Wieseralm

The Thaw

Forbidden to many

But not to everyone. ;-)

The untamed mountain

Quota 1000

24%

There are moments when photography is just an excuse.

Old gears ...

... are rolling on.

Since my newest MTB is still, let's say, "not-functional" and waiting for proper restoration in the darkness of a cellar, I'm trying to do the best use of the old one that I had (too early) parked away and even thought to sell, if it wasn't for my son. These old, muddy and heavy gears, after a chain swap and mounting a new shifting cassette, are now taking me silently anywhere I want again. I'd better reconsider my plans to go for a flaming new bicycle again. I might not be flying anymore, but I love the idea of reaching a top with something as experienced as me.

6684

My silent horse

I destroyed my official mountain bike on the way back home from a long ride, some months ago, and since then, given the lockdown and the limited number of cycling shops open, instead of turning my attention to other sports, I took back the "old" bicycle that I had passed to my son. This bike, after only one year I had told him to use it, was in very poor conditions, having been left dusting and rusting under sun and water the whole summer. I dared to ask my son a couple of times what the hell had he done to bring it to such status. His answers were always so elusive that I gave up asking.

So I set myself up to fix it at my best and ride it till the times will consent me to choose the right bicycle shop where to bring the other one and have it back again. I ordered a new chain and gear-pack on a web retailer, met with a colleague engineer one Sunday afternoon and made the necessary repairs. In doing this I refreshed my knowledge of the whole mechanism of the gears, the switches and breaks. Easy to learn, as well as to forget, when you don't deal with them every day.

I remember having bought the new bike because I thought this one was almost at the end of its life, let's say of its career. Still, in the last months there has been no gravel, road or rocky track that I had recently done with the new one, where it couldn't take me. In the meantime, for some magical coincidence (and some well done lubrications) the annoying creaking of the springs of the front shock absorbers has also gone. I can only hear the road and my breath now.

In the middle of nowhere

En route

... to reach the snow line.

One of my last chances, this year, to try a new road, to go somewhere out of my common tracks along the valley of the Mur river. Exploring puts aside the fatigue. The wish to discover how it is, the new scenarios, compared to the track you created on the map, is stronger that the hurdles and the slopes.

Evening Glory

Sometimes you need luck: if we want to call it in this way. Or, as I repeat myself, you need a little of that sixth sense that tells you to stop your bicycle ride, interrupt your ascent and turn your sight to the sun. Sometimes that bell rings inside many times but you are submerged by many other thoughts. And you miss it. Some other times you are in a serendipitous state of mind, empty and silent ... and you catch it. And soon after you ask yourself: "What if I didn't stop? What if I was faster, today, and passed ten minutes before? What if I opted for a shorter track and ran down in the valley? What if I left my mobile at home?"

It's a matter on seconds. Seconds that you cannot enjoy when you are with company. And soon after you start your evening training again, knowing that you'll be late at home, that the road will be dark and perilous, that you have to switch the red light under your saddle and wishing that everything goes right along the steep and fast descent that you have ahead. But you don't care that much. What counts is having been so lucky to stop in the exact moment the sun was going down, behind the far distant mountains, while its rays were being scattered in a way that you'll certainly be asked if the picture was photoshopped.

Muretto

On top

Now that I'm back home and not in such bad physical conditions as I initially feared, I can tell it and show the proof. I didn't expect to go that far and high, today. It's been raining hardly for two days and my expectations, while leaving my house for this afternoon tour, were not very high. Still, after renouncing the idea on a big tour that I'm going to make, sooner or later, over the mountains north-west of Graz, I passed, one after another, some milestones, each time deciding to go forth. Eventually, as the air had already gotten thinner and colder, I came to an elbow bent, on the road crossing the valley of Tyrnau, where I had to take a decision standing in front of a road sign indicating a slope higher than 14%.

And I went on, till I reached the top.

Two minutes before

Never again. Never type a message home, saying "All OK. We avoided the storm. Coming back home." 

Two minutes after taking this picture in Gralla, very south of Graz, to record from far the horrible storm that hit the city while we were out in the countryside, we hit the wall. A wall of water and hail.