Today, I was riding north and UP. I made sure no precipitation was in the offing, but temps were not a consideration. There's a reason I brought all my cold weather gear. After having the worst coffee *ever* at Hotel al Pelmo, I set off towards Cortina d'Ampezzo, which is the Vail of northern Italy. I wasn't sure if they checked bank accounts at the city limits, so I made haste to get past it. Pretty though, as are the visitors.
Before I even reached it, I had turned the handgrips on. 10 km past it I was already seeing the first snow and I decided to suit up. Neck gaiter, heated vest, winter gloves. Onwards. I was set to ride the Dolomites. The ride book mapped out a rough figure 8 west of Cortina, branching off the great Dolomite road. What followed is really impossible to to describe. The stats don't do it justice. I rode six passes plus one of them from both directions. None lower than 2000m and the highest at 2240m. Maybe close to 200 switchbacks and maybe 3000m or more of altitude delta covered. It was cold. Tons of snow. I had my heated gear cranked and taking the gloves off to take pics resulted in frozen hands in a hurry. Figure mostly around freezing and in a couple of spots below. But that's not it, in fact it's all irrelevant. Fun to be sure, but the scenery is what it's about. It's absolutely staggering. The vistas, peaks, valleys - your accolades notwithstanding, I'm nowhere near a good enough writer to put it into words, nor a good enough photographer to do it justice. I really wanted to have someone with me to share the feeling, the amazement. As it was, I had to focus on not running off the mountain because I was staring at the scenery. I had the camera rolling and the videos look good. You'll have to wait until I get back to Germany and have a chance to do some editing.
Today was the first day I started seeing more motorcycles. Traffic is still wonderfully sparse and there are many times I ride alone. At one point a local car club came back from an early blast through the passes. About 10 Lambos, 4 Ferraris, a Cayman in the lead AND a Miata right in the middle - nice :). Then there are those times I dodge oncoming buses. Quite unnerving and more than a bit annoying. They like to take more than their share of road coming around corners. Not fun. I keep wondering what would happen if I were another bus, not something that can squeeze into a third of a lane.
After six hours of buzzing Dolomite passes I entered a rift in the space time continuum. I decided to head for a village called Castelrotto in Suedtirol. In WWI Austria was on the wrong side of history and Suedtirol was ceded to Italy. It seems like this fact has been summarily ignored by the locals for the last 100 years. Everyone speaks German. All the signs are in German, with Italian subtitles. It feels as Austrian as anything north of the Alps, so really it's Kastelruth. I had a nice Tirolian meal with local Speck and a nice local bottle of Grauburgunder. I'm staying at the Wiesenhof. All the guests speak German too, the radio station is German. Weird, funny, amusing.
I'm not getting all the pics that I want on the iPad today somehow. I'll have to do an addon post.
GPS waypoints:
Cortina: 46.530, 12.1365
Arabba (center of the figure 8) 46.992, 11.8766
Kastelruth: 46.5947, 11.5858
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