Date: 18/09
City: Munich, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 58976
Street: N/A
Weather: Rainy, cold, warm

It rained heavily today so we took up Uli’s offer to stay. After lunch the BMW service called and told us that the bike is fixed and ready. The afternoon would be too short for us to get to BMW, do the paperwork and get going, so we decided to pick up the bike early tomorrow.

Date: 19/09
City: Prato Allo Stelvio, Italia
Kilometres ridden: 342
Cumulative kilometre: 59329
Street: Highway, Mountain Pass
Weather: Sunny, cold, warm

In the morning we hopped into the public train and went to BMW.

When we arrived we got the bike but unfortunately the parts left over from the incident in the tunnel still had to be fitted. The mechanic fixed it in no time. It was great; I could watch the mechanic fixing it through a glass window.

It turned out that one part in the tank had come loose which caused the trouble. The mechanic told me he used different clamps and I don’t have to worry about this problem anymore. Here is the mechanic with his buddy.

We took off happy that we could continue our journey. Our goal today was the Stelvio Pass which was around 400km from Munich. We went through the same tunnel where the problem started, this time the bike made it through; well there was no traffic jam either ;).
Just before the Austrian border we organized two stickers which were needed to get onto the highway in Austria and Switzerland.

In Austria we went through a couple of long tunnels, the longest one was 11km. I felt it took forever before we came out. I kept thinking what would happen if we get stuck in the middle of this tunnel? 😛

The weather was overcast, but the mountains were still beautiful.

We passed the Reschensee, where a church was submerged into a lake.

The weather got sunnier toward the evening. We decided to stop just before the Stelvio Pass, look for an accommodation and do the pass tomorrow…
The first hotel was already booked out, but he recommended another one to us which was fantastic, and so was the price 😀

View from the room 🙂

 

Date: 20/09
City: Zernetz, Switzerland
Kilometres ridden: 57
Cumulative kilometre: 59386
Street: Highway, Mountain Pass
Weather: Sunny, cold, warm

We had a very exiting ride after a nice breakfast in Prad. We drove up the Stelvio Pass (German: Stilfser Joch), the second highest pass in the Alps.

Then we continued and drove over the Ofen pass and just before reaching Zermez we passed some road works. Shortly after I asked Sigrid if she was wobbling in the back seat which she vehemently denied.
Just past the next bend I realised I had a flat tyre.
Mumbling words best not repeated into the headset I drove onto the car park of the first hotel in Zermez. Getting off the bike and looking at the tyre, there was no doubt: it was flat.

While I checked out the damage and our options as to what we could do, Sigrid went into the hotel to ask about accommodation for the night – a bit pricy but not too bad.
Outside we met a Swiz-Australian named Fritz, who offered his help. Great to meet people like that! I took the back wheel off, he drove me to the mechanic who said the slit in the tyre is too big to fix… Darn!

Back at the hotel I made a telephone call to a Motorcycle tyre shop about a new tyre roughly some 30 km away, luckily he had one available.
Fritz offered to drive us there after he picked his wife up from the train station.

Together we drove to the tyre dealer where Fritz dropped us off and we got the new tyre fitted.

We carried the wheel to the next train station, hopped on the train and let it drive us back to Zernetz.  Well, that was easy… But now where is the hotel? We proceeded to walk towards the direction where we thought it would be…. Then a car with two ladies stopped. They introduced themselves as guests in the hotel where we were staying and told us that they had witnessed our tyre ordeal. Now they offered to drive us and the wheel back to the hotel where it was fitted in no time! By the way, lucky that we found them ….we would have landed somewhere in the mountains if we had continued in the direction we were walking 😉

Last check and then a test ride. Well..all ok on the tyre front, but ….now I noticed some grinding noise when the clutch was disengaged!  “@#$%”!

The noise was so severe that we decided to change our trip and ride to the next BMW dealer for an assessment, hoping that we would make it there.