Day 2! Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Today's route: Feltrone to Kreuzberg, then the B111 to Tassenbach, Lienz, Felbertauern Tunnel, the A93 Autobahn, then Dieter's home.
At the top of Kreuzberg there's a nice rifugio with restaurant that you must know that it's there... Nicola, of course knew, so we did a small detour to have lunch there. Nice place, nice people, nice views. A military helicopter hovered around us for a while, then a couple of minutes later a military Ford Focus arrived with the crew: They also had lunch up there!
Nice Austrian valleys, with lovely vistas. One would imagine that following an R45, would be boringly slow. However, the truth is far from it. The serene ride is being nicer at a pace a bit slower than frenetic or just svelte. You get the time to absorb what you are seeing...
Inside the Felbertauern Tunnel!
Slow? Who said slow? Notice the speedo showing 120!
Nicola was nice enough to do extra stops, to let me smoke a cig here and there!
Just 15 km from Dieter's home, disaster struck: A small blue cloud of smoke arose from the right exhaust of Nicola's bike, while we were doing 110-120km/h on the autobahn, and only for a few minutes, and suddenly he slowed down and rode on the emergency lane. The right cylinder rested in peace... And to think that Nicola would only ride to Dieter's, and tomorrow he would ride back home...
Pity... It was at exactly this spot that I picked a nail in my rear tire... Stay tuned on this part of the story!
A few drops of oil drippng from the right cylinder.
A few calls and a few minutes later, help arrived, in the form of the ADAC truck and Dieter and Zozzo, in Dieter's car.
We dropped the bike at the BMW dealer with this hugely large name!
Later in the evening, the Oberst family offered us a lovely Chili con Carnet dinner, with a lot of beer. Carlo arrived also, late as always!!!
Almost all the Italians! Carlo is sitting across the table!
I took this pic of Dieter's rear tire, having in mind to ask him why he uses completely street tires on the GS, but I always forgot to ask! So, here it goes, Dieter!!!! Nice carbon hugger, BTW!
In the bright morning sun the garden looks -and is- glorious!
Dieter's passtime!
On Day 3, we ride to Detenice