I left my luxury hotel in Bolzano in light rain and headed North towards Innsbruck, a city I thought I had been to in an earlier life. Getting to Innsbruck proved a bit of a test, as the temperature, which had been hovering in the high 50'sF now started down as I started up into the mountains again. I passed several motorcyclists on the way up, and then noticed I was alone on the road. The rain, light and no factor now turned into a pretty good snow fall. The road was just wet, as it was not really very cold, but visibility was reduced to about 10 feet, and I was not having a great ride at 10kph. The road started down and I had a challenging ride down to the valley floor, again. Finally, I made Innsbruck, with heavy rain falling. It was lunchtime, and too early to stop for the day. After dodging the slippery wet tram tracks for a few minutes I parked the bike in downtown bustling Innsbruck and had a great hot lunch in a beautiful (of course) restaurant, where my soaked riding clothes and boots left huge puddles on the seat and floor.
After lunch, unable to see a reasonably priced hotel nearby, I headed out of Innsbruck towards Salzberg, Austria - last visited in 1997 on my Euro MC tour of the Alps with Beach Adventures.
It rained, very hard, all the way to Salzberg. I stayed on the autobahn to maximize the terror of riding with huge trucks and crazy Austrians in Mercedes. I made it to Salzberg, and took the first hotel I came to, at the airport. Turned out to be a classy place and they only had a suite available, so I took it for $85 Euros and had beer and pizza at the bar before turning in to my luxurious room.
The rain must have been too much, because next morning, I checked out, hoped on the Autobahn and drove all day back to Heidelberg, where Stefan at Knopf Tours put me up for two nights while I unpacked and cleaned up the bike and changed my ticket for an early return to NY.
Friday morning, a month after arriving in Heidelberg, I was shuttled to Frankfurt airport and onto a plane for Zurich and eventually JFK. A short train to a taxi and I was home for dinner with the family the same, long day.
One week later I am adjusted to the NY time and rested from my travels and planning my return!
Gut Fahrt,
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