First thing on my todo list this morning was a visit to the post office to send some goodies to the friendly Ebayers who bid and won. Three items, two buyers, both won and paid yesterday so now it was my turn to deliver. A front and rear Ultegra 6700 derailleur go to Italy, a set of Ultegra Dual Control levers travel all the way to Folsom, California.
After that was out of the way, I left home to escape the thick fog that will now often block the sun from us lowlanders. I rolled out of Biel on the Mares taking one of my regular escape routes. Within only a week, the trees have dropped a lot of their leaves. Combine those with the high humidity on the ground and you find some challenging trail conditions. The trail down into Frinvillier was already borderline on skinny cross tires, though it provided a first trail-side test of the new TRP CX8.4 brakes. And man, do they stop. The rear wheel was skidding all the way downhill and I had to be watchful not to pull the front one too hard else it blocked as well. Back to one finger braking and I’m sure glad about that.
In Rondchâtel, I started to gain altitude on the fire-road I’ve previously done a lot on the Niner. The cyclo-crosser definitely climbs faster, or at least it feels that way. Strava will tell. On the Sesselin du Haut crossover a lone lumberman blocked the way handling some heavy machinery pulling trees out of the forest. He sat high up on a vehicle with huge wheels facing away from the direction I had come from. With no rear-view mirror I had to keep my distance and wait. No way I was going to walk up to a machine swirling huge trees through the air. I waited a few minutes until the guy turned around and saw me. He stopped what he was doing and waved me through. I passed with a thumb up.
I crossed some nice pastures to Les Coperies, continued to La Ragie, then hiked a good way to Jobert. Once there it was all fast gravel to the Métairie de Morat. The Petit Chasseral was climbed at an easy pace out of the saddle. I shot down to La Neuve with over 60 kph then approached the last painful climb to the Chasseral antenna. I launched into the climb fast, then wondered why two hikers coming down were walking left and right of the pavement. I soon found out. As I was motoring up “en danseuse” my rear wheel suddenly lost all traction. This black pavement wasn’t wet, it was frozen. I steered to the left to ride at the edge of the road and had to drop my weight into the saddle. I made it.
Just like last weekend lots of folks were up there enjoying the sun and the splendid view of the Alps. A few travelled on a mountain bike, another few were in hiking shoes, but the majority had reached the peak in a car. Slaloming around people is probably the most accident-prone activity of the whole ride. Today, no pins were knocked over! Following last week’s traces, I descended down the road to Nods passing a couple of cars and bikes along the way. In Nods I enjoyed the last few rays of sun, then dove deep into heavy fog. Diesse and Lamboing were barely visible. I steered towards the Twannberg, gravel-grinded to Gaicht and raced down to Tüscherz on badly damaged pavement. Super way to get back into Biel quickly, but a total wheel killer if you make the slightest mistake.
Wheels I didn’t kill, but the minute I turned into the Rebenweg my rear tire lost all air in a sudden “pfffffff”. I stopped as fast as I could, rotated the wheel to find a 3-inch long nail. Someone must have nailed it into the road because it went through my tire head first. I pulled it out, then changed tubes. I wasn’t all that far from Biel, but fixing a flat wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. Maybe my insurance company knows that. Just last week they sent me a flier about road-side assistance for bicycles. Yes, you read that right - there’s such a thing as road-side assistance for bicyclists. The example they gave in the colorful brochure was an older couple riding their e-bikes. The husband crashes, bends his front wheel and is now stranded in the middle of nowhere with a not man-portable e-bike. Assisted mobility through electric dead weight and if it’s dead you call road-side assistance. Won’t be long and your bike dealer will be your insurance agent as well. I’ll stick to fixing flats, even if I swear doing it.
| Distance: | 60.4km (37.5 miles) |
| Elevation: | 2’474m (8’117 feet) |
| Time: | 03:20:54 |
| Speed (avg/max): | 18.1/73.9 kph (11.2/45.9 mph) |
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