought some vegan donuts, a pizza for lunch, and then in the afternoon I disassembled my bike and packed it all up into the bike bag.

Then I made one last trip to an Aldi to buy dinner and rations for the long trip home. In addition, I was able to scout out the bike-bag-friendly route to the S8 train to the airport. Then I was comfortably in for the night for more CNN International and dreams of safe travels.

Wednesday

Travel day, finally! Everything was packed the night before, and I woke up early, so I was on the train to the airport an hour or two earlier than necessary. For the first time in the entire trip, I used real euro currency (vs. my phone) because the train ticket machines wouldn’t accept credit cards or contactless payment. Thanks to Harald for giving me €20 “just in case”! Otherwise I would have had to find an ATM and withdraw euros for that, or change some of the dollars I brought for just such emergencies.

At the airport check-in, the bike bag clocked in at 23kg exactly, which meant that the bike would fly for no extra cost. Woohoo!

Handing the bike over to Delta (yes, I was nervous because of their ongoing Crowdstrike IT issues!) and successfully navigating security was a relief. I’d fly to Detroit and then to Madison, without incident. After 18+ hours in transit, my bike arrived intact and Liz was waiting to pick me up.

It was a so good to be home. I hadn’t been apart from Liz for this long in… ever? And I missed her and my dogs dearly.

I’ll also just leave this here to document the ongoing saga… Friday morning I was feeling lousy and this is what I have to show:

Expect one more post about my overall thoughts on the trip, to wrap things up!