Snow to 600 m

Blogger continues to limit access and today with the winter arriving early i am trying to clean up the " Posts " made earlier that have typo errors . Sunday was full on rain and low visibility and today is not much better ! At some point i will have to go find another access point with my laptop to post the photos that i have accumulated but " Blogger " facilities are not allowing the " upload " from my b/band . Fact is the signal strength ( 12.8kb/sec ) is such that " Fatcyclist's latest blog post " did not appear but when i hit " feed " on his header i get the last 10 items in seconds for about 6MB ! Please explain that for contrariness !

Twitter from @spokesmen tells me that Copenhagen is sunny with 10c weather and the weather chart ( metoffice )shows heavy rain and 13c so will the women's or the men's TT get the forecast adverse conditions ?

Saturday was a sunny warm start with me leaving the house at 10ish and heading east in time to find Thomas R. heading west and a quick U turn had me up with him as he was setting out to ride " Intervals " . He says that 2012 is sorted but the news will come later and that he enjoyed the Vuelta . Coming into Munster from the east is a short incline and this always knocks my pace down so i bid him a good day and when i crested i saw that he was 100m up the road already . With a nice day i had already told him i would head up to Achensee and this 7km climb is steady rather than steep but runs alongside the cog railway in places . Suffice to say i was waiting to photo the train at the top .

Around Achensee ( the lake ) are some really nice walking trails but the west side of the lake heading north is reserved for walkers only but no doubt those with mountain bikes will give it a go . West of the village of Petsau are some valleys which are National Park Areas and have tolls for all vehicles except pedal bikes and there are speed limits for these narrow roads . Suffice to say there are no speed cameras and walkers wander all over the road even on blind corners . With three distinct destinations there is plenty of area to investigate . The longest of these roads rises gradually with width for a Pullman Coach but not enough to pass a cyclist .

So along comes a coach in a hurry and just as he decides to pass anyway there is a car coming the other side of the road , so he slams the brakes and pulls back . Road continues upwards and when it widened for several hundred metres i signalled for him to pass but he hung back until the road narrowed then decided to go for it and of course in touching my shoulder had me on the stone verge , staying upright whilst he continued was challenging and of course he had no idea until i pointed out the disturbed dust on the side of the vehicle when i caught them in the parking area .

As usual it was the " Entschuldigung ( excuse me ) " attitude but no injury , no case to answer attitude ! Signalling as a curtesy when the road was wide enough is one thing , forcing through pushing the bike rider aside is quite another . As to the passengers , none were prepared to speak English and of course most would have been asleep or unaware of the risk even had they seen a cyclist in front of their conveyance .

Several hours of riding earlier in the week took me over the Alpbach climb which I have mentioned in previous posts but as I descended into the Zillertal I found a road I had not ridden up before . The sign said 7.2km of Vogelsveg so decided to try my luck thinking that it would connect to another road as do most of these roads . Climbing through new scenery and the forests in coolish conditions on quite steep gradients kept me warm but as it proved the road was a deadend unless you were on a mountain bike , so a descent to the valley and onto Kaltenbach was the result . By midday the sun wa out and another warm day ensued .

Whilst walking these areas in the past several seasons whilst forbidden to ride the bike due to the Embolisms treatment I had thought I had found all the roads that are available but it appears there are still a few more roads to be found . During this ride I took a few photos of the road surface conditions that you face as you descend , easy enough to avoid going up but a bit nerve racking for those on a race bike on a fast descent . One of the jobs to be done with the inclement weather will be changing the brake blocks on the bikes and sorting a slight noise from front wheel braking which could be the need to true the front wheel’s alignment . Spokes are tight so there may be a slight rim buckle to sort with the wheel truing equipment / gadget , as running the wheel against the blocks doesn’t indicate any obvious anomaly .