Summer 2008

After taking almost 4 months of vacation and unpaid leave this year, I'm sticking close to home this summer. But things could be worse - I live in a place where people come for vacations.

On June 15, I joined my friends Steve and Larry and a couple of others for a backcountry ski trip on Mt. Trelease, near the Loveland Ski area. Trelease isn't much of a peak - only 12477'/3803m - and when you're on top, everything around you seems to be higher. But it had a nice line on the northern side, and I needed to get one backcountry trip in this year.

I like to go as far as possible in my running shoes - this time I made it up to the base of the headwall before I had to put my boots on.


Steve and Larry hike in their ski boots.


Steve points the way.


Steve and Larry kick-stepping up the headwall


Yours truly heading down

I need to get some more weight on that back ski. But I've got some hamstring tendonitis, and I'm just happy to be out skiing...

I had some use-'em-or-lose-'em miles, so I took a quick trip back to Michigan over July 4th to see my parents and my brothers.

The next weekend, Sandy and I rode the Triple Bypass (120 miles with 10000 ft of climbing) for the third year in a row. It was a good ride, but we both agree that it's time to do a different ride next year.



On August 3, we had the High Altitude Hash at Berthoud Pass, so I went up early and tried to ride my mountain bike over Jones Pass. I almost made it but was turned back by snow a few hundred feet before the top of the pass.

Post-Mortem

... and the mortem thing is almost right. About half way across the Atlantic, I realized that I was getting sick. I ended up with one of the worst summer colds I've ever had - nasty sore throat, and a cough that still lingers on two months later. Maybe it's the dreaded Luxembourg Lung Fungus.

The grass in the yard was about a foot tall in many places. I have a teen-age son who is blissfully ignorant about how to use the lawn mower, so I had to deal with it myself. It was way too deep for the mower, so I spent about an hour with my two-stroke weed whacker, filling up the neighborhood with purple smoke and making more noise that a motocross race.

I went back to work the day after I arrived, and hadn't forgotten too much of what I do for a living.

Cindi spent the next two weeks touring around Normandy, visiting monasteries, battlefields and cheese shops, sleeping in airports, etc. But that's her story...

Heading Home

Monday (May 26, Memorial Day for all you folks back in the USA) was another beautiful day in Austria, but it was time to head home. We loaded up the car

and headed out the autobahn into Germany and around Munich. Anyone who tells you that all Germans drive 100mph on the Autobahn probably has never been there. This is a typical scene on most Autobahns:

a line of semis (mostly from Eastern Europe) in the right lane, and everyone else in the left lane. And there's a general speed limit of 130km/hr anyway. (But I do know a couple of stretches of Autobahn with no traffic or speed limit - I got up to 180km/hr last year.)

After a few hours of this, we left the Autobahn at Karlsruhe and headed northwest into Saarland. There are some pleasant low mountains in this area, but it's not the Alps. Eventually we crossed the Mosel River at Schengen and we were in Luxembourg, a new country for both of us. Luxembourg is clean and boring in a Swiss kind of way (but without the scenery).

Diesel is cheaper than almost anywhere else in Europe, but everything else is on the slightly pricey side. We ate at an Italian restaurant on the main square (the cheapest thing except for McDonalds)

(yes, that's a Belgian beer - there is Luxembourgish beer, but they didn't serve it) and had some good but expensive ice cream. Then it was back to our Ibis hotel (a step above the Etap which is a step above the Formule 1).

The next morning we drove across the border into Belgium looking for breakfast (and keeping an eye out for ornery people).

We found a bakery with some nice waffles and pastries, but there was no way to warm the waffles. Maybe they don't do microwaves in Belgium.


We crossed back into France and drove the backroads into Riems, where we had coffee in a PMU (off-track-betting) cafe. (No, we didn't place any bets.) Then it was onto the Autoroute (expensive tolls) to Paris and our hotel near the CDG airport. We took the train into Paris where we visited a couple of bookstores and an internet cafe before dinner at a nice but somewhat touristy restaurant.


