mgt on tour

Damn it. France wins again.  I've always joked that, of course the French are snobby, wouldnt you be if you invented baguettes, croissants, and human rights? But, after traveling in Austria and Slovenia, I just couldn't imagine anything topping it.  The first day I entered France from Switzerland I was a little shocked, there was peeling paint, and even some abandoned buildings! Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia feel almost like someone built the "Idyllic Village" Lego set...10,000 times and lined them up and I was riding through them day after day. France just has a romantic vibe that no amount of peeling paint or drab colorways can hide. In fact, this aire of not caring just adds to the charm. It gives it this totally effortless feel. I had always considered myself a Francophile, now I have the receipts.  Exhibit 1.  This video  is from my first full day riding in France. I'm getting dumped on by rain in a rural area that is not touristic at all. ...

This is basically just a WhatsApp conversation I had with one of my previous hosts that I edited and adapted to a post.  First an aside: Here's a picture of an abandoned building in Switzerland. There are so few abandoned buildings in Slovenia, Austria and Switzerland. When I tour in the United States and even in Japan, I went into a lot of abandoned buildings and houses. Becky gets annoyed because I'm always pulling off the road to jump through a window.  Ok, back to the original post: So I went around a month dirtbagging it --spending no money on lodging or transport, sleeping under bridges, park benches, even one rich person's ski condo balcony when they weren't home etc-- I'm now being much more proactive finding warmshowers hosts and infilling with inexpensive Airbnbs and hostels. I even booked a train to allow me to get further and see more things....gasp. This was is much more pleasant and still frugal! But, I had fun trying the former as sort of ...

Honestly, after a couple weeks in the Alps I'm getting cute landscape fatigue/blindness and am not taking as many pictures.  Beliw pictures from the first couple hundred kilometers south of Zurich. I've had a couple of amazing hosts. There's nothing quite like like dropping in on a family in another country short notice and joining thm for just a regular weekday dinner. I get a better feel for a place this way than from  hundreds of miles of cycling or sight seeing. At my last host, I mistook an electric kettle for a regular kettle and created quite a scene when I put it on the stove in high. It filled the hunt cabin with acrid black smoke and there was melted plastic all over the cook top 🤦🤦🤣🤣🙄🙄 Luckily I was able to get all the molten plastic up and the only casualty was the kettle. My hosts were very gracious.

The last 4 days in the Alps (IBK -> Zurich) were pretty rough as the weather had turned cool (cold at night!) and rainy.  It feels good to recharge, hang out, get some workouts in, and prepare for my longest single leg: 1300 km to Barcelona!

We locals call Innsbruck IBK, FYI. I realized I have not really been adding pictures much. So I'll share a few photos from IBK.  I'm first stop in was my first hosts' house. They were a super cool family--i was their first ever stranger/traveller--my host from the previous two nights called them and set me up. I hit it off really well with them. We did a long hike together the next day. Their flat was not very big and their daughter had riends sleeping over so there was no room in the house, so I happily set up in their garden. This pic is from when I work up. The next day after the hike I put my bags in storage at the train station because my next host wasn't getting home until 9pm. I took a cable car up to a mountain overlooking the city, these are some views. I had a lot of fun riding my bike up the mountain and then taking the cable car the second half. When I got down I then went to a beach on the river and did my stretching and ...

I'm writing this post from Switzerland.  I don't know exactly when I entered it. Becky told me because she saw me on the map. I think a lot of these psychopaths (cycle paths lol) Don't get the same signage as roads as far as "welcome to wherever". I was in Liechtenstein for a while. Becky was also the one to inform me of this.  Yesterday was kind of cool in some ways, and kind of bad in others. I did a huge climb of a mountain pass to exit the high Austrian Alps. I only really did two really big climbs: one buy-in and one cash out. Now there was a lot of really bad hills but I'm talking like climbs that take you half a day.. I feel bad I didn't blog during the ~600 km I was crossing the width of Austria, but it was just hard to keep up.  The Alps are beautiful. I don't think 30 seconds went by over the course of the week when I couldn't take a breathtaking picture.  The whole time I was in The mountains I was thinking I needed to do at least one hi...