Tag 3 (Imst, Tirol, Austria, distance = 123.2 miles; time = 6:40; odometer
= 496.3) -- I got to sleep kind of late, due to the Kosovo report in the
next room. Eventually, I fell asleep and I managed to get up good and
early. I was able to get ready quickly, since I didn't have much to pack.
At 7:00, I was ready. Of course, it was pissing with rain. Groan. So in
full battle gear (that had all just dried), off I went. I'm proud to say
that I rode almost the entire length of the country Liechtenstein in less
than an hour! Not really anything too remarkable about the place --
different license plates and the same Swiss postal service was different
letters (initials). Then I crossed the real border into Austria. The guard
was not especially friendly. I went to a bank right away to get some
Austrian schillings. I find this money hard to deal with. It is about 13
AUSC per US $, so a loaf of bread might be 30.00 units. I headed for
Sludenz in the Voralberg region. This road followed a river mostly and was
relatively OK. The rain was coming and going and by the time I got to
Bludenz, it was just cloudy. This road also paralleled an autobahn, and it
was often very confusing how to proceed without getting on it. In Bludenz,
I asked another cyclist for directions -- these people have serious accents
like the Swiss, but totally un-Swiss. He pointed to the tourist info office
we were standing in front of -- duh! So in there, I was told that all of my
target passes were closed. Jeez ... so on I went. The going got quite
tougher. It was half raining and half snowing when I got to Wald -- a town
that's not on the map I bought at the tourist office. It's just past Dalas.
I talked to a guy there while I ate a Jogurt purchased a few towns back. He
suggested that I take the train past the part of my climb where the
autobahn and train go into long tunnels. Hmm. So when I finally got to the
nasty bit of the Arlberg Pass, it was snowing like crazy. There were HUGE
drifts of snow -- it was freezing cold. Visibility sucked. I could see
where the autobahn went underground. I wasn't sure I could make such a
brutal pass equipped as I was -- I wasn't planning a winter expedition!! So
a little farther up, I came to the train station and I bought a ticket for
me and my bike through the tunnel. After a shorter time than I waited for
the train, I was on the other side of the pass. Whew! Here it was
blizzarding madly, and everyone in town was wearing ski boots -- oddly in
the towns on the way up, I didn't see very many people at all! So down I
went. Wheee! I must have done a lot of climbing! Down. Down. The irritating
thing here was that since the valley got so narrow, sometimes I'd have to
share the road with the autobahn traffic. So it was either zero traffic or
absurd, dangerous traffic. It was sometimes hard to tell when I had to
switch back to the secondary road. Once, I almost went into a strictly
autobahn tunnel -- very bad. Another time, there was a detour due to
construction -- only for cars -- bikes were supposed to just ignore it.
Well, I got to a nice, long tunnel that they were working on. They had
turned out the lights, and it was pitch black in there, and! my stupid
light didn't work! Grr. Finally, I got low enough that the weather was
actually nice! The sun even came out a bit. It's still pretty cool, though
-- 48 degrees F at 20:00. I caught a nice bike path to Imst and there found
a campsite. The woman suggested I sleep in the "Tisch" room -- literally
"table" room. OK. Done. So I'm in a chilly room with a ping pong table. Not
bad really. I went to the store and had a "hamburger" at an Imbiss truck
(mobile concession truck). I talked to some young Austrians who were
interesting -- I might have been even more interesting to them -- who
knows? I bought some milk and fruit. Back at the Campplatz, I took another
fine shower. That's been a LUCKY constant so far. The campsite was only 706
Austrian schillings. I think that's about $8. It could be $80 for all I
know. Well, everything's pretty dry tonight. It's just dark, so I'm going
to roll out the Schlaesack and try to sleep.
![[Bike]](./only2500b.gif)