Paris is famous for Bertillon ice cream, but at $6 for a modest cone, I let Cindi enjoy it while I watched. After a bit of a battle to find where to re-enter the train station, we took the train back to the airport area and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

The next morning I packed everything I could into my two bags, and Cindi dropped me at the terminal. I must have triggered some kind of warning, because the security people grilled me for about 10 minutes about the contents of my bags (including the large black bike box) and how I had managed to arrive at the airport. Apparently the idea of being dropped off by your wife in your car was something new to them, but fortunately Cindi was back and had the car registration to show them. My flight was uneventful, and I got lucky on the exit-row seats again. US Customs in Dallas was slow, but they didn't ask any strange questions. Andrew picked me up in Denver, and I dropped him off on campus and managed to stay awake for the half-hour drive home. The house didn't smell too bad, so I said hello to the cats, unpacked a few things and got to bed around midnight.

Mondsee 4-See Radmarathon

I've wanted to do one of the big European one-day bike tours ('gran fondos' or 'cyclosportives') for a long time, and as we plotted our route back to Paris, I realized that I could do the /Mondsee 5-Seen Radmarathon (Mondsee 5-Lake Bike Marathon) near Salzburg (on May 25, 2008). There are 4 different courses to choose from, and since I'd only gone 100km once this year, I passed on the 200km course and went for the 135km (900m of climbing and 4 out of 5 lakes) 'B' course. To prepare my bike, I'd taken off the 700x32/35 tires and put on my 700x25s (a lot lighter, but still not the fastest tire around).

The official rules for the event begin with "Der 5-Seen-Radmarathon ist kein Radrennen, sondern eine Rad-Touristikveranstaltung." (The 5-Lake Bike Marathon is not a race - it is a bike touring event.)
This is the only bike tour that I've been on that gives everyone a chip to determine their exact time, lines everyone up for a mass start, and gives awards to the top 3 in each class. But I guess I'll just take their word for it that it's not a race...
I got up a bit before 6 AM and headed downstairs to find almost all the guests at our pension already finishing breakfast. One of them explained to me that you had to get to the start at least 30 minutes early to get a good start position. I took my time and got to the start about 645, which put me slightly back of the center of the pack.

After a few speeches by local dignitaries and a blessing (including a reading from the Gospel!), they fired the cannon at precisely 700 AM and we were off. I'd expected mass chaos, but things were pretty orderly. After a kilometer or so we went through a large roundabout on the edge of town and the serious racing/touring began.
I was determined not to go out too fast, but it was easy to get sucked along by some of the more organized teams. Still, it seemed like many more people were passing me than the other way around. After about 10km, we hit the first hill: the Scharfingerhohe with a climb of about 130m. Surprisingly, many of the riders who had just flown by me seemed to be having trouble with this little hill. I cranked up at a reasonable pace and still passed a couple of dozen riders. Once over the top, we hit the rolling hills and relative flats and it was time to get in a group.

I found a decent pack of about 30 and just hung out towards the back - there were plenty of 'locomotives' up front so most of us never had to pull. In Bad Ischl, we went through the tunnel which was the site of many crashes in past years, but it was well-lit and I knew not to ride near the center line where the concrete barriers were. The pack was flying along at such a pace and the weather was cool enough that I skipped the first aid-station. The pace seemed to pick up gradually and we were shedding some of the weaker riders as we headed along the Traunsee. On a clearer day the views along the lake would be magnificent, but the slight cloud cover and haze did keep the temperature down.

Right in the town of Traunkirch, I decided to get something to eat and was rummaging around in my jersey pocket for my chocolate pastry. When I looked up again, I realized that I was all alone - the pack was receding into the distance and there was no one behind me. I pushed a bit harder and almost caught a guy whose bike sounded like the crank was about to fall off, but even he dropped me. It would have been a very discouraging spot, except for one thing: I knew from the map that the biggest hill was right around the corner.


Soon the route took a left away from the lake and the fun began. The first riders I caught were a dozen or so who were taking a 'natural break' along a hedgerow. Right after that, the road kicked up at about a 6% grade for about 170 vertical meters. I caught another 8 or 10 riders before the crest and then rode solo until the start of the steep part.

From here to the top, I must have passed another 20-30 riders, and no one passed me.

I stopped a few minutes at the aid station to cram down some bananas and Endurolytes and refill my bottles. Then it was a screaming downhill for the next 5 miles down to the Attersee.

