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San Bernadino Pass Ice in our water bottles. Icicles adorned rock faces. Puddles frozen beside the road. It was too cold to be out camping. We had all our clothes on, plus gloves and fleece hats, and were still cold. The wind blowing off the snow capped mountains didn't help matters. I pulled up my red wool socks and looked like a local in lederhosen. The Swiss army was very active, warming things up with a number of bombings. A pictorial sign showed that if you found a bomb don't pick it up. Very good advice indeed. Beginning the ascent, we passed a sign that assured us the pass was open. That was what we wanted to see. I would hate to have gotten so close, only to be turned back because the pass was closed. Partway up I stopped on a corner and took a picture of the shepherd's huts down in the valley. Sharon was way ahead. Sherry was way behind. Sharon had been at the top over half and hour before Sherry finally arrived. Luckily it was warm in the sunshine. We were at 2065 meters, almost seven thousand feet. On the way up the pass Sherry had hit one thousand kilometers. With a raspy voice she commented "That was my first and last pass!" I didn't see much cycling in the mountains in Sherry's future and snapped her picture in front of San Bernadino Lake to commemorate the occasion. We had a bite to eat, put on another layer of clothes in anticipation of the descent, the wind came up and we headed down. There were many curvy corners. The best view we had was two castles poised atop hills in the valley. Partway down I passed two army officers standing on the side of the road. Cars were pulled off to the side. I gave the officers a wave. They didn't yell too loudly, so I kept going. Soon, I saw why the cars were pulled off. More military. They were doing daytime maneuvers and simulations. Tanks were coming up the hill. I wondered if those army personnel had wanted me to stop. Oh well, it was too late by that time. I kept going, skimming past the tank tanking up almost the entire roadway. The fellow sticking out of the top of the tank hatch looked at me wideeyed. I tried watching in my rear view mirror to see what was going to happen when the girls went by. The guy rotated the turret so that it pointed directly at Sharon's head. My hands hurt by the time we reached the bottom. They were cramping from all the braking. Not a good thing when descending hairpin corners. Sharon said she didn't find a gun barrel pointed at her head all that amusing. By her comments I think she was happy to get off the mountain alive. In the town of San Bernadino, at the foot of the pass on the other side, we stopped for another break to rest our brake hands and look around. San Bernadino had old slate roofed buildings and a dome church. The angular mountain created a great backdrop for the old church. We were in Italian Switzerland. Most of the residents reminded us of Italians and spoke Italian. Even the scenery in the area was similar to what we had seen in Italy. That wasn't surprising once I learned the area had was been part of Italy. I pulled into a rest area and found out why it felt as if my bike was thumping along. It was. I discovered a hole in the tread of my rear tire. The tube was bulging out. Luckily I had installed another tire inside and that had saved me from having a blow out. At the roadside wc we met two civic workers. One had visited Canada and was overjoyed to tell us how much he had enjoyed his trip. We spent half and hour struggling to remember the little Italian we once knew. Sharon faltered. "I knew so little and forgot so much!" Sherry was in culture shock. "What language are we speaking now?" she asked. We had a late lunch beside the river in Grono. During supper a herd of cows came along with donging cow bells drowning out any hope of conversation. We watched the cows eat the leaves over our heads instead. A woman came along. We asked her if it would be all right to camp in the field across the road. She pointed down the road. In a few minutes a herd of sheep came along and took over the spot that had looked so inviting moments before. We crossed the bridge and cycled a forest footpath heading towards Roverado. After a bit of reconnoitering we found a flat spot in the trees amongst the fallen leaves. The night was considerably warmer-five degrees Celsius-there was no wind and we had dropped to three hundred meters. We crawled into our sleeping bags and blew out the candle lantern. We heard voices on the path and waited breathlessly until they passed. |
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