RP2IPBP - back on the bike

9am GPS time start at Tildas again for a ride out to Iron Pear Beach Park. C was unfortunately not available and no one else so far... little hope Ed may join in at Little Flower again, and so it was. They made there way out east.

Py got his 1st flat since a very long time, must have been long over a year -- hard to be leave but true, and may not have gotten one if he would have thrown out his now over 18000km old front tire... yes 18kkm! These GP4000 are just awesome, but now it got too thin rubber and a whole lot of tiny cracs in which some tiny pointy piece of glas found it's way. Removing this and putting a new tube fixed the trouble for the rerst of the ride.

Going North they had to fight some strong wind but had fun flying South...

Nothing special on the return. Was good to have some company on his first longer ride since a couble of weeks off the bike :-)

more skating

Always good to get more hours of a new motion coordination in and work on the efficiency, as there is still room for optimizations of Py's new skating experiences...

The weather outlook for the weekend was pretty much fully overcasted with good chances of snow or even rain at lower altitudes. As he had a good number of days on the board already and so far finished with a great day the decision was to leave it like this and take the train again to Engadin and luckily, surprisingly the sky broke mostly open and the sun came out. Renting some skating ski again, Py went out on the long 'Marathon Loipe' for three hours of skating.


View Larger Map

A perfect snow day

A significent snow fall on Tuesday/Wednesday magically transformed most of Switzerland into a winter wonder land with over 40cm of new snow!

Here a photo of the arriving RhB train at Madulain station blowing up the snow... Tuesday around noon:

Py visited his old buddies Alex and Claude on Tue/We and got up early on Thursday to meet with Urs 8:45 at the bottom of Pizol Mountain for a expectation of an perfect snow day...

This week some local maskerades were adding some extra fun...

Py and Urs after lunch break.

... a few more runs and traversing back. A unforgetable day at the fairly small but nice Pizol Mountain with a lot of deep powder runs...

Engadina, Madulain, Skating

For Monday Py was looking forward to expand his nordic skills and he took the train again into the sunny Engadin to the village of Madulain, here a few stations before -- a impressive layer of snow is covering the Engadian, especially the upper part of the valley.

In the afternoon he took a one hour lesson in skating at Nordic Engadina... it took him a couple of hours excercising the new motion until he got readjusted from classic XC ski to skating and to get the double stick push and skating motion coordinated...

A couple of out and back runs along the Inn, very nice scenery.

Scuol one more time

Nothing in particular. Py took the 8:40 Postauto to the connecting train via Verainer to Scuol Tarasp.

...just a great long day snowboarding at Scuol. A great sunny day, a cold one, but great powder all over and many options to find fresh deep powder inbetween the groomed slopes.

And once again a finish with already low sun on the 12km long dream run down to the lovely village Sent.

tired from a week of traveling...

Py was not doing much, since last Saturday when he managed to get in a 10k run, one of the more unusual version for Py, as this one was a 5k uphill with a total elevation gain of 450m or 1350ft plus the downhill return and as the upper third of the road was snowy and icy, the downhill took even longer... 24min 5k up and return at 63min for 10.7km (GPS). On Sunday he joined fiends for a nice hike beyond 1500m elevation in deep fluffy snow with zero visibility as it was in the middle of snow clouds - but kind of enjoyable.

Fun PHOTOs later.

The following week was a traveling marathon... Seewis - ZRL - Zurich(ZRH) - Hannover (HAJ) - Negenborn. From there to Berlin and Bremen the next days, returning to Seewis Friday night.

Tired of traveling and missed workouts he decided not to do any travel today. He went out for a initial hike up to the top of the locale slopes of Seewis Dorf carrying his snowboard on the back. A decent warmup and way to quick run down, but wait, what awesome short slope with deep fresh power!! It was still silently snowing...



the uphill walk felt so long for the quick run, luckily just as he arrived at the bottom, the little short T-bar lift was put to operation and so he did numerous runs playing in deep power at times - good day.

A different 10k

Just before the party... a little workout. Equipped with hiking boots and running pants, Py jogged up towards the Vilan -- about 5k uphill and return. Here the stats:



View Larger Map

more days on the board...

so far Py was snöben in Kloster-Davos, Scuol, Lenzerheide and at mountain Pizol which has a nice glacier on top, but unfortunately this only day and chance for Py to get together with his good friend and biking buddy Ben on Friday was a very windy one and only the very lower part of the slopes was accessible via the gondola from the base located in the warm Rhein valley and only one little tedious T-bar pulley lift was running, the nice FIS piste above was closed :-( -- however tickets were reduced this day.

However, they had made the best out of the day and it was good getting together again and thinking already a bit of eventually summer bike adventures...



Ben protecting himself from flying snow and ice...

Off the bike on the Board

Py escaped from the frozen island, here some iceboating between Bellport and Fireisland

,

for his annual winter visit of his buddies and friends in the Swiss Alps and to take his time off the bike for some very welcome alternative activities on his snowboard once again

The first two day he took the chance to go riding at Davos/Klosters. A few first impression, more later....