Right at the lake, I got caught by another rider, so I jumped on his wheel and we started working together on the flats. Pretty soon we'd picked up another half a dozen, and within a few miles we had another pack of 20. I took a couple of turns at the front but I wasn't as strong as some of the others so I kept it short. By the time we'd rounded the north end of the lake, the pack was flying and it wasn't long before a couple of other riders and I were spat out the back. We got ourselves organized and rode together for the next few km to Nussdorf where the road left the lake and headed up the 13% grade. My riding companions decided that this was a good spot to back off to a conversational pace, so I took off on my own again. Soon I was reeling in most of the riders from the pack that had just dumped me. About halfway up, I caught one guy who then stayed with me for most of the rest of the climb, but otherwise I was passing people like they were standing still (and a few of them were).

Starting down the other side, my right leg suddenly cramped and I had visions of last year's La Veta Century where I had to jump off the bike before both legs cramped up. But this time I was able to unclip and work out the cramp. I must have really moved up on the hill because no one caught me on the 8km downhill stretch. At the bottom, I was just starting to grind out the last 5km into Mondsee when a pack of about 10 caught me. I jumped on the back and was surprised to find that the pace wasn't too bad - I even ended up taking a short turn on the front. By the outskirts of town, we were moving along at a good clip, even shedding a couple of riders off the back. The final turn into town came quicker than I expected and I was able to join in a modest sprint to the finish line. My official time was 4:24:26 (56 minutes behind the leader) for 329th of 452 finishers. I was a bit surprised to be this far down in the standings, but apparently there were many people who didn't wear the timing chip and therefore don't appear in the final results. I'll just assume that there were lots of them and that they were all behind me...

Post-ride refreshments were decent - a bowl of pasta with your choice of two sauces, and a drink of your choice. Of course my choice was the Frankenmarkter Hefeweisse - very tasty after a few hours on the bike.

Later we got some ice cream (much more expensive than in Slovakia) and watched some of the 200km riders come in.

In the evening, we headed up a tiny one-lane road through the forest to the Hochsernerhof, an inn perched at the top of a Sound Of Music meadow with fantastic views of the Salzkammergut.

I had some sausages and a big glass of home-made Most (a kind of hard cider) and Cindi had the Holzhackertoast (woodcutter's toast), complete with fried eggs. A nice change from the more touristy scene in downtown Mondsee.

Leaving Slovakia

If you don't want to die in Slovakia, you have to leave sometime, and our time had arrived. Cindi's teaching was over and exams were here. I mananged to squeeze in another trip to the Slovak Paradise (this time the Velky Sokol (Big Falcon) gorge)

and to do some more bike riding into the Javorina Reserve, a huge former military training area that most people still think is closed to the public (it isn't). One of my colleagues at the University invited me along on their field trip up the tower of the cathedral in Presov, which isn't open to tourists yet. You can get some nice views of Presov from up there.

We finally made it into Spis Castle, probably the most famous castle in Slovakia (used in many movies for that authentic medieval feel). We'd driven past many times, but never been in.

One of the attractions during tourist season is the amusing display of martial arts.

After visiting the castle, I got my bike out of the car and rode home over some roads I hadn't ridden before, including the Branisko Pass (which isn't as steep as the sign says).

The last few days in Presov were pretty hectic, with packing, grading, throwing things out, trying to drink all the remaining booze in the apartment, etc. The US Ambassador to Slovakia was in town, and Cindi got a few minutes of one-on-one time with him.

Then it was back to cleaning the apartment. Here's an outside view - our balcony is the 2nd one above the 'V' in 'potraviny' ('groceries').

One of the features of the apartment was the Under The Sea toilet seat.

Our landlord came by at 1PM on Friday to check the place out and returned our damage deposit in the form of a large stack of Slovak crowns, which we then took to the bank and converted into a large stack of Euros. We actually made money over the last 4 months by having the money in SKK, which even increased in value relative to the Euro (to say nothing of the dollar).
By the time all the final details were taken care of, it was 5PM and time to hit the road. We headed south into Hungary and picked up the autobahn to Budapest. We stayed in an Etap hotel on the west side of Buda - Etaps have all the comforts of Formula One hotels, PLUS your own bathroom. The next day we drove across the western part of Hungary, skirted Vienna and arrived in Mondsee in the Salzkammergut region of Austria.

