On the Road...day23 cont.
Let’s walk then…
Always trying for
THE shot !!
:wow::wow::wow:
What a fascinating place…it’s good that they closed it to traffic, hopefully it’ll preserve this little pocket for many more years to come.
Due to the (certainly deserved) reputation of the Dolos, there are a lot more bikes on the roads than what we’d previously seen in France and Switzerland …perhaps it’s the current weather, who knows…
From small groups of 3 or 4 to whole clusters of 20 and more, there are bikes everywhere.
Several times a day one or more of us are faced with one or more oncoming bikes in our lane….drifting wiiide out of the hairpins, taking ridiculous entries, taking the “going for the gap” to new levels :wow:
, sometimes crawling around bends holding up even Campervans and tourist-coaches, literally a poofteenth away from just plain falling over in the middle of the bend due to the lack of speed.…moments, that leave one with heart-in-mouth…
And this is the
LATE low-season…during the summer-peak I don’t really want to be here, it’s gotta be mayhem…
A quick check in the mirrors afterwards usually shows nearly exclusively German plates…
It triggers a memory of all those little jibes and jokes in some of the Euro-bike-forums:
“The “Piefkes” can’t ride for shit”…”crashtest-dummies” etc…
“Piefkes” …the slightly derogative, provocative Austrian name for Germans…
Perhaps it’s just a good-natured rivalry between neighbours, but there certainly seems some solid “stock-in-the-broth”, there’s an extraordinarily large amount of riders who just can’t ride….and can't ride corners in particular.
For a
possible reason why, let’s walk around a cluster of parked bikes at one of the lookouts…or the bike-garage at the Biker-Hotel Olympia…
“Look at that nicely restored CB750 over there!!” ….which then turns out to be stock and dead-original (bar the packrack and heated grips).
30+ years old, 24.000k’s on the clock….a 16y/o mint-looking TDM850 with 16.000km…parked next to it, a sparkling late 90’s Funduro650 with a paltry 8600km on the dial….and on, and on.
Keep checking, and there’s hardly a bike that’s seen more than 5000km/ year. Average around 2-3000km/ year.
No wonder then when they’re wobbling all over the road….and no surprise, when the Hotel offers a parking area for busted bikes.
Up the Fedaia Pass… and we’re in for a stumper.
On the left, the green waters of the dam are crowned by a grandstanding cluster of peaks and glaciers.
The Marmolada, a breathtaking view after the recent re-coat of snow.