This is continued from the last post.

Black risotto with squid

We got up early this morning, cooked eggs, ate salami, and headed out to ride the highest pass in Slovenia. We stopped and walked down a pretty cool gorge 3 miles into the day and then continued to the town at the add of the pass (we did go over the steepest road to date). After a lunch of gnocchi we started on the 11km 9% average grade pass. I felt really good and it was an awesome day cycling. We have discovered that cows still wear cowbells in Slovenia and Austria so you will be cycling up a pass and hear cowbell (which either motivates you like people are cheering you on or taunts you like hecklers at a cyclocross race) which is pretty awesome.

The route isn’t always roads…

1/4 of the way up the pass

Almost at the highest pass in slovenia

We then descended to the first town and discovered the next town (where we were planning on staying) didn’t have a market so we stocked up on food to cook dinner. They had wine on tap and in bottles so we were planning on getting a beverage for the evening. We said we didn’t have a bottle and asked for the tap white wine and the lady came out and filled a 1.5l (48 ounce) plastic water bottle. With that size bottle we were worried it was going to be expensive. We were wrong, $3.08… When we descended 4 more miles and got to the place we were staying we started talking to a man just wearing purple boxers (small gut). We learned he owned Cuder where we were staying, but he got his daughter, Tara, who spoke better English and we talked to online. We were told that yes she booked us a room, but we were staying in a village 7km away with her aunt. Traveling you never know what is going to happen so we said ok and got to talking with her. Her eyes lit up when we said we were from “America” and they got saucer size when she found out Chris lived in New York City. She said maybe she would see us the next day and then told Chris when she wasn’t working… We then started peddling the 7km to the next house with very vague directions, which we discovered has a pretty steep 2 mile hill to finish with.

Road to Grandma Cuder

Grandma C must entertain a lot

Yellow jackets all over. Drinking a grapefruit radler before I shower

We were looking for 16 Lepena. Lepena has a #8, #11, #12a, #12, #14, #15, #16, and I didn’t check the last place’s number, spread out over 2 miles. We get their and there is grandma, aunt, and daughter. We discover that we will be staying in grandmas house and grandma will be staying in the guest/vacation cottage with her daughter and granddaughter. They were excited to see us and that we were from America. Aunt the offered us some grappa shots which is exactly what you want with sweat still oozing out of your pores after a solid climb so we of course said yes. Via translation grandma asked if we wanted coffee so of course we said yes (sweat still oozing)…. It has been a pretty awesome/friendly unforeseen turn of events, not to mention the view from the table outside is killer.

This post doesn’t have the pictures from my camera and it is late so I will include them on the next post  some of these photos may be blurry due to sweat…  Also some are from the previous post

View from grandma Cuder’s