Mount Alpha

In August my brother Trev was visiting my other brother Fras in Vancouver for a week, so I headed up on Friday morning to join in on some weekend adventures. On Friday afternoon we headed up to Squamish where we checked out a newish bouldering area called The Hatchery which was pretty fun although whatever meager bouldering strength that I had at the start of the season has now completely dissipated as I have focused on sport climbing throughout the summer. The term “focused” is used very loosely as it means getting spanked out at Little Si once a week (though I did end up sending Psychosomatic, a 5.12d that I had been trying there, which at least partially preserved my self-perception as an adequate climber). On the way back from Squamish we stopped off for some swimming at lighthouse point which was really fun, as it was a hot and sunny day.

On Saturday we headed up to Whistler for some downhill mountain bike action in the bike park, which was quite entertaining. I had never been there before but had been meaning to try it out for a while, so it was nice to finally make it there. Trev and I both rented downhill rigs which is pretty expensive ($100 and up per day), but necessary as the trails wouldn’t be that fun on a cross country bike. The bike rental along with the lift ticket ($60) make for a pricey day of mountain biking, but it is a pretty cool experience. We rode for most of the day, stopping in the late afternoon due to general fatigue and blisters.

Crankworks happened to be that same weekend, so we spent the evening watching the slope style competition where brave young men rode their bikes off of some crazy stuff in the pursuit of victory. And I mean really crazy, the biggest feature was a step up jump onto a platform where they had to go 12 feet up and 12 feet across to clear a gap and make it onto the platform, they then they launched off of the end and had to go 25 feet across and 30 feet down to clear the next gap and land back on terra firma. You might have thought it would be enough just to survive this, but the top riders were spinning 360s and doing tail whips as they hurtled off of the platform. Not surprisingly there was a pretty high rate of attrition among the riders, with several having their hopes of victory scuttled by trips to the hospital for x-rays on the various body parts they had bruised or broken when they cased it into the dirt after missing a landing.

Perhaps the most revealing moment in the competition for me was on the last run of the day: the riders had taken three runs each with the single best run determining the winner, so when the final rider took his last run, he already knew he had won based on his previous runs. As he took his place on the starting ramp for the final run of the competition, I thought “Sweet, he’ll probably do a hard-charging, all-out victory run and really have some fun and put on a show”. However, what he did do was essentially ride straight down the hill in between all of the jumps to the finish, only hitting a few of the smaller ones. I can’t say I blame him as there is no way that I would ride any of that stuff, but it did reveal that riding these features isn’t necessarily all that fun for these guys, this is their job to do this and they are just trying to survive it and hopefully bring home a paycheck.

With our bike park adventure complete, we climbed into Fras’s car and headed south back to Squamish where we camped that night on the spit and rested up for the main event of the weekend: an ascent of Mount Alpha in the Tantalus Range. The Tantalus Range lies between Squamish and Whistler just west of the Squamish River, and is composed of four striking peaks: Alpha, Serratus, Dionne, and Tantalus. Anyone who has driven to Whistler in clear conditions and is not legally blind will have noticed these majestic peaks, it has been on my list for a long time to climb one of them so I was happy to be finally doing it. We had selected Mount Alpha as our target since it is the highest (or maybe it is just the easiest to access, one or the other), and we were climbing the standard route up it which is graded 5.8 due to a couple of pitches of technical rock climbing on the route though it is primarily hiking up snowfields and scrambling up third class rock. The biggest challenge in climbing in the Tantalus range comes in the approach, which involves crossing the Squamish River followed by an arduous hike up to Lake Lovelywater.

We planned to do the climb over the course of 2 days, with the first day spent crossing the river and then hiking up to Lake Lovelywater and the second day spent climbing Mount Alpha, descending, and then hiking back out and crossing the river back to our car. We had purchased our food for the trip the night before at Sav-On foods in Squamish, so on Sunday morning we woke up around 7:00am, organized our gear, and drove north of Squamish to the turn-off for the Squamish River crossing. There are 4 standard ways to cross the river: you can charter a jet boat from Squamish to drive up the river and deposit you on the other side (or I guess if you had your own boat you could use that) which costs $50/person, you can charter a helicopter or float plane to cross the river and deposit you at Lake Lovelywater (avoiding the 3000 vertical foot grunt of an approach) which costs $Lots/person, you can use the fixed steel cables that are used by government personnel for conducting water surveys on the other side of the river, or you could swim across. The last option is not recommended since the river is about 100m across and moves pretty fast, so by they time you made it across the water you might find yourself in a pulp and paper mill south of Squamish. The first two options were ruled out because they compromised our sense of fair play as climbers and didn’t seem very sporting (they also ran counter to the most defining characteristic of climbers: being too cheap to pay for anything). So that left us with the third option: crossing the fixed steel cables.

To access the cable river crossing you drive north of Squamish and then turn off the main roads onto a dirt road on which you pass through some first nations land and on to the river. At the entry point to the dirt road we found a large steel gate, but luckily it was unlocked so we opened it up and proceeded on down the dirt road to park at the river. The steel cables are used for a manual cable car that can be winched across the river; unfortunately this cable car is kept locked up, so unless you have a key you are forced to either do a tyrolean traverse where you hook a fat steel carabiner onto the lower cable and drag yourself across, or you can do a sort of tight-rope crossing where you walk along the lower cable while holding on to the upper cable. The latter approach is complicated by the presence of large airplane warning cones on the upper cable that must be bypassed with a certain degree of awkwardness. We were forced into the latter approach by not having any carabiners large enough to fit on the thick, lower cable.

After unpacking our gear and suiting up we were ready, so we climbed the tower to the cables and off we went. A 25 foot tall steel tower accessed the cables, and Fras headed off first with Trev and I observing and offering moral support. We each had a heavy pack full of camping gear, climbing gear, and food and water, and Fras was wearing his pack which appeared to make the traverse quite difficult. The upper cable that you held with your hands was much thinner than the lower cable upon which you were walking and they were not fixed to each other in any way and so were free to move relative to one another, which meant that it took a lot of balance and core tension to stay upright and keep the lower cable beneath you. We wore harnesses and were clipped in to the thin upper cable, but if you were to fall off and dangle from your harness then I’m not sure how you regain your place on the cables, so while you would not end up in the river, you would be stranded and therefore falling was not really an option. Add this to the fact that there were 5 large airplane markers on the upper cable that had to be bypassed, the first of which was an especially awkward large sphere (which, come to think of it, is likely there to discourage people from exactly what we were doing), and you have a pretty exciting and tense 30 minutes spent working your way across the cables above the water.

