Gooool!

Hooray. I still cannot believe it but we somehow managed to shot our submission "A SOFT Way for OpenFlow Switch Interoperability Testing" past defending reviewers and program commitee goalkeepers directly into the goal net of CoNEXT 2012 conference.

Little giants

After Nufenenpass and Gotthardpass, it was clear that Maciej and me should not leave waiting Furkapass for too long. Therefore, we (Maciej, Daniel and I) decided to use Swiss national day (1st of August) as an excuse to climb this very nice pass. And not only that -- because Furka is not big enough for one day, the plan was also to attack Grimselpass with a climb to Oberaarsee.

The start was at Realp where we arrived quite late (11am). As far as I can tell, Realp is one of the most train-time-distant places in Switzerland (at least as measured from Lausanne) -- the more time consuming travel is just to the south part of Switzerland (Locarno, Lugano). Although Furka is more than 2400m, climb from Realp is quite short because Realp itself is over 1500m. Moreover, the climb itself is not very steep -- after initial section of hairpins there is a long section with only 400m of ascent.

After Furka, our next stop was Belvedere with views to Rhonegletcher. There we even went inside an ice tunnel in the glacier. The result is that now I know why ice and glaciers in Ice Age movie are always blue. That is because they are blue!

Before we went all the way down to Gletch, we had another stop. This time not scheduled -- Maciej got a flat tire. And he did not have a backup one. Fortunately, we realized that it was compatible with my bike and I had a spare one (actually, I had two spares, just in case). Therefore, we were able to continue to the Grimselpass.

At the Grimselpass, Daniel decided to split from us and go ahead faster (generally, he was much faster than Maciej and me and was waiting for quite frequently). His plan was to go directly down to Meiringen and then "enjoy" a steep ascent to Grosse Scheidegg and down to Grindelwald. Maciej and I stayed at Grimselpass for a while -- I went to visit a crystal "cave" (a collection of crystals from different parts of Alps) and Maciej was having his late lunch. After a pause, we went for our final climb -- from Grimselpass to Oberarsee dam. We were half the way up when, surprise, we met Daniel.  He changed his mind after seeing a map at Grimselpass and realized that the way to Oberaarsee is quite uphill. We said farewell again to him.

Oberaarsee is the second highest (elevation) dam I visited. With surface elevation of a few meters over 2300m, it was beaten only by a Griessee dam near Nufenenpass. With views to the Oberaarchletscher, this was a good reward for finishing our climb. And while you can definitely sit there for a few hours, we did not have so much time and after a I did a short walk (Maciej was lazy), we returned back (with a short stop at Triebtenseeroli lake) back to Grimselpass.

From there, we really enjoyed a 30km long descent to Innertkirchen. To Maciej's horror, the road from Innertkirchen to Meiringen was hiding another climb. It was however a short trip and we quickly managed to get to Meiringen with the bonus that we arrived on time to quickly get into the train in the direction to Interlaken.

For thoso of you who did not climb Furka&Grimse, here are photos.

Mauvousin

My "Tour de Suisse barrages" continues. This time, I went to the dam of Mauvousin. The start is in Le Chable, under famous ski village Verbier. From there, I obviously went upwards valley, towards Fionnay which is hydroelectric power station and a little dam getting water from Grande Dixence complex (Grande Dixence is on my "to-climb" list). But the highlight of Fionnay isn't the little dam or hydroelectric power plant.
The highlight is a really high waterfall (unfortunately, I do not know the name as it is not named on the map).

From Fionnay, the road continues directly to Mauvousin. At the beginning there is a moderate slope but the height difference will catch on later, especially very near the dam. After catching my breath and having a lunch, I started my route around the dam. It starts with a long tunnel (+ several shorter ones) climbing a hundred meters above the dam.

Meanwhile, you will pass a tunnel with water which is a source of a big waterfall. Apparently, the Swiss people like digging tunnels because this one starts a few kilometers away in a nowhere place near the stream of Dyure de Sery. They probably need to supply a lof of water to the dam when they are producing the electricity.

The road, however, does not end at the other end of the lake. In fact, you can go much higher as there is a gravel road to a high alping hut Cabanne de Chanrion. From there (height 2460m) I had a nice view of all the big mountains around. For a while, I debated continuing even more (and completely around the lake) but that would mean climbing another two hundred meters and a road on unknown quality (it is a hiking road). Moreover, the sun seems to be smiling less through the clouds so I decided to simply go back the same way.

However, the way back wasn't so boring. Just as I was leaving Mauvousin, I managed to fell with my bike. I was going down on an asphalt road and with my right hand I was trying to fix my saddle. And suddenly, because I was braking with my left hand, the bike started to rotate (more precisely, started to pitch). You may guess what is the reflex for that situation (if you guessed "brake even more" than you are correct). Fortunately, I managed to land better than I expected at the moment. Although I scratched my right elbow quite deeply, it wasn't really bleeding and I managed to wash it in a stream. I hope it will heal soon.

As usual, photos are here.

Family visit

My family again decided to visit me this summer. And as usual, I was supposed to come up with ideas for trips and excursions (and optimize them for travelling). Here is what I came up with

On Saturday, our first stop was Pissevache waterfall near Martigny. The waterfall is visible even from highway but standing below this impressive 60m high fall is another matter. After this short stop, we continued towards Sion and Sierre where we stopped at village Lac St Leonard with quite nice subterranean lake -- basically a cave filled with water. From there we continued to Blatten where I wanted to hike through a long suspension bridge. Unfortunately, I severely overestimated hiking speed of my mother and brother and therefore we made it only to Riederfurka (the weather wasn't so good and we would return too late from the trip)

Sunday was a bit harder to schedule. Especially because we wanted to visit salt mines in Bex and they recommend booking entry timeslots. As it turned out, we were not able to book the first possible entry and therefore needed to spend some time in the morning. Therefore, I decided to visit Orbe -- a village near where I live.

