However hard I try, 9:15 am is the magic time when set off every morning. Independently of the wake up time, muscle stretching or not, packing and re-packing, small or abundant breakfast, fixing my bike or not, I always start pedalling at 9:15 am. Today I aimed for 8:30 but then started a conversation with two couples at the breakfast table and the mojo of 9:15 happened again. 

The route today was meant as reward since biking down the valley of the river Enns. But very soon a head wind came turning stronger and stronger. 

“Yes, it became normal in the last years”, told me a local lady and added “In the afternoon it will be even worse”

Oh, how right she was. Soon I had a feeling of not moving forward at all. If only I had started at 6:15am instead!

Liezen and Lienz are two different small cities Austria which I permanently mix up. Even when being in one of them. A waitress in Liezen gave me a really strange look when I asked how many people live in “here in Lienz”

As common in Austria and complying with the door sign, I entered the sauna naked. I felt, however, like “a naked one in a thorn bush”. Several Serbs on the right and two British ladies on the left had swimming suits on. Having nothing to hide or to be ashamed of, I started a conversation with the British ladies, futilely trying to match their upper class pronunciation. 

All in all 106 km today from Radstadt to Admont. The 500 altimeters felt due to the head wind rather like 1500. 

Let see if the 9:15 magic will trick me out tomorrow, too