Fras eventually made it across, but from the short grunts that he used to reply to the accolades that Trev and I offered him during his crossing, we ascertained two things: this was quite challenging, and it was better not to wear a heavy pack. Trev and I decided to rig up a system by which we could hang our packs form the lower cable and drag them along with us, luckily there was a thick piece of rope someone had left on the platform that we were able to use for this. We finally finished rigging our system up and headed across. It was a little spooky with the cables swaying so much over such a wide expanse of water, but the absence of heavy packs on our backs definitely made it easier going than it had appeared to be for Fras. Here is a picture from Fras’s perspective as we made our way across, about to pass the final airplane marker:


We finally reached the other side at 10:30am, the crossing had taken us about 1.5 hours in total which wasn’t too bad given that there were 3 of us and we had spent a fair bit of time figuring out the best approach and trying to rig our pack system.

Safely and happily on the other side, we removed our harnesses and started the arduous trek up to Lake Lovelywater. The distance of this hike isn’t too great, but it ascends a few thousand vertical feet, so it is quite strenuous. After about an hour we stopped for a break at a dry river bed where we refueled and inspected our food supplies for the next 2 days:


That’s right, trail mix and candy. In doing our food shopping late the night before we had spent a disproportionate amount of time in the bulk section, so we had ended up with generous amounts of trail mix (2 different kinds), peanut M&Ms, yogurt-covered raisins, fuzzy peach slices, and gummy worms. It might not be straight out of the Sierra Club’s hiker’s handbook, but it was food and it had certainly seemed like a good idea at 10:30pm the night before! We continued the approach and kept gaining altitude on the steep trail, with just some short level sections such as this one where we passed through a grove of attractive ferns:


As we soldiered on, we eventually found ourselves traveling parallel to a larger river which from our GPS map seemed to be draining down from Lake Lovelywater. It had a number of nice water falls that coursed through the trees:


While the scenery certainly left nothing to be desired, one thing that was not to our liking was the large number of bugs. Every time we stopped we were swarmed by clouds of brown flies; they didn’t seem to bite too much and were pretty easy to kill but there were so many of them that we quickly gave up on this approach and just tried to keep moving as fast as we could. We had read about the bugs being really bad up at Lake Lovelywater, but despite this we assured ourselves that the situation would be better up at the lake. It was also pretty warm, and at the frequent spots where the trail crossed a small tributary draining into the larger river we would stick our heads in the river and don “ice helmets”, with the technique demonstrated by Fras in the photo below:


After a few more hours we finally reached popped out of the gully and onto a flat area, and after a few hundred more meters we found ourselves crossing the river for a final time on a suspension bridge:


And admiring a beautiful view of Lake Lovelywater with glaciers and mountains as a backdrop:


Awesome! The bugs were no better, but we were happy to be at our destination nonetheless.

The Alpine Club of Canada maintains a hut at the lake were you can choose to stay if you pay a fee and reserve it in advance, but we had decided to forgo this comfortable accommodation since anyone who had flown up to the lake in a float plane or helicopter would likely also be staying at the hut, and we didn’t want to risk catching their “softness”. The hut did look nice though, here is a photo of it:


As we marched past the hut to the established camping area, several of its weekend inhabitants issued forth on their way to the helicopter pad for their ride back to civilization and the comfort of their SUVs, each hefting their weekend supplies in one or two large green garbage bags. Yep, I think we made the right decision to camp. We set up our tent on one of the well-built wooden tent platforms overlooking the lake, and after a brief respite from the bugs (inside the tent), we ate some candy and then headed down to the water for a swim. The water was really cold but tolerable for a few minutes, and it was really warm in the sun so it felt awesome to feel your skin slowly heat up after you climbed out of the water and onto the rocks surrounding the lake. By this time the thump-thump-thump of the helicopter carrying away the last of the outdoorsmen who had been staying at the hut had died down, so there was nobody else around and it was really peaceful.

We had a few hours before the sun would go down, so we decided to go out for a row in one of the boats that is kept at the lake by the Alpine Club. Luckily the bugs were not bad out on the water, so we launched the boat, grabbed the oars, and made our way to the opposite end of the lake.


There were a number of glaciers that descended right to the water of the lake, so it had quite a rugged and remote feel and was really impressive with the mountains rising up directly from the back of the lake.


There was an open talus field at the far end of the lake with a lot of flowers and glacier-fed streams scattered though it, so we beached the boat there and traipsed through the alpine surroundings for a while before getting in the boat to head back to our camp as the sun started to set:


We hadn’t brought a stove with us, so dinner was served cold as a mix of flax buns, cheese, and mini-peps (some sort of meat stick that Fras convinced us to buy but which actually tasted pretty good). After dinner we set about hanging the rest of our food to keep it away from the local fauna, with the most choice hanging location we could find being the flagpole on the Alpine Club hut. So, with the rest of our mini-peps blowing in the wind alongside the emblem of the true north strong and free, we squeezed into Fras’s 3-man tent and drifted off to sleep, with visions of the next day’s adventures on Mount Alpha dancing in our heads:


We woke up to our alarm at 6:30am the next morning, we knew it would be a long day so we wanted to get an early start (but not before the sun was up, let’s not get too crazy). We ate some delicious lemon poppyseed muffins for breakfast (thank you, Sav-On bakery!), hoisted our packs onto our backs, and headed up the trail for the ridge of Mount Alpha that we would ascend. The trail was fairly easy to find, but soon became fairly indistinct so that we were relying on finding the pieces of flagging that had been affixed to tree branches. We did manage to stay mostly on course though, and after an hour or so of light-duty bushwhacking we popped out onto a ridge in alpine terrain:


We progressed up this rocky ridge and it eventually turned into a snowfield, so we took out our ice axes and continued on up the snow. We had decided not to bring crampons since the information we had read on the route indicated that the snow was not too steep. Kicking steps did prove to be adequate, and unencumbered by a rope we were able to move pretty fast. Here is the view looking up the snowfields towards our destination:


We progressed up the ridge, with a few trickier sections where we had to transition from snow back on to rock, but overall the route finding was straightforward and did not present any problems. The sun was slowly climbing higher in the sky and the scenery was spectacular, here is a view looking back down the ridge to Trev with Whistler and coast mountains in the background:


Eventually we made it to the end of the snowfields and onto a rocky shoulder where the technical rock climbing started, a short pitch of 5.8 crack climbing. We changed into our climbing shoes and donned our harnesses, and Fras belayed me as I led up the pitch. The climbing was straightforward and well-protected so we quickly dispatched with the difficulties, after which Fras led a short pitch of low fifth class. Here is a shot of Trev making his way up the second pitch:


After regrouping we had some lunch and then continued scrambling towards the top. Near the top we ran into one more short pitch of low fifth class, and then it was more easy ground to the summit. Here is a shot of Fras coming up the final stretch to the summit with the waters of Lake Lovelywater sparkling in the background:


We finally crested the final series of ledges and we were on the summit! It was perfect weather and the views were spectacular, we took a few moments to eat something, admire the view, and take some photos before getting ready to head down:


Great success! We had decided to take the standard descent route of heading down the west ridge; some parties head back down they way they came which eliminates some route-finding challenges, but I prefer covering new ground on the descent to keep it interesting. The descent proved straightforward initially, as we scrambled down some rocky slabs with a lot of loose rock to gain a saddle below. At the saddle we had good views of another large glacier to the north on the slopes of Tantalus and Dionne.


