I am in Imst, Austria at a little cafe drinking coffee. I will stay in the campground in town but there is no sense getting there too early because of the rain.

The good news is that the weather is supposed to start clearing tonight and tomorrow we may even see sun. That seems to be the hope of the German couple I met at the bus stop.

"We are taking the bus over the pass to Imst," they said. "The bus takes bikes."

I had been planning to ride over Fern pass, even though the guidebook does not recommend it. The route takes you through the forest on a gravel road, which is not supposed be the bad part. The bad part is single track on the way down and, according to accounts, treacherous on good days. This is not a good day. I had planned to climb up and then hop on the main road on the way down, thus avoiding ghe single track. Not sure it is legal but i can keep up with cars and trucks on the downhill so I wasnt too worried.

Anyway the German couple seemed to have a pretty good plan. There are organized bike shuttles that take 20 bikes and riders over the pass in one blow. But you have to reserve that and I dont bave a phone. So i linked on the the post bus with the Germans. We hung our bikes on the back of the bus and off we went.

Rain was coming down all over the mountain in places that looked it didnt belong. I was really glad I ran into the Germans. They asked me about touring in the U.S. Of A. and I recommended This website for them to look at for ideas. Maybe I will see them in America some day?

I got off the bus just over the pass instead of riding the bus all the way to Imst and said goodbye and danke to the germans for translating for me, then I rode through the forest road the rest of the way. On this side of the pass the rain was not as much of a deluge. Still, even here there were a few sketchy spots.

The town of Imst is cute as a button and the campground is close enough to town to walk back for a closer looksee later.

I am seeing more touring cyclists now. Cant wait to ride tomorrow, hopefully in good weather!

(Btw For this trip i am creating two entries per day, one for text and one for pics. Thats because I dont always have time to sort through photos and write the text part. This way I can enter things as i have time. I am hoping this will allow me to keep up to date better than i have in past journals. So far it is working, I am up to date. So dont worry if you dont see pics right away, pictures usually take longer to sort through and edit. I will post for each day even if they are a bit later than the text)