It dawned cool and bright, another beautiful day. This promised to be an easy-paced 55 miles with only 2 profiled climbs, neither very difficult compared to what we had recently done. We detoured up a valley to a bike shop in a small town where we bought them out of Swiss cow bike jerseys and other memorabilia. Some of our group went to see a waterfall inside a mountain, others explored further up the valley. Everything was leisurely--we had the illusion of plenty of time.
We split into smaller groups based on our puttering around, and Howie, Chris, Steve and I eventually set off down the valley for Interlaken, the town, where we promptly got lost. Directions were sketchy at best. We asked 4 different people and got no answers that clearly corroborated each other. We didn't speak SwissGerman and apparently our English wasn't too clear either. After an hour delay, Howie navigated us through the town and along the north side of Interlaken, the lake. We had pizza alongside the river in Thun, with 6 more of our gang arriving just as we left to head cross country to Luderenalp, our final destination. Once again, directions were sketchy and we soon found ourselves on the wrong road. In this case, it turned out to be fortuitous as we found out later we apparently circumvented the first profiled climb of the day.
Somehow, we turned 55 mi. into 79 miles and lots of map study before arriving at Luderenalp at 6 PM. And we were the first to arrive. The other six arrived 45 min. later, and Markham and Charles arrived last, pulling up at 7:45 PM in the Lanterne Rouge, also known as the broomwagon, earning a DNF for the day.
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