Orbe is small old village but it is really nice. Probably the biggest attraction is the Orbe castle and a big round tower called Tour Ronde.

From Orbe we went to Bex, an old salt mining city. The visit of salt mines starts with a more than 1km of ride in a train inside mine tunnels. From there, you will follow a short route during which you will learn about how the salt was mined in the past and what is different now. And in the end, you will get another long ride on a train.

Because the weather was really nice, after a lunch break we decided to try another trip. My plan was to go from Lac D'Emosson through Lac du Vieux Emosson to the place with real dinosaur traces. Unfortunately, my plans were destroyed because of construction works at Vieux Emosson. They are building another hydroelectric power plant and the whole road to the second dam is closed. As we learnt later, they even completely drained it. Anyway, because of this complication, the only possible road to the dinosaur traces was through mountain and I got a lot of complaints for this.

On the other hand, going through the gorge and mountain had its advantages. We saw a lot of Alpine Ibexes and they weren't really afraid of us. One of them let us to go just a few meters from him (but did not let us to touch him). Overall, a very nice bonus to the trip.





Photos from Saturday: Pissevachefalle, Lac St. Leonard and trip Blatten-Riederfurka.
Photos from Sunday: Orbe, Salt mines Bex and Lac D'Emosson

Bike trilogy part III - A double

After our climb to St Bernard pass, Maciej and I looked seriously into the list of highest Alpine passes. St Bernard (2469m) was third highest in Switzerland. Remaining two are Nufenenpass (2478m) and Umbrailpass (2501m) (with bonus Stelviopass (2757m) part in Italy). Thus, the plan was clear -- we need to beat these two (three). As a part of this plan, we decided to do a grand triple Nufenen, Gotthard & Furka. However this was very ambitious and it was estimated to be a two-day ride which was fine except for the fact that there was nowhere to sleep (for a reasonable price). Thus, we decided that just two of them must do. The best option was Nufenen & Gotthard as this left a potential for Furka&Grimsel next time.

Therefore, on Tuesday (just two days after my Jura trip with Daniel), we take a train to Ulrichen and started a twelve kilometers long ascent to Nufenenpass with the stop at Griessee dam. We enjoyed views to Griesgletcher and then continued last two hundreds of meters of ascent to Nufenenpass.

Descent from Nufenenpass to Airolo was quite long (and on quite terrible road, welcome to Italian canton). In fact, it is so long (25km) that it was obvious we have chosen a correct side for climbing as the other way would take forever as we are quite slow even on very small slopes. This way, Airolo welcomed us with just small pedaling at the end (and most notably some road constructions with annoying traffic lights).

After a lunch break at Airolo, we were ready for Gotthardpass. And here it was again obvious that our decision to take trip in this direction was quite good. Quite unexpectedly, the asphalt route turned into an old stone-paved road which was quite pleasant (definitely not so boring as asphalt). Moreover, as this road was not built with speed in the mind, there were a lot of cute little hairpins and near the top we even met an coach with tourists. And then it was time for another set of pass-pictures.

But we did not stop at Gotthardpass. That would mean missing views to two dams -- the first was Lago della Sella with incredibly blue water. In fact, it was so blue that I had an impression that I am near the sea and not 2256 meters above. The second one was Lago di Lucendro but it was getting late and cloudy so we just did a quick climb without really going all the possible way around. And that was it, the rest of the trip was just a quick descent to Hospental where we took our train back.

You can enjoy photos here.

Bike trilogy part II

Second part of my bike trilogy was only a day after my bike trip to Lac de Moiry. Together with Daniel, we went to trip from Neuchâtel. I was quite happy to go (for a change) on somewhat flatter surface than Alps -- Jura is much flatter, isn't it? Well, although certainly Jura mountains are not so high as Swiss Alps, they are not negligible. In fact, we started with serious 500m climb directly from Neuchâtel to Valangin and then to Les Hauts-Geneveys where we had lunch. From there we obviously continued to the highest peak in the vicinity - Tête de Ran.

Here I must say that I really prefer Alps than Jura for a simple reason -- when you finally climb some high Alpine pass, the way down is zero-energy-expenditure. However, Jura is quite different. You are still going down and up and down and up ... Anyway, we descended to La Chaus-de-Fonds and took (hilly) bike road towards Tramelan. However, near St Imier it was clear that we are far behind the schedule (mainly because of me, Daniel was always faster). Thus, we descended to St Imier where we learn that we missed the train. And because Daniel was really in the mood for some serious workout, he suggested that we climb Mt Soleil while waiting for a train.

To sum up -- never underestimate Jura mountains. They might not be so big but they are still big enough to cause consistent trouble ;-)
P.S. More photos are here.

Small screen big window trick

Ever happened to you that you opened some application on your netbook with screen resolution small x even smaller and the application contains big unresizable window? And do you know the frustration when the thing you need to click (save/ok/whatever) is in the bottom part of the window which is invisible to you? Then you know what I am talking about. Especially because you cannot move window above top of the screen. Well, at least, not with only mouse. Today, I am proud to introduce you a linux (gnome) solution for this problem. It is called ALT+F7 and it is "move window" shortcut. Except, for some strange reason, there is no limitation on where you move the window with this shortcut, i.e. you can move it over top edge of the screen!