From here we continued our descent heading south, with one long rappel to gain a snow field which we then glissaded down to gain some nice heather slopes. We had all run out of water by this point, so we were really happy to have the chance to drink directly from the cool streams that were coursing through the open fields of heather, grass, and wildflowers. We refilled our water bottles and continued down, marveling at the alpine paradise we were lucky enough to be passing through:


Mount Alpha does have the curse of being pretty inaccessible (unless you want to shell out for a helicopter ride to Lake Lovelywater, but most of those people probably won’t find themselves on the slopes of Mount Alpha), but this is simultaneously a blessing as it means that the setting is almost completely untouched by humans. Aside from the faint trail we were trying to follow there was no other trace of anyone having been there, and we didn’t encounter anyone else during our climb. We continued down, eventually getting to a point where we could see Lambda Lake below us, from where we knew a trail started that would take us back to Lake Lovelywater. By this time it was getting fairly late and I was pretty sure we were going to be doing part of our return journey in the dark, the only question was how much.

We had read some warnings about encountering cliffs on the way to Lake Lambda but we were not quite sure which way to go, and after encountering a steep drop when we tried to approach the lake from the west, we decided to try our luck approaching the lake from the north. We down climbed a stream for a while to gain a saddle, then crossed some snowfields, then some bushwhacking through ferns and thorn bushes, over some talus fields, and into another drainage that appeared to descend down to Lake Lambda, the only question was how much down climbing of slippery rocks would be involved. By this time we were 100% certain that we were no longer on the recommended descent route, but we were all-in so we forged ahead. After a few short down climbs and butt slides down slippery, algae-covered rocks, we were relieved to emerge onto the shores of Lake Lambda.

The tricky bit here was that we were on the wrong shore, we could look across the lake and see some flagging indicating the start of the trail that would take us back to Lake Lovelywater, but it would have been a tedious bushwhack along one shore to get there and the other shore was ringed by cliffs that would not allow us to get through. The obvious solution was to cross the lake, which luckily was only about chest deep, so we removed our packs and shoes, hoisted them over our heads, and waded on through the lake. Here is a shot of Fras heading for the opposite shore


The bottom was pretty soft and swampy which made the going a bit difficult, but eventually we found ourselves on the other side at the trail marker. Trev had pretty bad blisters by this point which had stung a lot on the water crossing, so he elected to leave his shoes off and do the rest of the descent to Lake Lovelywater barefoot, like a real woodsman. We continued on down, and by 6:00pm or so we found ourselves back at our camp which we quickly disassembled in preparation for the hike down from Lake Lovelywater. We were definitely behind schedule but the waters of Lake Lovelywater were just too inviting, so we hopped in the lake for one last refreshing dip before drying off and heading down the trail towards the Squamish River. The hike down was definitely easier than coming up, but we were all quite tired by this point so it was still tough going. Dusk was falling as we came into view of the river, so by the time we made it to the cable crossing it was completely dark and we had to deploy our headlamps. This time we went one at a time with me going first and dragging all of our packs behind me on the lower cable (a bit of a grunt), followed by Trev and lastly Fras.

It was 10:00pm by the time we were all standing safely on the east shore of the river, at which point we remembered to send text messages to Carla and Roanne to let them know we were getting down a bit later than planned (actually there had been no plan, which is probably why we were getting down so late). At this point we thought we were done, so we celebrated with high 5s and drove out the dirt road. We stopped at the closed yellow steel gate and I offered to get out and open it, but open attempting to do so, I realized that it was locked… stinker! There was a number on the gate to call if it was locked so that someone can come open it (which makes me wonder why they don’t just leave it open in the first place), but there was no answer when we tried to call that, so we sat quietly on the dirt road in the darkness and mulled over our options. Fras had seemed quite concerned about bottoming out his car on the drive down the dirt road the previous day, so I was pretty surprised when he tabled the following plan: there were a bunch of logs and rocks lying in the field beside the road, so we could use these to try and assemble a makeshift platform that we could drive the car over to bypass the gate while avoiding the ditch that ran along the road on both sides.

I was a little dubious but the others were committed and Trev is really good at building things, so at 10:30pm we went to work and by 11:00pm we had a passable log platform that looked like it might hold the weight of a Toyota Matrix. With Trev and I guiding him, Fras slowly inched his car onto the platform, along the logs and just past the gate, and which point he gunned it and slid to a halt in a cloud of dust back on the road, on the home-free side of the gate. Score! It now looked very likely that we would make it back to Vancouver.

We left the log platform in-place as an FYI for the gate keepers that they shouldn’t be so zealous about locking it since climbers like to finish their adventures in the dark, and headed back to Vancouver, rolling into town just before midnight. This was good news for Trev and Fras as they could go to bed at a reasonable hour, I, however, had an 8am conference call the next morning at work that I needed to be on so I loaded up PT (Purple Truck) and started the drive down to Seattle, finally rolling into Jet City just before 3:00am. Thus concluded one of the most epic adventures I have had in a long time, definitely well-suited for a CBAC (Charles Brother Adventure Conference).

Ax les Thermes

My plan for the coming day was to catch the early morning flight to Barcelona (which departed at 7:10am), immediately pick up a rental car that I had booked, and then high tail it into France to Ax les Thermes to catch the summit finish of the day’s Tour de France stage in the Pyrenees at the Ax 3-Domaines Ski Resort. The timing worked out pretty well assuming that all went according to plan, with my landing in Barcelona at 9:00am and then a 3 hour drive to the Pyrenees which would give me time to position myself on the climb to see the riders go by.