Biking to the top of Slovakia

One of my cycling goals for this trip was to ride my bike to the top of Kral'ova Hol'a (the Kings Mountain) in the Low Tatras. It's not actually the top of Slovakia (that's Gerlach in the High Tatras), but I think it's the highest spot (1947m/6386ft)in the country that you can ride to, and the climb up there is rated as the most difficult in the country. I waited as long as I could hoping that all the snow would melt off, and finally set out on May 18 from Presov. It was a beautiful day, but as I approached the Low Tatras, I could see a huge cloud bank - sure enough, Kralova Hola (KH) is big enough to create its own weather. I parked in Cervena Skala (the lowest place around at about 770m) and rode the 3km up to Sumiac in a light drizzle. Above Sumiac, the official KH road begins - it's closed to cars and motorcycles, but bikes are OK.

I was surprised (and irritated) to find that the road was dirt and gravel - I'd seen pictures of pavement. But I'd come a long way to do this, so I kept going. After a few km of dirt, I heard voices and came around a corner to find another biker talking to a hiker. The hiker assured me that the asphalt started soon, so the other biker (Martin from Kosice) and I rode on together for a while. At the saddle (where the asphalt finally started), Martin stopped to let his heart recover

while I ate a banana and then kept going alone.

Pretty soon I got above treeline and the wind picked up.

(I have no idea who was doing all that heavy breathing on the soundtrack to the video - I don't recall hearing it at the time.)

Much of the time it was a tailwind, but as I came around to the north side, it turned into a headwind. The summit was still lost in the clouds, but every so often they'd blow off so I could see how far I had to go.

The last stretch to the summit was still covered in snow,

but only required a couple of hundred meters of walking. (And it didn't seem nearly as steep as the 15+% that the web site promised.) By now the wind was howling and I was in the middle of the fog, standing up in my 34-32 lowest gear and barely making progress. As I approached the TV antenna building, the wind was so strong it blew me off the road, and I had to do the last 50m on foot. Fortunately the lee side of the building was completely calm, so I was able to change into a dry shirt and put on the rest of my clothes. I got a couple of pictures of the summit obelisk

and then decided to get the hell off the mountain before the weather got worse. As I walked out from my sheltered spot, the wind grabbed me again and almost blew me into a large puddle. My bike was flying out to the side at about a 45-degree angle as I was leaning into the wind the other way. Once I got away from the building, the wind dropped a bit and I was able to slowly ride down to the snowfield. Below the snow, the wind was considerably less and I was out of the fog. Martin had just reached the final switchback (he made it to the top too). My next trekking bike will have disc brakes. 12km of hanging onto the brake levers with cantilever brakes is hard on the hands! But I made it down in one piece. Much to my disgust, when I looked back at the summit, it was clear up there! (But clouded up again later.)

Romania

We've now been to all the countries that border Slovakia, so it was time to go a bit farther. Romania seemed like a likely candidate, and it didn't look far on the map. To paraphrase the warning on your rear-view mirror, "Objects On Map Are Farther Than They Appear". Or at least it will take you a lot longer to get there than if you were driving I-70 or the German Autobahn. We headed out Friday morning, going south into Hungary and taking a very scenic (and very slow) road over the Zemplin Hills to Tokaj. This is where they make the famous Tokaj wine (the wine that the bums' favorite is named after) and you can't swing a cat without hitting someone who's there to buy (or taste) the wine. We saw a bike tour group of a dozen happy people, one of whom tipped over and crashed on the bike path while we watched. They must have already visited a couple of cellars...

Unfortunately, we had no time for wine-tasting, so we headed east through Nyiregyhaza and out into the plains of eastern Hungary. Flat, boring and lots of traffic. At the Romanian border, they seemed more interested in our car than in us,
but after 10 minutes or so, they let all three of us in. We'd heard that ATMs are hard to find, so we headed for downtown Satu Mare, which has more ATMs on the central square than any other place I've seen. Fortified with 500 Lei (2.39 to the dollar), we headed east to Baia Mare. Roads in Romania make Slovak roads look good - you have to keep a constant watch for potholes, uneven railroad crossings and lots of horse-drawn wagons. In Baia Mare, we realized that we'd lost an hour - like Ukraine, they're in another time zone.

