Although very difficult, the climb up the Grossglockner was great.

Me on top of the Grossglockner Pass.

Still alot of snow for being in June. It would have been awsome to ride this about the first of May. I'll bet the snow banks would be 50' high.

I took the 5 oldest kids for the afternoon, while Kindra stayed at the chalet with Mitzi. We rode an alpine slide ride that runs on a rail. It was like 1.2 miles long. A lot of fun.

Then me and the kids stopped by this deep gorge.

Then we went swimming.
6-9-10 Wednesday
Great ride up the Grossglockner pass. Weather was perfect. Sunny and cool climbing. That was one epic ride. It was very steep right from the start and never leveled out much. The upper section had a little respite in the curves, but for a 1:45 climb that gained about 5500’ in about 11 miles, my average rpms were only 65, and that is with a granny gear of 39 X 31. I wished a lot of the climb that I either had a compact crank or a triple, as a lot of the time my rpm’s were under 60. It felt like the longest tension interval I had ever done. The descent was fun, except that it was so steep and had so many curves my arms were starting to ache from squeezing by my brakes so much. I was starting to get worried I’d totally melt my brakes and not be able to stop.
Mitzi has had a bit of a fever and hasn’t been feeling too well, so she stayed at the chalet with Kindra, and I took the other kids up to a place to ride an alpine slide type ride, but it rides on a rail. It was quite long as it was about 2km (1.2 miles) long. The kids really liked it. We did the ride a couple of times, and had ice cream up at the top and a little terraced restaurant that overlooked the valley. Then we stopped by this really cool gorge. It is extremely narrow with this river at the bottom and you walk along these stairs and wooden walkways. The water is this cool aqua green color. At points the gorge was only a few feet wide, by probably 50’-80’ deep with the river swirling at the bottom. Then we went swimming. It was very sunny and warm. It’s hard to imagine that only about a week ago I was riding my bike in the morning and the temperature was only 41 degrees. Today it felt like it was about 90, although it was probably a little cooler than that, but the humidity makes it feel pretty hot.
Went into a nearby town to try and get internet hookup or use an internet café. Connected my Wi-Fi card and briefly connected to a network and got internet but it was extremely slow. Tried to get a better hookup and lost it. Drove around trying to find another network I could hook into. Finally stopped at a sports café and asked if they knew where an internet café was. He showed me where one was near the train station, but when I got there, they were just closing. I’ll have to come back tomorrow morning. It’s extremely frustrating not having immediate internet.