I was fast asleep when my alarm went off at 5:30am, and after collecting my things I made it downstairs to check out at 5:45am and then boarding the shuttle which departed just after 6:00am. I was flying with EasyJet out of Terminal 2, and my first indication that I might be in for trouble occurred as we pulled up to the Terminal where cars were backed up for a few hundred meters from the departures part of the airport. Luckily the line for buses and taxis was not as long, and after donning my backpack I sprinted inside only to have my suspicions confirmed: everyone in the greater Milan area had booked a flight on EasyJet departing that morning. Stinker!

The terminal was a sea of people, I could barely even figure out where the line for the check in counter ended and where the crowds of people just generally milling around began. I finally found the back of the line and started waiting, but based on my distance from the ticket counter (far) and how fast the line was moving (very slowly), I soon knew there was no way that I would make it in time. At 6:28am I left my spot and began walking around, and eventually caught sight of a roaming EasyJet representative. After getting his attention I explained my situation and asked if there was a way I could get checked in right away. However, he immediately dismissed me, and summarily told me that since it was now 6:30am I had missed the 40 minute check-in window prior to departure, and that it was no longer possible for me to check-in. I began to protest but he promptly marched off to deal with some other crisis, and I wanted to yell “But Andy Schleck needs me at Ax-3 Domaines!!” but he was gone before I had a chance and I was left standing in the crowd feeling deflated with my heart sinking.

He had told me that I needed to go ask at the ticket counter about getting on the next flight, so I thought maybe there would be one leaving soon and my plans would not be impacted. I went and waited in line to speak to the surly ticket agent, and she informed me that the next flight leaving for Barcelona on EasyJet was at 7:30pm that night. My immediate instinct was to leap over the ticket counter and strangle her, but I suppressed that and asked her if there was another airline that I could get on. She made a phone call and told me that Weylings had a flight leaving out of another terminal at 9:00am, and that I would have to take a shuttle bus there and ask them about booking a ticket on their flight.

With a sigh I turned and started to walk towards the terminal exit, resigned to my fate, when I though I heard something about “Barcelona” over a loudspeaker. At this same moment I had a flash of inspiration that maybe it was still possible to get on the 7:10am EasyJet flight even though by now it was 6:40am. This sentiment was reinforced as I recalled various experiences traveling with Roanne where I have observed her aggressive, no holds-barred approach to air travel which can involve threatening ticket agents, sprinting through terminals, and spitting venom at security guards. I ran back into the ticketing area and saw that the monitor for one of the ticket counters displayed a reference to my Barcelona flight, indicating that they were ticketing any last comers for the flight. I desperately shouldered my way through the crowd and reached the ticket counter just as the information on the monitor changed to indicate the counter was now closed, but the agent was considerably more accommodating than anyone else I had dealt with so far and she agreed to print me a boarding pass and told me to fly like a banshee to the departure gate (at least that is what I heard).

So off I went, passing other people who were also running for their flights like they were going backwards. I made it though security quickly with the knowledge that you don’t need to remove your shoes in European airports, and my heart leapt as I rounded the corner for my gate and saw that they were still boarding. SO AWESOME! I felt like I had come back from the dead, and was so stinkin’ happy that I was going to be able to see the tour after all.

We took off on time and landed in Barcelona just before 9:00am, at which point I immediately headed to the rental car counter. There was a long line there that took almost an hour to get through, but I was still so happy to have made my flight that I didn’t mind at all. My car was called an Ibiza and was a compact standard (not diesel this time) that seemed like it would do just fine. I headed out of the airport on the highway and made a wrong turn at the first opportunity, but luckily it didn’t take too long to correct and I had better luck with navigation for the rest of the trip.

I arrived in Ax les Thermes at about 1:30pm, perfect timing since the riders were expected to arrive around 5:00pm, so I would have time to hike up the climb and find a good viewing spot. I parked the Ibiza just outside of town on the road that I had come in on, pointed back towards Barcelona anticipating the gridlock that would ensue after the stage was over and I needed to get back for my work meetings that started the next morning (Why did I come to Europe again? Oh yeah, it was for work!). I then walked down into the town, where the roundabout the riders would pass through was already set up with barriers and had gendarmes directing traffic in anticipation of the road closure (that went into effect at 2:00pm).

I stopped to buy some water and some sort of delicious ham-based savory food item, and then continued walking through town towards the base of the climb. It was nice to be in France where I felt like I had a fighting change of making myself understood to locals, as opposed to Italy and Spain where all I could do was say “Hi” and “Thanks”.
After a few hundred meters I reached the base of the climb, where the KOM banners indicated that there was 7.8 km of climbing until the summit (there was then a further 1 km before the finish line):

I continued up the climb, passing lots of spectators and stopping along the way to say hi to Didi the Devil:

It was pretty hot out and the climb was really steep, as I struggled up on foot I was feeling sorry for the riders who would have to race up it in a few hours time. There were a number of amateur cyclists riding up the climb, and as they almost came to a standstill on the steeper sections (up to 10% according to the sign posts) it was pretty telling as to how fit the pros are who will cruise up it at 20 km/hour. As I went higher on the climb the crowds became thicker and there was more writing on the roads:

There were also lots of tents and campers set up, as most people had driven up the night before and had been there all day drinking, barbequing, and partying as they waited for the show to arrive. Just past 2 km from the finish (1 km from the end of the climb) I finally reached the start of the barriers, and decided to set up shop just below that. While a view from the barriers would have provided a clearer view of the riders, I was more excited about being in the midst of the chaos, with the crowds and flags and their thickest and only parting to allow the riders through. Here is the view down the climb as I waited for the action to start, you can see the 2 km to go banner in the distance:

At around 3:15pm the publicity caravan began to come through, which is sort of like a bunch of parade floats that drive up the climb playing loud music and throwing things at the people in the crowd. I had planned on wearing my yellow jersey for the event, but during packing I had decided to cut down on clothing by also wearing that as my jersey if I went riding (as seen in the previous post), however an all day ride in 35 degree C heat tends to really stink up a jersey so I had been forced into wearing a plain white shirt. I managed to catch enough flying objects from the publicity caravan to deck myself out in more appropriate attire, a polka dot T-shirt and a wide-brimmed red hat (the photo is from after the stage, if you are wondering where the crowds went):

Here is a shot of the caravan coming through:

The publicity vehicles filtered through in starts and stops for about an hour, and then at 4:15pm the flow died down and it was just the occasional race motorcycle that would go buzzing through, with the gendarmes (who stood about every 30 feet on the upper part of the climb) blowing their whistles and yelling at everyone to get back and make a path. As more motorcycles came through the tension began to slowly build, until just before 5:00pm when the “thump-thump-thump” of a distant helicopter could be heard. This was the TV camera that followed the race, so it was then clear that the riders were close and the excitement ratcheted up a notch further. Finally a whole fleet of motorbikes came through followed by the lead rider, and Ag2r rider named Christophe Riblon who was the surviving member of the day’s break. I don’t think words can justice to the next few minutes (at least not words written by me at the tail end of a 14 hour flight back from Spain), so if you want to get an idea of what I saw check out the 3 minute video that I took and uploaded to youtube:



Oh man was it ever awesome! It all happens pretty fast, but again, I would say: “Worth it!!!”. Here is one photo that I took after the video:

After the majority of the riders seemed to have gone by I decided to walk up the rest of the course to the finish line. I did feel that I hadn’t seen all that many riders go by compared to the 170 or so that should still be in the race at this point, and as I neared the finish line almost 40 minutes after the leader had gone through this sentiment was confirmed as the gruppetto rolled around the corner:

This was cool to see as there were so stinkin’ many riders in there, there must have been over 100. The wearer of the green jersey (Alessandro Petacchi) was on the front marshalling the pace (“piano, piano!”) as they all rolled by at a casual pace.
I continued on to the finish thinking that I might try to see jersey presentations, but it was a real maze up there with all of the official vehicles parked and I gave up before ever finding the area where the awards would be given out. I decided I had better start back down the climb in light of my obligations the next day, since it would take an hour or two to walk back down the climb and then another 3+ hours to drive back to Barcelona. By this point the entire road down was clogged with a tour-sized traffic jam, with a mix of official vehicles, publicity caravan vehicles, campers, etc. and I was happy to be walking instead of sitting in a car (though I did inhale a lot of diesel fumes as I walked by all the idling vehicles).

I finally made it down by about 7:30pm where I grabbed something to eat in town and then walked back to my car. Traffic was insane going the other direction (into town) on the road I had parked on, but not bad in the direction I was headed so luckily I made it back across the border into Spain without too many delays. I did hit some traffic delays closer to Barcelona, so by the time I searched the city for a gas station to fill the rental car tank, returned the car, and caught a taxi to my hotel it was 12:30am. Darn, another short sleep coming up! Oh well, the adventures aren’t going to come to you if you just sit around and wait for them, better to get out there and go after them!

The next two days of work meetings went well, it was fun to hang out with Dylan and Chris from Synapse as well as the others from the various companies involved in the project. We got a chance to swim in the Mediterranean and had good times in the evenings going out to some great dinners, with the highlight being going out for Tapas with Dylan’s friends (who are locals) Eli and Lluis (apologies in advance as I’m sure both those names are spelled incorrectly), lots of good laughs and general hilarity. All told it was an amazing trip, I hope I can continue to have my employer finance vacations for me!

Cortina d’Ampezzo (day 2)

As another day dawned with bright sunshine filtering through my window, I woke at 7:30am feeling greatly refreshed with my headache completely gone. I was fully recharged and ready for another day of unmitigated fun, but the burning question was what should I do? I had initially thought I might do two days of via ferrata, but I felt as though I had overdosed on it the day prior so I needed to find an alternative. Luckily I had a backup plan, as I had packed my road cycling shoes, pedals, and kit, and I felt like an epic road ride through the dolomites was just what the doctor ordered to clear away any final remnants of my bleariness from the night before. Over breakfast I mapped out an introductory Dolomites ride, a nice 95km loop that would cover 4 different alpine passes with about 8500 feet of climbing:

I left the Punta parked at the hotel, and walked over to one of the bike rental places. They seemed to be more focused on renting mountain bikes, but I was more inspired to retrace some of the mountain passes featured in the Giro d’Italia so I inquired about road bikes. Luckily they had one of our Cannondale company road bikes in my size (or at least close enough):

I changed into my kit, hopped on my pony and off I went. It was pretty exhilarating to be cruising through the Italian sunshine (much more stylish than American sunshine) on the cobbled streets of Cortina, headed for some amazing riding in the Dolomiti. The experience enhanced even further by the fact that I was resplendent in my replica yellow jersey that I had brought for the following day’s activities, and after I had changed into it in the rental shop the staff had started addressing me as “Aendy Schlecka” (to be pronounced with an Italian accent). Here I am stopped for to make a few adjustments and enjoying the sunshine:

I headed out of town the same way I had gone the prior day, towards the Passo Falzarego except that this time I continued up past the previous day’s turn-off point to the start of the route. The ascent took a little over an hour, as there was a lot of elevation gain and I was trying to pace myself in light of what I had planned for the day. During my ride I made four observations: 1) a lot of people ride motorcycles for fun on the roads through the dolomites, 2) most of them go stinkin’ faster than a bat out of hell and seem to have little to no regard for their personal safety, 3) there seemed to be a direct correlation between the width of their rear tire and how fast they went blowing by me, and 4) oh man does that ever look fun! I found myself briefly wondering if I should have rented a ducati instead of a cannondale, but then I reminded myself that the only time I have ever driven a motorbike was during the testing for my motorcycle license (which I passed, thank you very much) and Dolomite mountain passes inundated with speed-crazed Italian motorists probably aren’t the best place to refresh my memory on how one drives a motorcycle. But next time, for sure!

I soldiered on up the climb, feeling secure in the sentiment that there are certainly worse ways to die than by being run over by a high-powered sport bike while retracing the route of the Giro d’Italia. I finally reached the top, where I paused to take a picture of my pony resting beneath the sign marking the high point of the Passo Falzarego:

I then remounted and headed towards the Passo Valparola, which I soon reach as it is effectively part of the same formation as the Falzarego and is just another km or so and another 300 feet of elevation gain.

From here I started down my first descent of the day, and holy cow was it ever fun! The switchbacks are amazing to ride, they are all banked so you can really lean into them and the roads where in great shape unlike many of the high mountain roads in North America which are not well maintained. I even managed to pass another cyclist on the descent (a real Italian cyclist!) which was a good feeling even though he was probably about 50 years old. It was pretty fun to yell “Ciao!” at all the cyclists who passed in the other direction, everyone seemed really friendly (or maybe they were just humouring the maillot jaune). I stopped to eat a peach at the conclusion of the descent, and then passed through a few more small towns before starting the next ascent to the Passo Campolongo. I passed a few other cyclists on this climb, and halfway up I was passed by a Liquigas team car which was pretty awesome but I wasn’t fast enough to get my camera out. This climb wasn’t as long as the previous one, and before long I was at the high point:

By this point I was pretty hungry, so I stopped to refill my water in a café at the summit and ate the leftover pizza from the night before that I had stashed in my back jersey pocket. It was quite hot out, so the sun beating down on the pizza coupled with my body heat as I sweated my way up the climb had an effect similar to warming the pizza up in the microwave, and it tasted pretty good as I sat by the side of the road. Bene! I then started down the next descent, which dropped down into a valley that I had driven through on the way to Cortina d’Ampezzo two nights prior. Here is a shot of one the switchbacks, from the angle of the upper guardrail relative to the road below you can get a sense of how tight the corners were that the switchbacks wrapped around, well over 180 degrees, so awesome!