Our destination in Romainia was the town of Botiza in Maramures, the poorest part of the country. I've seen it described as 'medieval' - I wouldn't go that far, but it's definitely early 20th century. We stayed with a delightful couple, Ioan and Maria Manta. (In Romania, all the men are named Ioan (John) and all the women are Maria (Mary). In our first 5 minutes in the local cemetery, I spotted at least half a dozen Ioan Mantas, although our host showed no signs of being deceased.)

There are no restaurants in Romania outside of the major towns, so we had our breakfast and dinner at the Mantas - some interesting (and tasty) sheep cheeses, polentas and other good stuff. And of course, a glass or two of palinka (only at dinner). The rooster got us up the next morning, and after breakfast we checked out the local market and then went up to the Orthodox church where some kind of ceremony was in progress. The local ladies forced loaves of bread and cabbage rolls on us -

finally a nun took pity on us and got us a plastic bag to carry all our bread.
Wine plays a big role in Catholic services, but we're not sure about the theological significance of Coke...


After Botiza, we visited a pottery shop in Sacel, and the monastery complex in Barsana. I thought monasteries had monks and convents had nuns, but this monastery was exclusively nuns.


On Sunday, Cindi got to dress up like a Romanian peasant, after which we hit the road. There's not much public transportation in Maramures, so we picked up a couple of little old ladies (Maria and Maria?) who were hitchhiking down to the big Orthodox service in Stramtura. We decided to check it out ourselves, and were wandering around outside the church when I was accosted by an old gentleman. I'm not usually addressed as 'Boy!', but something about him seemed interesting. He quickly invited us back to his house for a drink (more palinka). His house had all the signs of being the home of an aging drunkard, but it turned out to be his 'museum' - he has a perfectly normal house next door with a perfectly normal wife. His name is Ioan Stef, and he's very interested in the Jewish history of the area (he himself is Greek-Catholic, but he had many Jewish friends who were deported to Auschwitz). Despite his affections for the Jews, he seemed rather intolerant of the Orthodox Christians ("Orthodox bad!") He and his wife served us coffee and lunch, and we probably could have stayed for dinner, but needed to get on the road.


Last tourist stop in Romania was the famous 'Merry Cemetery' of Sarpanta. A local woodcarver started the tradition of carving humorous tombstones with little poems, and it continues today. This fellow drank and smoked himself to death,

while this poor boy fell under a train.

And this guy appears to be performing an unnatural act with a sheep.


After spending our remaining lei on ice cream, beer and diesel (in that order), we crossed back into Hungary. There's a new superhighway that we missed on the way out, so the trip back to Presov was a bit quicker. Still a long day (470km) in the car...

Caves

The karst area of SE Slovakia and northern Hungary is riddled with caves, and we've been to a couple of them. The first was the Aggtelek system in Hungary (which connects to the Domica cave in Slovakia). We joined a bunch of Hungarians for the 2 hour tour - the guide spoke only Hungarian, but they had a printed English description which gave us some information about the cave. The tour started with a seemingly endless set of steps leading down an artificial entrance to the cave. At the bottom you could go left (towards Slovakia) or right - our tour went right. The entire tour was on a well-paved, well-lit pathway with lots of 'tites, 'mites and other stalags to look at.

In the 'Great Hall' they turned out all the lights and then played the 'Chariots of Fire' theme music over a large sound system while various lights flashed on and off. You come to the surface again a couple of miles away from where you started, and take the bus back. Not a bad tour, but a bit on the 'prepared' side.

For a change of pace, we also went through the Krasnahorska Cave in Slovakia. This one is run by the local caving club and is a lot more basic. You start by putting on your red coveralls, your helmet and your miners light. A short artificial entrance leads to the cave proper, where you scramble over rocks, cross small wooden bridges, go through a tight squeeze,

climb ladders and cross a large pool of water on a couple of steel cables.

At the end, there's a larger chamber with the 62m tall 'Dripstone of the Rozhnava Cavers', at one point listed in the Guiness Book as the worlds tallest.

Then you turn around and go out the same way.