Bike tour report Bassano-Munich May 2008

Total km: 872,96
Average per traveling day : 218,24 km

Path in GPS eXchange file format (gpx):

gps file of the tour

gps file of only way back

view back route gps recording in google maps !!!

The path:

Altitudes:

This is the day I want to reach already Austria. It is a very looong way and I wake up at 5:25. The weather looks good:

Despite of my efforts, it seems circumstances are not going to help me: about at km 40 I have a flat ... And I also have some problems with the pump :-(

As usual, Trento is very complicated to pass! Even if I have a navigation system on the bike! Indeed I find a very quiet small street on the right side of the Adige river which goes to north, but after some KM it simply finishes in the nothing and I have to go back! Grrr....

..and as usual, Bolzano is instead very easy to pass. Bike ways are clearly indicated and well separated from the ordinary streets:

Bleah ! The sign of the last town in Italy before entering to Austria seems to be really dirty this time !

I spend the night a few kilometers after the border. I.e., In Austria :-) I have made it !

This morning I leave at 7:30 with a temperature of 17 C. Freezy but not cold. And also a little bit sunny :-)

Usually from Jenbach to Achen lake I take the B181 (in red), which goes up pretty hard but still “doable”. The navigation system suggest me instead a shorter path (yellow). I would consider it “really hardly doable” :-)

I hope the photo gives an idea of how hard it goes up ;-)

About 40 km before Munich I get my daily flat...

Fortunately the weather is not bad :-)

At 3:30 I arrive in Munich ( temperature 21 C )

Today in the beginning is lightly rainy and cold (11 C). About 40 km after Munich, I get my daily flat... (as expected...) . I have to ask a local guy for helping me by lending my his pump.

Ok, it happened always on the back tire, which is pretty old. So probably it is my fault. So in Bad Tölz I buy a new tire which has even some kind of protection against flats.

Somewhere between Germany and Austria there is a nice asphalted bike way next to the street. I take it but it is a trap !!! Once in the wood, the asphalt disappears ! Only the the GPS saves my from thinking that I am lost and I'll be never back home :-)

At 18:00 I am again in Sankt Jodok, at the same hotel of last week and where I also was 2 years ago with Susanne, and I would like to finally make clear one point: The hotel guy 2 years ago was in pants (as supposed by me) and not in swimsuit (as supposed by Susanne), simply because even this time comes to open the door and the only thing he is wearing are for sure white pants !!!

Today I leave at 7:20 with a temperature lower than 9 C and with light rain.

At 8:00 I am again in Italy.

In the blue plate you car read “Italia”

After the border, the street goes really down hill, but as it is rainy and cold, I can not speed up so much.

Once again close to Bolzano, I enjoy the landscape from the bike way:

In Bolzano the weather is nice, but in Trento some more clouds are waiting for me... :-/

I follow the bike way up to the center of Trento, because I really want to check if it is properly indicated coming from normal streets by the sings or if I am dummy, as I always have troubles to find it.

This is an intersection between the bike way and the normals streets:

You can enlarge the picture as you want, but the only visible sing from normal streets that says something about the bike way is this :

As Trento is full of short bike ways that finish suddenly in the nothing, I can assure that this confusing sign does not help at all !!! Moreover, if you take the street on the left of the picture, you will end to a dead-end street along the river, parallel to the real bike way. Maybe mockery if the proper word to describe this ? As the dead-end-street is about 4 km logs, you could experience a waste of 8 km ...

Yellow: bike way

Magenta: dead end small street

4 hours later I am about 40 km from home, about in the place where I had the first flat on the first day. But this time I have my new no-flat-super-tire, no flat can stop me ! Or so at least I think...

Indeed my fate is waiting for me here:

The picture is not very sharp, but it is a part of the bike way where the payment is a metal grate instead of normal asphalt. As I have already passed 100 times on that grate I feel pretty safe and I simply slow down to about 10 km/h, but as it is wet, it is totally slippery... I fall down getting a lot of blooding grazes. OUCH !!! Standing up, I am happy to realize I did not break any bone... I would have much preferred my daily flat instead ...

On the map, this point is indicated with this sign:

At about 20:00 I finally reach home :-/

As the grazes of yesterday are still hurting, probably this had some influences in the way I wrote this page.

Going to Munich, the battery of my odometer died, and I bought a new one in Munich. Therefore all distances of days 1 and 2 refer to the navigation system. Distances of days 5 and 6 to the odometer.

Back to home, my weight was 93 kg in the following morning .

As the GPS antenna seems not to work properly if the memory of the navigation system is full with saved routes and as I deleted them only during the second day, the GPS tracking is more accurate since the second part of the second day.

I thank Antonio (old guy living 40 km north from Bassano) for the pump after the first flat.

I thank the german guy in Egling for the pump after the third flat.

I thank my colleague Torsten Schmitt for telling me how to put the GPS track in a Google map.

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21-May-2008