Ride Day 2 -- Lake Como to Ponte di Legno

Today is a multimodal type of day.  We are staying overnight on the eastern shore of Lake Como in Varenna.  This is a rest day for the Giro, with the high Alps set for the next few days.  Our plan is to get to Ponte di Legno today and stay overnight.  But it is too long from Varenna to Ponte di Legno to ride it in one day (about 150 km), so we'll take a train from Varenna to Tresenda.  From there, it is about 50 km to Ponte di Legno but a fair bit of climbing. We'll see how the legs do with the fully loaded bike.

Tomorrow, our plan was to ride up the south side of Passo di Gavia.  But all of that has changed now since the pass is closed due to snow.

Here's the route from Tresenda to Pontagna, which is where we are staying just outside of the Village of Ponte di Legno.

Now that we've made our destination we are kind of counting our lucky stars.  What could have been a bit of a mess turned into an amazing adventure.  I’ll explain.

We knew that today was going to be a rough go – lots of steep climbing and the weather outlook going from nasty to awful.  But what can we do?  With all of the vertical today it was way too far for us to ride from Varenna to Ponte di Legno.  So we hopped on the train.  We rode to the station and were amazed at the crowd on the platform.  I plopped down next to an older Italian guy who was very curious about our bike, and who explained that he lives nearby and comes to the station in the morning to watch all the Americans leave to go to Milan.  The “best part of my day” he said.  He was fun and he explained to us that we (a) needed validate our bike ticket (bikes need a ticket on Italian trains), and (b) to go molto vitesse (very fast) to get the bike on because the train will not wait.

The queue for the train to Milan 

Me and my new friend -- watching the crowds leave

The beast blocking the train aisle -- nobody seemed to care.

When our train arrived our guy shouted “via via!” and we ran.  The car that had the “Bike OK” emblem was way up the track so we ran to get there.  The conductor was ready to close the doors and when she saw our monster bike she laughed.  But she was a good sport and told us to just cram it in the aisle and to try to no knock anybody off.  Worked for us.

We were already running late and by the time we got off the train in Tresende it was nearly 1300.  We got the bike off and headed up the road from Tresende toward the Alps.   The road immediately tipped upwardly.  Our GPSs show the gradient ahead.  I told Lorie not to look.  There were a couple of tunnels at the base of the climb so I clipped on my new headlight.  It failed.  Argh.  So we turned the taillight onto mega-bright and went ahead – if you have only one light it is better that it is pointing backwards.  Fortunately, no cars at all.  But maybe the failed light was a harbinger of bad fortune to come.

The weather was already bad, about 14 degrees and a steady rain.  There was no gradual introduction to the mountain.  It was steep from the start.  So we dropped into the lowest gear we had and cranked, eventually settling into a rhythm.  We weren’t cold – we were generating too much heat, but we were getting pretty wet.  Our route today was only 50 km, but lots of up.

At about 20 km into the ride it was pouring rain and the road was switching through numerous switchbacks.  The road at this point is about 4 meters wide and we’d climbed about 700 meters.  All of a sudden our rear tire blew.  I have had lots of flat tires.  But this was no typical flat tire.  It literally exploded with such force that it blew the tire off the rim.  I do not know how that happened.  Fortunately, we were only going about 10 kph up the hill, so we stopped without a problem.  But what an awful place to have a flat, and what awful conditions.  We had seen a wide spot in the road about 200 meters back down the hill so we turned around and walked the bike back down to change the tube.

As we were doing this, a biggish truck pulled into the wide spot.  There was room enough for both of us, and we didn’t talk to the driver.

Fixing the flat

A soggy day

Damn!  The pump broke...

We removed all of our panniers, then took the rear wheel off and I pulled the tire and the now-shredded tube.  It isn’t hard to change a bike tire, but I’d rather do it in sunshine than a monsoon.  But I had the new tube and tire assembled pretty quickly.  I started to pump the tire up and within a few strokes our pump broke – the internal disk that drives the air in the cylinder just broke off.  Crap.  We were at least 15 km from the nearest village and it was mostly uphill.

As if on cue, the driver of the truck walked back to us and asked if we were OK – maybe we looked a bit distressed.  He lifted the flap on his truck and said that he’d be glad to throw the bike on there and drop us somewhere up the road.  He was heading to Dachau in Germany via the Reschen Pass and the small road that we were on was a shortcut.  He actually said that the only reason that he was on the road was because his GPS showed that this was the shortest route but he had no idea that he was signing up for driving on a donkey path!  Our friend was Polish and his English was near perfect.

We loaded the beast and all our bags and then Lorie and I climbed in.  We were soaked but our Polish friend was unconcerned.  The truck was nearly as wide as the road and in places the drop off on the right side of the road was dizzying.  I was glad that he was a good driver.  Our fortunes continued to rise; we compared GPS routes and his route took us right past our AirBnB address just 35 or so km up (literally) the road.  As we drove through the small alpine village of Aprica we started to see lots of pink ballons and bikes.  Our friend asked us what it was all about.  We explained that the Giro was passing through this road because they’d had to retroute the thing due to the Gavia Pass being closed.  He wryly commented that his GPS hadn’t been updated.  I was glad that it hadn’t.

The travel was slow due to the abysmal weather and the narrow road.  But in no time we had been dropped off within an easy walk from our room for the night.  I didn’t get our friend’s name, but in the past we’ve met people who we’ve called Road Angels because they offered unsolicited help – directions, warm coffee, whatever.  This guy was a Road God.  We would have been walking and hitch hiking without him and on a road with virtually no traffic and in crap weather.  What a good hearted person -- to take in a couple of bums and give them a ride that saved their bacon on a rainy, miserable day.  We thanked him profusely but he'll never know how much we really appreciated his help.

Our Polish Road God and his truck.

Full already, but a bit fuller with our bike inside.

Unloaded in Pontagne.

We slogged the short walk to our AirBnB and got in touch with Paolo, our host.  He took one look at us and quickly ushered us into our room (actually a very nice alpine house) and cranked up the heat.  He then called his friend who has a bike shop in town, which was closed today, and asked about a new pump and a new tube.  His friend said that he’d meet us at the shop in an hour.  So Paolo drove us to the shop and made sure that we got what we needed.  

Paolo on the way to the bike store

Back at the house, I borrowed a floor pump from Paolo and completed the repairs on the bike, which is just fine now, I am glad to report.

We are actually in the village of Pontagne, which is just a few km from Ponte di Legno.  This is a ski village and everything is set up for skiing – there are lifts everywhere.  The Alps loom high overhead – when the clouds cleared for a moment we got a photo.  It is very beautiful.

The view from our room

We had finally warmed up enough to consider walking the 3 km to the village of Ponte di Legno to find a market.  We borrowed a few umbrellas and walked to the store (needed to ask for directions twice) and bought what we needed.  It rained incessantly the entire way up, and back.

The forecast is for a steady rain tonight and perhaps snow in the morning.  Argh.  But the good news is that we now have tomorrow off since the bike race had to drop the Passo Gavia.  So we are staying an extra night and the weather looks a bit better on Wednesday.

Here's to a bit of sunshine!