ALPS! ALPS! OR DO I MEAN HELP! HELP! Many years ago Don and I attended a slide show of some bicyclists touring the Alps.  Ever since that day I have had that hanging over my head.  I knew that some day Don would be having me cycling the Alps.  Well, today is the day! We woke to a brilliant blue morning.  From our hotel we could see Neuschwanstein Castle sparkling on the mountainside across the brilliant green valley. We enjoyed more visiting with our new friends from Santa Cruz, Jim and Christa and their grandchildren.  We chatted throughout breakfast and then exchanged names and telephone numbers and promised to call each other when we get back to California.  I hope we really do get in touch. After breakfast we packed up and headed out.  We only got 300 yards and we had to stop to take another photo.  This went on every several hundred feet for a few miles as we traversed the green valley and on to Hoenschwangau.  There were churches and views and parasailers and all manner of things to photograph, all beautiful.  Hoenschwangau is the town where everyone goes to visit Neuschwanstein Castle, and we had to cycle our way up the hill, through the buses and hordes of tourists and cars and campers and horse-drawn carriages.  Once we got past that area we headed out on a very nice road, not to be used by automobiles, that went alongside a nice lake, Alpensee.  This route went for several miles, up and down and up and down, with beautiful scenery and glimpses of the blue lake between the fir forest.  As we arrived at the end of the lake we came to the border between Germany and Austria, and so we snuck into Austria with no one knowing but us.  As we crested the next hill we had a fabulous view of a lovely country valley with little towns nestled in the green fields.  We rode down the road and came out into the beautiful Austrian countryside.  We followed a nice route into the town of Reutte. We had our lunch in Reutte and then on the way out of town we got a bit lost, eventually coming upon a road that was denied to bicycles, so we turned around and found the bicycle route into the mountains.  The route was wonderful for 1 mile and then we had to turn off and take a gravel road.  Well, that was ok, except soon the gravel road started going uphill, and then it got to be big rocks and very steep, so we had to get off our bikes and push.  We pushed up and up and up some very steep terrain.  Finally we got to a manageable hill and continued riding up and up and up.  The route was sometimes gravel road and sometimes paved. By the way, we have learned where the term “ok” came from.  It seems that early in the life of the manufacturing process there was a fellow named Oscar Klein.  He worked for Ford Motors as the inspector and every time he inspected a car off the production line he would mark his initials, OK, on the windshield with a bar of soap.  Those were his initials showing that he had inspected the car and it had passed his inspection.  Eventually OK became synonymous with all right, good, approved.  What do you think of that!  Urban legend or German truth—take it for what you will. Now we are surrounded by jagged granite crags.  Everywhere we look it is up, up, up.  There is no turning back now.  What dramatic mountains! At about 4pm we decided it was time to stop, so we rode into the town of Lermoos. We did over 50 kilometers today, even with the pushing we had to do!  We stopped at several zimmers, but no one would rent to us for just one night.  We were getting discouraged, but finally Don found a nice place for one night and we settled in and cleaned up and went for dinner at the local café.  From the restaurant we had a fabulous view of the Zugspitz and surrounding Alps as the sun set and turned them all red.  After a stroll around the town we returned to our room and hit the sack. The really hard part comes tomorrow. Friday, September 5.  Today we climb up and go over the summit, the Ferenpasse.  We got up and had a nice breakfast at Martin’s Hof, the place we stayed last night.  Then we packed up and were on the road for another sunny, blue day of cycling.  We rode out of town on good road with little traffic.  We are following the Via Claudia Augustus, the route which was followed by the Romans as they moved into Bavaria on their invasion north.  Just imagine—2000 years ago they were walking the same path! We picked up our bicycle route as we began to ascend the mountains.  We had a very nice, paved bicycle path, which we followed for several miles until we got to the place where the fast highway meets the country road.  Then the path turned to gravel, but it was pretty good and we were able to continue on riding for awhile.  Eventually the path turned to those big rocks again and we had to get off and push because we just couldn’t get good traction with the weight of our trailers and our small tires.  Some of the segments were very, very steep and took all of my strength to get my bike and trailer up to the next plateau. After several miles of this we were able to ride on good gravel road for awhile.  I got passed by a group of strong guys on mountain bikes and they rooted for me up the hill.  Then we were at the summit.  There we had a good talk with the Germans while we all rested and admired the view.  I couldn’t believe I had made it to the top of the pass.  Now it was all downhill—the easy part. Ha!Ha!Ha!  The downhill was harder than the uphill.  It was very steep, narrow, rutted out and rocky.  Also there were stumps and roots to trip us up.  We ended up walking our bikes a lot of the way down.  At one point we had to get our bikes and trailers across the fast highway, with cars roaring down the hill and other cars roaring up the hill.  Luckily we only had to wait a few minutes for a big enough break in the traffic for us to run across the road. Back on the route we came across a granite slab in which we could see Roman wagon tracks grooved out—6 inches deep--from what must have been hundreds of years of travel.  The path got narrower and narrower.  The drop-off on the side got steeper and steeper.  Pretty soon we came to a little, flimsy wooden bridge that we needed to cross and that was a bit dicey too.  Looking off the edge we could see the cars straight down 300 yards.  Yikes! We do not recommend this route to anyone but very strong mountain bikers with no luggage.  It is definitely not possible for street bikes and we think that even fat tires with saddle bags would have to be walked a good part of the way.  Most of the young guys we have seen cycling over the route have only had small backpacks. We finally made it to the bottom and picked up our trail.  We stopped for a bite to eat in Nasserieth.  Continuing on the Via Claudia Augusta,http://www.viaclaudia.at/ we had a nice, easy, wide dirt and gravel path on into a pretty green valley and the little village of Stadt, where we arranged a room at the Seewald Gasthaus.  The little old grandma in charge seemed a bit dubious about us, especially when Don went up to her and in his best German asked, “Spreken sie Deutsch?”  She looked at him like he was crazy, of course she speaks German!  But obviously we didn’t.  Well she did rent us a room at last.  All of the people enjoying their afternoon aperitifs on the terrace had a good giggle about the scene. The major Alpine pass is now in our history.  Tomorrow we do have a few climbs, but it is mostly flat on into Innsbruck.  Can you believe we did it?!?!