Mile 912: Morning on the Rhine

It's 47 degrees and chilly here on the banks of the Rhine river. Today I'm planning on taking it relatively easy and not going more than 30-40 miles. It's been a demanding last couple days, but a total hoot.

It started off at 3 in the morning, on Thursday. Caught a plane to Zurich, with a layover in Toronto. For all the US bike tourists out there, I recommend Air Canada simply by virture of the fact that the surcharge for bicycles is only $50, compared to upwards of $300 on some of the other airlines.

The bike arrived in one piece:

From May 14, 2010 - Zurich to Stein-am-Rhein

I put it together with just a couple of minor glitches (all of them my fault). Thanks again to Paul and the folks at Classic Cycle on Bainbridge for helping me learn how to do this. Here's a snap of the re-assembled Chump Steamroller, ready to tackle Europe.






The ride out of the airport was a little confusing. I stopped and asked a few different folks where to pick up bike route. I was finally pointed to the Cloten train station where the bike signage became extremely obvious.





The signage for this route was jaw-dropping. Once I got the hang of the color of the sign, I would see them everywhere, at least every half-mile or so. Even I, who am completely directionally disabled, found my way there.

In terms of riding difficulty, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary except for one steep climb right at the border between the Zurich and Thurgau cantons. It was about 30-40 minutes of straight climbing up to the town of Neunforn. When the route started heading north, there were a couple of these climbs up and over hills that took you into the next river valley. Here's a rough map of the route. This is by no means an accurate route, just a rough idea of which towns I went through. It took me about 4 hours to complete, because I got lost for a while at the beginning. I don't know how many exact miles it was because I didn't have my trip computer snapped in.




My first impression of the Swiss countryside is that it is simply the most immaculate farmland I ever seen. It's like swarms of Gap Store employees are swarming the countryside, putting everything away. Every woodpile is stacked like an Escher print: perfectly tesselated.

I pulled into my campground right around 6:30, rang for the camp host. He sent me down to the tent camping site, right by the Rhein (Rhine) river, which I had all to myself.





Had a dinner of schnitzel and beer. There's lots of falcons overhead, so there's the inevitable local brew named after them.





It got to around 40 degrees at night. Chilly, but not too bad. I came prepared, but my warm weather pants got wet on the plane. I didn't think your luggage could get wet when you checked it in, but there it is. Luckily, it's the only piece of clothing that got damp. If I had been able to wear them, the night would've been extremely cozy.

So now I'm off around the lake. Also, I forgot to bring an power plug adapter, so I've got about 2-3 days of laptop batter left before I'll be cut off from the rest of the world.

Oh, and here's a link to all of the photos from yesterday:
http://picasaweb.google.com/benkrok/May142010ZurichToSteinAmRhein