© 1984 - 2024 Adrian Tritschler
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My early morning walk around the campground left me with free day passes for the vaporetto — a woman I met was leaving today and she had a pair of three-day passes, she thought it would be a shame to waste them and gave them to us.
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A last breakfast in the hotel and then a minor victory — they’re happy to let us leave the bikes in the basement for a couple of days while we head off to visit Venice.
stats. Today 81km Trip ??km
A long climb up from lake Idro. We passed through the charmingly named village of Crone, then gained about 600m in altitude over ten or so kilometres. One “longish, darkish tunnel” that was luckily straight-ish as well — for it was indeed both very long and very dark! Roughly half-way up the climb the road levelled out to cross a bridge, then turned sharply into a climb complete with 14% warning signs. I left Jo to continue on my own, passing endless signs warning of “2 Tornante” — a quick zigzag and up some more.
stats. Today 69.63km Trip ??km
Sometime around five in the morning it started to rain — quietly at first, then a solid downpour that sounded as if it would last for days. My temporary patch on the pinhole in the tent’s roof held, but other parts leaked where the walls touched the floor, or where the tent is just too old and worn. There was no point in staying inside and getting gradually wetter, so even though it was supposed to be a short day’s ride, Jo and I got up early and sat around in the marquee.
stats. Today 84.74km Trip ??km
A crisp, cold morning greeted us today, everyone in fine spirits — even Eddie, who somehow seemed to have forgotten that Swiss mountains could get cold, even in the summer, and had forgotton to bring any warm clothes.
stats. Today 103.82km Trip total ??km
Around the lake to Villeneuve, then after stopping at the shops to stock up on vitals, Jo and I missed the turn off for the bike path. On and on through town we went, out the other side and then nearly ended up on a major road — the same major road that the route notes warned us not to get onto. Andy arrived just as we were trying to work out where to go next, and redirected us back into the centre of town, with directions on finding the bike path. Once on the bike path it was supposed to be simple: “just follow the signs to Aigle(46.3166667,6.9666667)” said the notes.
Coffee in the first café that we came to, just around the corner from Paddington station — Jo suddenly realised that it used to be a florist that she walked past nearly every day.
Joe and Paddy had been up the river to Beale on Saturday, but both of them enjoy the boats and the river, so off we all went again for a day in the sun at the Inland Waterways Association’s annual festival. Strolling around in the hot sun and looking at the dry grass, it was hard to tell that we were on the banks of the Thames, and not at a country show somewhere in Australia in summer time.
dst. (km) Today 49.61 Trip total 193.8 Odometer 2512.5
As we were leaving this morning we passed a familiar-looking cow at the side of the road, but thought nothing of it. Phil — driving out half an hour later — realised that it was the dairy cow that belonged to the farm and had escaped onto the road, so he stopped, caught it, and then managed to lead it several kilometres back to the gate. Judging by the way he looked at lunch time, he had the most energetic morning of us all!
dst. (km) Today 83.24 Trip total 146.5 Odometer 2463.0
We woke to grey skies and a howling wind — not very inviting weather for cycling. Breakfasted in Phil’s room then the four of us packed the bus and drove the 30 or 40km up from the lake and down over the ridge to the end of the gravel road. We stopped at the spillway to look at the view, but the wind was really funnelling in across the lake so nobody wanted to stay and look around for long.
dst. (km) Today 61.26 Trip total 61.3 Odometer 2379.7
We woke to a mostly clear sky. Sleeping in late and unpacking the bikes meant that we didn’t get away from Paengaroa until about 10:30 for the drive down to Rotorua.
There’s not much more I can add to who I am.
Vanity site? Technology experiment? Learning tool? Blog? Journal? Diary? Photo album? I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you…
I experiment. I play. I write and I take pictures. Some of the site is organised around topics, other parts are organized by date, then there’s always the cross-references between them.
Its all been here a fairly long time. Like the papers on my desk, or the books on the bedside table, the pile just grew… and it all grew without much plan or structure. I try not to break URLs, so historical oddities abound.
Long ago it started as a learning experiment with a few static HTML pages, then I added a bit of server-side includes and some very ugly PHP. A hand-built journal/blog on top of that PHP, then a few experiments in moving to various static publishing systems. I’ve never wanted a database-based blogging engine, so over the years I’ve tried PHP, nanoblogger, emacs-muse, silkpage and docbook before settling on Emacs Org mode for writing and jekyll for publishing. But the itch remained… I never really liked jekyll and the ruby underneath always seemed so much black magic. So now the latest incarnation is Org mode and hugo.