Ravioli between the spokes

With summer comes work, and when it's not raining, it's best to live under the stars. Fleeing from the rain, we headed south with the large metal mass. We turned west early into a remote valley while the herd continued to bleat towards the Mediterranean. Instead, we struggled on abandoned paths with our bikes and indulged in food in the evening. The locals have long known wandering hikers, while the sight of bikers makes the farmer's hand twitch on the pitchfork.

With or without the understanding of the foot soldiers, we arrived in an area teeming with motorhome gypsies. Another valley welcomed us, where no one is stabbed with a pitchfork anymore. Why slaughter the pig when you can still milk it?

Here, you are only bothered by bearded men collecting parking fees, prohibition signs that are supposed to stop you from biking, and of course plenty of Germans who behave in a German manner. Such a German woman ran in front of us with her child on her back. It used to be called mountain running, today it's called trail running. Not that we were chasing this creature on our bikes like a deer cow, it would have been forbidden anyway, the woman was training. From a distance, she sang us her current pulse, calorie, and kilometer values like a Suunto watch. And as if that wasn't enough, she also told us her crazy Transalp marathon story from last week. Now my hand began to twitch on the bike handlebar. Most likely the conception of her brat had also been a sporting achievement with a German record. Unfortunately, we could not provide her with any information about our accumulated altitude meters, the kilometers covered, and the top speed reached. If we had enough patience, we would have gladly told her about the green spider on the spruce, how we suddenly fell asleep by the river and slept through the day, or about the delicious ravioli. But before I could strangle her with a bike tube, Annina recognized the impending disaster, picked up the pace, and in record time, we mastered the final section of the route.

Back in the valley where Reinhold Messner already shot himself into diapers, we remembered his words: It doesn't matter if you break records with high-tech material, what matters is the interaction with nature and with yourself. Reinhold probably didn't see mountaineering as romanticized in his youth, otherwise he probably wouldn't have become a legend. Wisdom comes with age, and hopefully, tolerance does too.