Day 9
Lucerne, Switzerland – Warth, Austria – 284.7km

Man! Another great day of riding. It’s amazing to me that we are getting day after day of good riding. I hooked back up with Mike, John and Sean to tear it up in the twisties some more before getting out of the mountains.

We had some more of the roads that I really didn’t like – that’s the ones that are about 1.25 lanes wide with a lot of blind corners. I still kept coming around them and almost got squeezed off the road a few times. Maybe I had more room than I thought, but it was pretty sketchy.

The three of us stopped several time and took plenty of pictures crossing the borders of Switzterland, Austria and through the country of Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein is the smallest country in Europe. Blink and you will miss it!!

We even stopped and something to drink while Mike got his camera battery charged. There were a lot of cute European hotties walking around and of course we were all geared up and smelling pretty ripe. I think I may just have to burn my jacket after this trip.

A last stop was made to try to catch the toboggan run heading into Warth, but we had wasted too much time and didn’t get to make it. So we made our own “run” by taking some photos and goofing off for a few minutes. Even here, John was still lagging behind.

We played some more on the longer route and took our time coming into Warth. It was hysterical because John was really lagging behind. He hates the twisties and high altitude passes. We gave him a pretty hard time, but the best was when he took off ahead of us so we could get some photos. We caught him pretty quick and there was a dump trunk behind him with it’s break lights on!! John was getting schooled in the twistes by a dump trunk!! You can imagine that we gave him a ton of shit about that one.

The place we stayed that night was Jager Alps and it rocked. It’s a ski resort in the middle of nowhere. Very warm and cozy with a great bar and, great atmosphere and good people. Definitely one of may favorite places on the trip. We had Jagermeister shots after the ride and Axel taught us how to do it properly. You open the bottle of Jager, put the lid on your nose and then shoot the bottle without the lid falling off your nose. I guess we looked pretty silly, but that is OK with me. You only go around once.

That evening I caught wind that some folks on the tour were unhappy with either the tour, Axel, or all of the above. I couldn’t quite figure that out because everyone that I talked with was having a most excellent time. I think there was just one or two people that are very picky and likely to complain about anything. One of the most vocal complainers was even saying how happy he was with the trip, so this was all a bit odd to me.

Ahh….open the windows….cold air….and cowbells tinkling like wind chimes all night. Not a bad way to sleep.