I continued along my route, stopping at one point at another café to drink some juice and eat an entire Ritter Sport chocolate bar. I didn’t really feel like eating the entire thing, but felt like I had no choice because it was so hot out that any remnants would have melted in about 30 seconds in my jersey pocket, dripping out of the packaging and soiling the golden fleece. I also would have liked to have had an espresso, but sadly it was too hot for that and I felt like I needed to retain fluids rather than start peeing more out. Here is a shot looking down from the roadside café’s patio into the valley below (it was partway up an unnamed ascent):

I then continued on to the base of the final ascent of the day which also happened to be the biggest, the climb up to the Passo Giau. By this point my energy levels were starting to fade, probably a combination of the previous day’s exertions, the oppressive mid-day heat, and the fact that I was on the tail end of a 95 km ride with 8,500 feet of climbing. As I started up the climb it seemed noticeably steeper than the others, and I soon happened upon a sign informing me that I had 29 switchbacks to ascend before reaching the top:

I soldiered on, but as I progressed up the climb I could feel the heat really starting to affect me, as I stopped twice to recover a bit in the shade and each time I stopped I would feel a bit faint (probably as my heart rate dropped rapidly, allowing my blood pressure to drop further which was probably already low since I don’t think I had been drinking enough) and start to shiver a bit, which is not normal when it is 35 degrees C and sunny. The only other times I have felt like this on the bike was the first time I climbed Little Cottonwood Canyon after moving to Salt Lake City (I had wisely decided to do that ride at 2:00pm on a hot July day), and during the final climb of my Canyon master birthday challenge in Salt Lake City. Oh well, if there is one thing I have learned it is that the worse you feel during a ride, the more fun it seemed after the fact. Secure in this knowledge of immense pleasure in store for me after the ride I continued to grind my way up the climb. Near the top two Italian cyclists passed me headed down in the other direction, and one of them yelled “Vai, vai, vai!” (“Vai” is Italian for “go”) as he went flying by, and this gave me the fortitude to put in one final burst and propel myself up and over the top.

The view from the top of this pass was the nicest of any that I had been through so far, with lots of rugged mountains laid out below:

I continued down the descent which was the most technically demanding of any that I had come down, making for some exciting riding. I finally rolled into Cortina and headed straight to the rental shop where I returned my bike and the employees bid goodbye to “Aendy Schlecka”. I then walked back to the hotel (stopping for a recovery gelato along the way, of course), where the worthy Punta was already loaded up and ready to go.

I had used google maps to determine the most expedient route back to Milan (which was drastically different than the one I had taken on my late night drive to Cortina), so I headed due south towards Venice to pick up the A27 before continuing west on the A4. I had finished my ride around 4:30pm and departed by 5:00pm, so with the expected minimum drive time of 4 hours and 30 minutes I should get getting into Milan with enough time to catch some decent sleep before my early flight to Barcelona the next morning. You might think that 10+ hours of driving is a lot for less than 2 days in the Dolomites, but to that I would say “Worth it!!!”. I drove straight through with no wrong turns, and with only one stop for gas and a panino I made it to Milan Malpensa Airport where I was dropping off the rental car by about 10:00pm.
After parking the Punta and dropping the keys off inside at the rental agency counter, it was time to make my way to my hotel, which was near the airport (in anticipation of my late arrival and early flight out the next day). I had a vague memory of a free hotel shuttle to and from the airport, but since it was late and I was tired I decided to just take a taxi. I showed the taxi driver where I wanted to go, and he kindly called the hotel for me and arranged for the free shuttle to come and get me. This was my first experience with an Italian taxi driver, and I was really impressed!

I then waited for the shuttle, and finally made it to the hotel at 11:00pm. After checking in, I asked the hotel clerk about getting a shuttle back to the airport the next morning, informing him that my flight departed at 7:10am. He suggested that I take the 6:00am shuttle, and assured me that it would leave plenty of time to catch my flight. I was a little hesitant, and asked him if he was sure that the airport wouldn’t be busy at that hour. His response was (translated from broken English) “At 6:00 in the morning? Don’t be ridiculous! Nobody gets up that early here!”. I thought to myself “Okay, Italians know best”, and headed up to my room.
I had a much-needed shower (removing the many layers of salt, sweat, and dust that I had accumulated during my epic 6 hour ride in the Dolomites), and then spent an hour organizing and packing for the next day’s flight. I finally climbed into bed and dozed off just before 1:00am.

Cortina d’Ampezzo (day 1)

I rose at 8:00am, still feeling a little tired after only 6 hours of sleep but what choice did I have? I had things to do! The first thing to do was breakfast, which turned out to be subpar compared with my breakfast in Monza, especially the cappuccino which seemed to have some sort of extra sweet simulated milk froth on it instead of the real thing. After breakfast I headed to the grocery store to buy some food for the next couple of days, my rations consisted of: bananas, apples, peaches, oranges, some weird little cookie/cracker things, and chocolate bars. It would have been nice to have spent more time browsing and putting thought into what I would eat, but I knew that time was of the essence and I had to get my adventure under way.

The days itinerary involved a via ferrata adventure in the mountains of the Tofana group, about 5km from Cortina. For my uneducated readers: via ferrata means “iron path” in Italian, and refers to fixed steel cables that Italians have bolted to mountain faces to establish fixed routes up and through the mountains that can be ascended solo, either using the cable itself or the rock, and clipping yourself into the cables using a climbing harness, slings, and locking carabiners so that if you were to fall, the steel cable (or more accurately, the last attachment point of the steel cable to the rock) would arrest your fall. You don’t really want to fall, as in most cases you would go about 10-20 feet before your fall was stopped by the combination of steel cable and static sling, neither of which have much give in them to cushion your fall. Luckily, most of the ascent is not that difficult (especially if you yard on the cable) so it becomes a sort of high-speed vertical hiking adventure, where your pace is limited only by your aerobic capacity since you don’t have to worry about belaying, you just move your carabiner from one section of cable to the next as you progress. Big time fun!

