At last: our day starts with a blue sky, warm temperatures and the sun fighting its way through the last remainders of fog in the valley. Our destination for today is Villach – getting there will see us leave the northern Italian Dolomites region and crossing into southern Austria – both regions are, given nice weather, beautiful – we’re really looking forward to our drive today. We will have to cross three passes today – some of them are above 1800m. We will have to see if the roads have already been cleared. I’ve promised my wife that we would […]
TDST2020 – Day2, South Tyrol – Dolomites
Today is our official first day off – we wake up to a grey day with us not really being able to fully take advantage of our awesome suite-style room with huge balcony so obviously designed for the lazy consumption of a sunny day! After a hearty Austrian-style breakfast my wife and I start our trip with a traditional TWIKE pilot team picture. With me traveling long-distance with my TWIKE since 2008, there are many of these pictures – maybe I’ll create a page for them someday. Not much later, I spy a first real Italian bar and stop to […]
TDST2020 – Day1, Home – South Tyrol
Finally, the day has come for TDST2020! My wife and I will be traveling to Southern Styria together by TWIKE. We will be taking our time, whilst our children will follow a week later by car and meet up with us at one of our favourite Buschenschanks close to where we stay every year. Packing our stuff is done in just a minute and we’re ready to leave. Since it’s still Friday, my wife will be driving whilst I work – I just love how this is possible nowadays. Since it’s raining, there isn’t too much to see – our […]
TDI2020 – Heading Home – A Few Days On My Own
As I got up early morning, I suddenly felt different about what I should be doing the next few days: I wanted to drive home. No hardcore TWIKEing. Direction home, nevertheless. Starting my trip at 7am today, I am, yet again, greeted by a very nice day, promising to be hot and sunny. I cross the hills on some very uninteresting roads which take me to the very flat Pianura, which I really don’t like: 80kms of pure flatness. Let’s skip forward to Milan – a town I’ve been visiting regularly for the last 30 years. This year, as with […]
TDI2020 – A few days at the sea
Our stay in Lucca was much too short. Today’s drive will take us to Massa Marina, just 80km from Lucca. My family will enjoy the town for another few hours whilst I start bright and early. My plan for today is to drive from the coast inland up some hills and back to the sea again. Off we go! Temperatures soar and I’m happy to climb continuously. Every 100m up means about 1°C less temperature. A first pass at 1300m brings me to a plateau at around 1000m, complete with mountain lake and many, many people escaping the heat. For […]
TDI2020 – Northwards along the Ligurian Sea
Time has flown by in Terni & Rome. We’ve had a great time as a family with all our friends and we’re very grateful for their friendship. Today I will drive to Lucca on my own – my family wants to spend less time on the road – rather a long and relaxing lunch at the sea somewhere en-route. Me, however, am looking forward to the trip. Today will be a very hot day and I’ve planned to take TW560 up some hills to get a reprieve from the heat. TW560 was charged slowly at 0.02C to allow the […]
TDI2020 – Terni & Rome
After arriving in Terni, we’re ready for a week of time-off, Italian-style! We live with our friends whilst our kids live distributed across town with their grown-up children or stay with the extended family. Most of our days consist of sitting at long tables and eating fabulous food or visiting other parts of the family – very relaxing. With Covid Lockdown1 over, most of public services are back – with the hot weather we’re loving the fact that we have a swimming pool just around the corner from where we live! We spent a few afternoons here. Our kids, however, […]
TDI2020 – Southwards along the Adriatic Sea
After our two days with our friends, it’s time for us as a family to spend some time at the sea on our own. We’re all looking forward to 3 days in Lido di Dante – it’s a trip down memory lane: as a young family we came here a few times when the kids were all in their single digits and it was just perfect – kid-friendly Italian restaurants – pizza and pasta universally loved by our children, beach fronts with playgrounds and shallow water…and tons of other kids. Our new vacation setup sees us parents getting up and […]
TDI2020 – Two Days On My Own
A new TWIKE adventure! Post-Lockdown1 relaxation of travel restrictions to Italy meant that we – at short notice – arranged to visit various of our Italian friends and stay a few days at the sea, both on the Adriatic and Tyrrheanean side of the Italian peninsula. The first two days will see me driving on my own to Brescia and staying there with friends and their family before my own family joins me on late Sunday. I really need the time-off and two days on my own as I’ve been extremely busy lately. As always, it doesn’t take me long […]
Pre-TDI2020 battery spa
As always, the time until a major trip seems endless until…the trip is just 2 weeks away and the agenda is still full with calls and meetings and weekends are chock-full with other stuff. Equally important is balancing a pack before setting out on 3 weeks of full-cycle discharges during long-distance daily trips. Thanks to the fact that I have multiple battery workstations, balancing the 42 strings takes only about one day in total and – as mentioned previously – this exercise is also a very good indicator for cell ageing and cell health in general. TW560’s pack is nearing […]