July 4

 Today is the day I had been looking forward to since we started.  I kept telling myself "I just have to get over the mountain after Florence then everything will be alright".  Well, the mountain is in front of us.

We started the day with a 35 mile uphill climb.  The first 20 miles were a gradual climb.  But the next 15 got steeper and slowed us down.  But we just kept going in some of our lowest gears and made it to the top.  We celebrated by each having an orange!!


Brian, still smiling about 1/2 way up the mountain.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 26

Image
 Today we left Bulle and headed for Lausanne.  Another great day; sunshine, no wind, no rain, and miles and miles of downhill.  Our path took us to the shores of Lake Geneva in the town of Vevey, which was just beautiful.  We headed east, away from Lausanne, to look around the town of Montreux.  Montreux is famous for having a fantastic Jazz Festival.  This year the festival ran from July 5th to July 20th.  Many of the stages were still standing along the waterfront.  It must have been a great 2 weeks.  Will have to come back sometime for the Jazz.  Also in Montreux is a statue of Freddie Mercury (from Queen).  He had a home here and spent a lot of time here.  Also, Charlie Chaplin spent the last 25 years of his life here and also has a statue to remember him. Our first view of Lake Geneva from up in the hills. Vineyards around Vivey.  We would be riding through those vineyards later in the day. Waterfront promenade around...
Read more

July 27

Image
 Our last day of bike riding on this trip.  The end of a trip always gets to me.  There's so much time and effort put into planning and executing a trip like this, that it's bittersweet when it's over.  When we start, the end seems so far away.  But this trip in particular involved some real struggle.  I have ridden my bike over the Rockies and over mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire - but I have never encountered steeper hills than on this trip.  The reward, of course, was the beauty of Switzerland.  I'm glad we ended the ride here. Today we left Lausanne for Geneva.  Another sunny day.  No big hills in our way but my legs were still talking to me the entire way, saying "when are you going to get off this bike?"  But we made it and dipped our bike tires into the lake at Geneva.  We have a host named Sarah for the next 2 nights.  She and her boyfriend are planning a one year bike trip and they leave on Wednesday - the ...
Read more

July 23

Image
 Today we are heading to the Lauterbrunnen Valley to camp for the night.  I saw pictures of this place on the internet and just had to visit. Clouds are beginning to break up as we enter the valley. Staubbach Falls. Wonderful path through the valley. Paragliders up in the sky. Our campsite for the night. We took a gondola ride from the valley up to the town of Murren.  When we got there it looked like this - all clouded in. Five minutes later it looked like this!!  That's Eiger mountain on the left. The valley walls look so high when you're down there.  The walls are 300 - 400 meters high.  But then you go up to Murren and see the mountains continue up from the valley walls another 3000 meters!!!
Read more