Passo Giovo

Some more passes were waiting. Instead of going directly to Bolzano I planned a loop through Vipiteno, covering Passo Giovo and Passo Penser. The weather improved, so I was sure that there will be no problems with passes that are at least 500 m lower than Stelvio. It turned differently, however. The climb to Passo del Giovo (Jaufenpass, 2099 m) started in the sunny morning. 13 degrees at 700 m altitude should have warned me, though, what was going to happen. About half way up, just before the tunnel, the rear tyre blew off. The moment I heard the hideous hissing sound I knew what was going on. When I took off the tube I didn't have to look hard to find the puncture - it was at the base of the valve. A day before the trip the front tyre blew in the same manner, but I was just to lazy to fix the rear one too. But in half hour everything was fixed and I moved on. The temperature was rapidly decreasing and near the top it again dropped below zero, this time even with a full snow storm and icy gale. Once again my hands froze and I struggled even to make a photo at the top. I expected that the ride down will bring some relief (as was the case yesterday on Stelvio), but it seems that in cycling buisseness there are no generalizations and that even two identical set of conditions lead to two different circumstances. So, I was shiverring all the way down to the valley, where the snow turned to rain bringing no improvement. I like riding the big climbs, but there has to be an element of enjoyment in it, and I couldn't find any of that in the past hour of climbing and descending from Passo dello Giovo. The weather down in the valley was as grim as it could be, so I gave up on original plan of climbing 5 more passes nad headed straight to Austrian border.

Day 5: 103 km. Total 622 km.