"milemarkers" of death

June 26 Thusis-Disentis Munster

I suppose none of you would be surprised by now to hear that we got another late start. We found a washer and dryer that appeared to be free so we couldn’t pass up the offer. When we woke up, Nate went to put our laundry in, but found someone else’s inside (done). He waited for twenty minutes and decided to pull that stuff out and get ours done. It turns out that you actually had to pay for the laundry and the lady had pre-loaded the machine so that she could spend most of the day doing laundry. Woops. Oh well, we were able to get our laundry done and started heading for the base to our next pass-Olberalppass. Today entailed a lot of busy roads, construction, and diving off onto backroads as often as we could. Somehow, we kept ending up on roads with long tunnels, construction, and buses honking at us to get off. We’ll just chalk that up to the fact that we’re tourists without an actual cycling map. (They do sell maps with just the cycle paths of Europe, but we have yet to find the one or several that we need). It’s also a bit unnerving that the “mile markers” quite resemble headstones. The construction areas here can get a bit dicey at times. They generally turn the road into a one-lane road and stop traffic from either direction. When it is your turn to go, the lights are timed. Well, on a bike these timed lights turn into interval workouts and the prize is that you don’t have to ride into oncoming traffic if you make it. Just ask Nate and he’ll tell you that I am my most powerful when the thrill of oncoming traffic looms ahead  Although we were wearing down by midday, a nice lunch and the idea of having to ride less tomorrow pushed us ahead. We made it to a town called Disentis-Munster which was just a little ways off of Oberalppass base. We ended up going down a steep hill into a campground and then figured out that we would have to climb out of it tomorrow. We enjoyed two dinners tonight since the first course of grown up grilled cheese didn’t quite fill us. Tonight, we’re going to bed early in hopes to start a new habit of getting on the road before noon.

~50k
Mo