Today the whole team managed to wake up in time. We left the house at 9.30 am and rode towards Airolo and the St Gothard pass on the motorway. It was a boring ride in the traffic and the heat. I almost got hit by a truck today as I hit the brakes at a 60 sign before a tunnel. The truck driver must have been asleep and he just saw me in the last moment as he pushed his horn and started to break intensively. It was a close call and I wasn’t happy about it.
This whole area is a paradise for bikers – and you see many of them.
Andermatt lies in a valley and serves as a connection between the North and South as well as the West and East. The town is thus connected by four Alpine passes: the Oberlap (2,044 m.) to the East, the St. Gothard (2,106 m.) to the South, the Furka Pass (2,436 m.) to the West, as well as the Göschenertal Pass (1,418 m.) to the North.
On the top of the Furka Pass we met with an old colleague who now works in Lausanne as he was about to join us for a couple of days. We took a couple of pics and had a coffee from the caravan situated on the side of the road before moving on.
While riding on the Gimsel Pass Ocsi almost had an accident. He was riding at the front and was about to overtake a German biker who stopped at the right side of the road. At the last moment the guy decided to make a u-turn… and he just narrowly managed to miss a collision as their shoulders touched. Lucky we left the panniers at the house as it would have been a disaster if the bikes touched. After the initial scare we continued though the Gimsel Pass and arrived to Innertkirchen for lunch. An interesting thing was that we met a Hungarian waitress so we had a chat with her about life in the Alps.
After lunch we enjoyed the beautiful road through the Sustenpass and we stopped in Wassen to refuel the bikes before taking again the St Gothard Pass to head back home. At Airol we again took the motorway and had another boring 45 minutes in a 39 degrees suffocating heat.
Once in Lugano Ocsi went in front telling us he knows where the Coop is. Needless to say it wasn’t the case. He was lost as usual… but he never learns. We still managed to find it with the help of the GPS database. We purchased the essentials for the evening and tomorrow and also had an ice-cream. ON the way home we must have forgotten about all the stuff we were carrying as a beer can exploded in Csabi’s top case to make everything soaking wet.
Once back at the house we started preparing dinner and everyone having their turn under the shower. We also made some washing in order to have some clean clothes. We had a great dinner with a lot of talk and laughter and went to bed before midnight.
Total mileage: 350.4 km