Based on some route descriptions I had read on the internet, I had decided to link together two via ferrata that sounded quite good, the first being the Via Ferrata Guiseppe Olivieri which ascended the Punta Anna, and the second being the Via Ferrata Gianni Agloi which continued on to ascend the Tofana di Mezzo. I drove about 5km from Cortina d’Ampezzo towards the Passo Falzarego and then cut off onto a smaller road which ascended the hill side to a parking area at the Rifigio A. Dibena. I suited up for the day’s adventure, at which point I realized that I had forgotten my sunscreen back at the hotel. Luckily a friendly looking hiker with a really big pack happened to be walking by, and I rationalized that in such a large pack he must surely have some sunscreen, which turned out to be correct and he kindly let me use some of it.

I then headed up the hillside in what I thought was the right direction, but turned out to be on the wrong side of the Punta Anna which I would be ascending. Luckily there turned out to be a short section of Via Ferrata traversing the base of the Punta Anna, so I used this as a bonus section that served as a good warm-up and also put me back on track towards the start of the intended Via Ferrata. Here is a picture as I end this traverse, with the trail that I should have been on all along visible on the right side of the photo:

Back on track, I continued on to the base of the Via Ferrata Guiseppe Oliveri where I found the requisite commemorative plaque installed that I could not read since it was in Italian. Most of the Via Ferrata were installed during World War I to enable training exercises for the alpine units of the Italian Army, though in most cases the hardware has been upgraded since that time.

I then began the ascent, and happily the angle kicked back immediately with some good exposure right off the bat. Here is a shot looking up as the fixed cable disappears off into the distance:

Pretty fun! I stopped for a breather on a ledge that offered a good view of one of the other peaks in the Tofane group, the ???. The summit was enshrouded in clouds, but that often seems to be the case for many of these peaks, even on otherwise beautiful sunny days:

Here is a shot of our protagonist, happy to be out for a day in the Dolomiti:

And here is a shot looking back down towards my starting point:

I continued on up the Punta Anna, passing a few other climbers before reaching the top. Here is a shot looking down from the summit of the Punta Anna to the valley below and Cortina d’Ampezzo:

I hadn’t been going for that long at this point so I continued on towards the next summit of the Tofana di Mezzo, ascending a rickety old steel ladder that didn’t inspire too much confidence as it swayed under my weight. I didn’t bother clipping myself to the cable provided on this fixture, since I figured that if anything failed it was going to be the ladder itself and it wouldn’t matter whether I was clipped into it or not as I would be going down with the ship either way. I held my breath and second guessed having that extra pain chocolat at breakfast, but finally I exited the top with everything still intact.

Here I am after finishing the sketchy ladder ascent, feeling happy to be back on solid ground:

I continued along the route, with a brief detour to inadvertently ascend and descend an extra bonus peak. My route finding policy is that when I am faced with two choices, I take the one that looks like it is going up. Usually this serves me well (especially when climbing mountains), but in a few cases you end up gaining some bonus elevation and being forced to backtrack. Back on track, I continued along on the correct route, re-passing a fellow climber who was also moving pretty fast and who I had swapped positions with during my detour. He seemed really nice, though we didn’t speak a common language. I think we felt a sense of inherent camaraderie as we were both doing the ascent by ourselves and moving quickly. Here is a shot of him doing one of the nice exposed traverses (though you don’t get a sense of the exposure from the photo) along the route:

He also had a good mustache, which definitely made me question my clean-shaven state. After passing my mustachioed friend I ascended the final few hundred feet to reach the summit, which was marked by a cross and had good views in all directions:

The summit was not all that exclusive, as in addition to the via ferrata route it could also be reached by cable cars. This made it a little more crowded that it would have been, but also offered the option of taking the cable car down from the top. This possibility flashed through my mind briefly, but I then scanned my surroundings and noticed another nearby peak that was almost the same size. Here is a photo of it:

This was another mountain in the Tofana group, the Tofana di Dentro, and according to my map there was another via ferrata that dropped into the notch between this peak and the one I was on and then ascended to the top of this one. At this point it was only 3:00pm (I had started at 11:00am), so, never one to stand idly by while a nearby mountain goes unclimbed, I decided to continue on and tag this peak as well. This via ferrata was pretty tame compared to the ones I had just completed, so I didn’t end up clipping into it and just used the cable as a handrail since I would have felt comfortable on the terrain even without the cable. This made for a fast ascent, and I reached the top of this peak just before 4:00pm. Here is a shot of your happy protagonist with one more peak under his belt:

And here is a shot looking back towards the Tofana di Mezzo, the summit I had just come from. You can see the cable car station on the upper left shoulder of the mountain:

I reversed my route back to the notch between the two peaks, and from an inspection of my map I noticed that there was a trail descending from the notch that should take me back to my starting point without retracing my ascent route, and avoiding the namby-pamby cable car. The trail was labeled as “difficult” on the map and it looked a little improbable based on the terrain it had to move through the get back to the starting point, but I saw some footprints in the snow field that it started down so off I went. It started by slip-sliding down a lengthy snowfield which made me question my footwear choice of running shoes, but I made it though staying more or less upright and without getting too wet:

After the snowfield the faint trail continued around the shoulder of the mountain, with a few short downclimbs that appeared to have had cables installed on them at one point. This made me wonder if a “difficult” trail was code in Italian for a decommissioned via ferrata route, but at this point I was committed so I continued on. After some more traversing I reached a really long scree field that led back down to an area that I recognized from my initial misguided approach to the via ferrata. Part way down this scree-surfing descent the Rifigio Guissani came into view, allowing me to confirm my whereabouts on my map:

After another long section of scree surfing I finally reached the base of this slope, where my “difficult” path rejoined with a “medium” path which was a real trail instead of a free-for-all down snow fields, scree fields, and 4th class rock. Here is a shot looking back up at my descent route (some trail!):

I happy dumped all the rocks out of my shoes and continued down, reaching the Punta about an hour later at 6:00pm:

I was pretty happy to be back down, as by this point I was quite tired and had a bit of a headache which could have been from any number of things (not enough sleep the previous night, spending much of the day above 10,000 feet, not drinking enough water, etc.). I jumped in my getaway vehicle and headed back down to Cortina d’Ampezzo where I briefly wandered the the town, ate some pizza and capresi salad, and then went to bed at 9:00pm. Bene!

Monza

I rose at 7:00am to go for a run which allowed me to see a bit more of Monza and its environs, and upon returning from that I found out that my luggage had been delivered overnight, so that was excellent news. I still wore my new designer Italian outfit though, as it was nicer than anything I had packed. At breakfast I met the representative from our client’s client who was staying in the same hotel (it is a pretty complicated arrangement of companies involved in the project, with 5 different parties involved), and after a really good breakfast and a delicious cappuccino we walked over to the meeting location.

