Day 4: Meiringen to St. Moritz

Day 4 · St Moritz

Took off early this morning from my idyllic stay with the odd hosts for a long day to St. Moritz over two passes – the Klausen and Albula.

First, I realized my Garmin device must have some setting on that is different from the setting on the Garmin app on my phone, because I reviewed the maps in the app, yet the device was sending me on some silly detours. It seems somehow desperate to keep me off the highway – instead preferring to route me through every tiny town full of crosswalks and construction on a road in sight of the highway.

Anyway, one of its detours was a ferry across Lake Lucerne that I was desperate to avoid on account of my tendency to get seasick and general dislike of boats, but the stupid thing was refusing to navigate me any other direction. Another cool thing about the ferry? The edges are slanted toward the water – to disperse any water that should come on board. Sensible, yet troublesome. I could not stand the bike back up at the end of the ride. Another motorcyclist helped me get it back to vertical, fortunately, but not without letting me know that the bike was too tall for me. Thanks friend, I had not noticed that my toes barely touch the ground. (And really – why am I dealing with this? I am literally the global average size of humans, and I am on a middle-weight touring bike. Get it together, motorcycle manufacturers.)

After the ferry, I did ride along a beautiful lake and many, many slow towns along the lake. Then I ignored the navigation and got on the highway when I finally came across an on-ramp. It’s right, the highway was not as nice (it was a lot of long tunnels) but you know what – it saved me like an hour of going 20mph through villages.

Next up was Klausen Pass. I stopped before the peak for a few snaps in a safely level pullout, and a car with a family stopped in just after me coming from the opposite direction. Turns out the dad and the daughter are both motorcyclists, and they’re from Costa Mesa lol. So-Cal representing on the Klausen Pass today.

Klausen was beautiful, stunning vistas, rocky mountain peaks, hairpin turns, etc. Saw many more bikes and Porsches, and more of those crazy cyclists.

After the descent from the pass, the road wanders through a valley with a small, slow village every 5 minutes. This would probably have been cute and lovely had it not been 85º and heavily trafficked. I was about ready to throw the Garmin into a ditch when it again refused to navigate me to a highway on-ramp, but instead I loaded up the Albula pass on Google Maps and turned off the Garmin. Take that.

It was a mild 90º through Chur and up to the foot of the Albula pass, and I was increasingly miserable. I was feeling acutely aware that unlike riding through miserable desert heat, I would not be rewarded with a pool and air conditioning at the end of my day today.

It was blissfully cooler (75º or so) as I got into the mountains again, and the Albula pass really was the highlight of the day. There’s an old train that runs near the road for some of it, and you weave through very old stone footings for the train, as well as some other stonework that seems to be support for the road itself. At the top, you’re reward with an otherworldly view of granite peaks around you, and rocky landscape surrounding the road. I had no idea the Alps were so geologically varied, but I suppose I should have put that together.

I would have liked to have stopped for a few photos up there, but I didn’t see any spots that looked convincingly level and my navigation was telling me I was a mere 35 minutes from my hotel – and I could only think of ending my day and giving my very sore clutch hand a break. I had hoped to go for some longer rides to get myself in better shape before this trip, but as most of you know it’s been like 90º for over a month in San Diego and I just couldn’t bear to put on pants.

Tonight I’m settled into a beautiful old hotel in St. Moritz, home to a few previous Winter Olympics, and there’s a fabulous breeze from the lake coming in my enormous window (a window that can only be fully open, or fully closed). I’d planned to ride with a coworker tomorrow (hiya Bart!), but something came up for him so we’re going to attempt to connect later in the month instead. And to be honest, after my last two days I might take a break from the bike tomorrow and take a train to this point of interest instead. Or maybe I’ll do NOTHING! We’ll see how I feel after an evening in town and night’s sleep.

After taking a little break, I headed out for a wander of St. Moritz and to find myself a place for dinner. I had my eye out for a couple of spots that were well reviewed on Google Maps, and ended up stopping at the one with 5 tables and a great reputation.

Because I’m an American and get hungry at 6, I ended up chatting out front with the chef before his staff arrived for dinner service at 7. He told me about his path to opening a restaurant in St. Moritz – while he is European, he and his wife were filmmakers in LA until Covid when they returned here to regroup. What started as a small shopfront decorated with his artwork and setup to sell friends favorite pastas/cheeses/wines from their Italian travels ended up a restaurant as Chef Mauritzio’s home cooking turned out to be very popular.

The whole experience left me missing Jordan very deeply. That’s exactly the kind of connection he cherished when we traveled – learning someone’s story, eating a big meal with reckless abandon, and talking about it for years afterward. I’m no stranger to dining alone nor to missing my husband and travel companion, but the empty chair across from me was increasingly hard to face during this meal.

The rest of the GoPro videos will be posted to the album as they upload overnight. I went with a higher number of shorter videos this time so that maybe they will eventually upload (unlike yesterdays, which remain in “syncing” purgatory via the GoPro app). I’m sure there’s some better process for down-sampling the video files on the laptop and then uploading them that all the influencers use – but I for now I remain irritated in 90% of my tech (everything but you, iPhone camera).