The meeting went well and lasted most of the day, being cut off at 5:30pm because some of the others had flights to catch back to their various European locales. I, on the other hand, had pressing business to conduct over the next few days in the Dolomites (the Italian Alps), so I high tailed it over the rental car agency where I had a diesel-powered Fiat Punta waiting for me. I swung by the hotel to pick up my luggage and then I was off, heading east on the A4 expressway towards Venice. As I drove I had an excellent omen, being passed by a Saeco truck:

Before leaving I had just ordered a Saeco espresso machine, so I took this sighting as a divine sign that I had chosen wisely. The town I was headed for was called Cortina d’Ampezzo, a well known ski town (akin to Whistler or Zermatt) located in the heart of the Dolomites. A few summers prior when Roanne and I had been to Italy, we had taken a train to Bolzano thinking that we would have good mountain access from there, but we learned that to get right into the mountains you need to have car (unlike in Switzerland, the greatest country on earth) so this time I had taken that approach from the outset.

I hadn’t done any precise distance calculations from Milan to Cortina, but from my well-honed instincts I had guessed it was a 2-3 hour drive, giving me plenty of time to get there in good time after my meeting ended on Thursday night. Unfortunately, it turned out that much of the drive (at least for the route I had chosen, which was definitely not the fastest) took place on tight, winding mountain roads up and over high mountain passes, which made the drive take considerably longer. I later found out from google maps (maybe I should have done this before the drive, who would have guessed?) that the base amount of time for the route that I took was just over 5 hours, and with my total time (including a few wrong turns and difficulty finding the hotel at 1:00am when I finally rolled into Cortina) being closer to 6.5 hours. I must say though, it was pretty stinkin’ fun to be driving a small manual-transmission car on those super-tight switchbacks at midnight with no other cars on the road. You get into a good rhythm on the uphills especially: gear down to 2nd and brake a little as the turn approaches, then gun it around the steepest part and shift into 3rd as you come out of the turn onto the short straight section between switchbacks, then back down to 2nd for the next turn and repeat up to 31 times (at the bottom of each pass there is a sign telling you how many switchbacks there are, and each turn is numbered).

Needless to say, I was quite tired after finally finding my hotel in Cortina d’Ampezzo. There was someone at the check-in desk, but he seemed a little drunk (I could smell the liquor on his breath also) and at first could not find my reservation until I pointed out that it was sitting directly in front of him on the desk. I guided him through the rest of the check-in process, and then finally climbed the stairs to my room for some well-earned sleep.

Milan

The coming sequence of blog posts describes a trip to Europe that I took for work (a “business trip”, if you will). I knew that such an event was a possibility for the project that I have been working on, but I didn’t want to get my hopes too high in case it didn’t happen, but about a week before we received confirmation that we would have to send someone to attend a meeting in Monza, Italy (just outside Milan) on Thursday, followed by some meetings in Barcelona, Spain on the following Monday and Tuesday. Somehow I was chosen as the lucky man who would attend the meeting in Italy, and I would then be joined by two co-workers (“colleagues”, if you will) for the Barcelona meetings.

I flew out from Seattle on Tuesday, July 13 at 1:50pm, with a connection in Paris before continuing to Milano and landing in Milan-Linate Airport (Milan has another airport called Malpensa that is considerably further from the city center, so I was happy to be flying into Linate). The connection in Paris was pretty tight, as we landed just as my next flight was starting to board, but I made it onto the plane in time. Unfortunately, as I found out when I reached Milan at 11:15am the next morning, my checked baggage was not quite so fortunate and it remained in Paris. In one way this was a bit of stinker, since I had some important stuff in my luggage (such as clothes), but on the other hand, I had been wondering if there was somewhere I could stow my luggage somewhere for the afternoon while I explored Milan before continuing on to Monza (which is about 15km or so from the Milan city center) and this solved that dilemma. The airline representative informed me that my luggage would arrive on the next flight from Paris at 3:00pm, so, unencumbered by luggage, I bought some delicious focaccia and headed into Milan for some sightseeing.

It had been pretty cool temperatures when I left Seattle so I had dressed for that weather, so the first thing that I noticed when I stepped out of the airport was that it was stinkin’ hot. I took a bus into the city center, and the first order of business was to eat some delicious gelato. Molto bene! Milan was nice to walk around as a number of the streets in the city center are open only to pedestrians. The first interesting thing that I saw (besides the gelato vendor) was a rack of bikes that were part of the city’s bike sharing program:

Awesome! The bikes looked really nice, with racks, built in locks, and fenders. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how I could use one of them, but as my Italian vocabulary consists only of “Si”, “Grazie”, “Bene”, and “Ciao”, I had limited success and decided that I was better off to continue on foot. I think bike sharing programs are a great idea, hopefully more North American cities will catch on to this.
I continued on to one of the main sights in Milan, a giant cathedral (the 3rd largest in the world according to the travel guide to Milan that I had obtained from the Seattle library) called the Duomo. Here is a picture of the exterior, quite impressive:

I toured through the inside briefly which was equally impressive, but you were not supposed to take photos (although everyone else seemed to be), so I don’t have any pictures to share. I was happy to have checked off the obligatory old church visit for my European vacation, so I continued on my way. I wandered around through some old castle type structure, and down a bunch of narrow streets where I took this photo of a never-ending row of parked scooters:

There were tons of scooters around, it would have been pretty fun to rent one to go buzzing around the city. I then wandered through some sort of shopping structure with a really interesting domed glass roof:

By this point it was around 5pm and I felt like I had maxed out on being a city tourist, so I headed to Milan Central Train Station where I caught a train to Monza. As a side note, public transit is so awesome. Had I taken a taxi from Linate Airport directly to Monza it would have cost over 60 euros, but my trip of a bus into Milan and then a train to Monza came to a grand total of 2.50 euros. Deal!

After a bit of wandering around I found my hotel, and after checking in I asked if my luggage had been delivered. It had not arrived, so I headed up to my room and called the airport baggage service. The woman who I spoke with there could not tell me if my luggage had been found (though the person I had spoken with at the airport seemed sure it had been), nor could she tell me if it would arrive that night. I didn’t feel that jeans and a sweaty T-shirt was proper attire for an Italian business meeting, so I frantically headed to the Monza shopping district to buy some presentable clothes before the shops closed at 7:30pm. After a bit of leg work I came up with an acceptable outfit, here I am modeling it in my room at the conclusion of my mission:

Bene! With this out of the way I took a much-needed shower and climbed into bed to finally get some sleep as I had not been able to sleep on the overnight plane ride.