04 August 2014
Traunkirchen to Bad Ischl, Austria (15 miles; Total = 511 miles)

This beauty adorns our bathroom here in Bad Ischl, a nicely vibed town on the Traun River south of Traunkirchen. What I like about this artistic toilet is that it fills the cultural hole left behind from us not being able to visit the Museum für Historische Sanitarobjeckte (Museum for Historical Sanitary Objects) in Gmunden, the town we bypassed a few days back due to Gina’s declaration of “It Ain’t Cute.” According to our Lonely Planet guidebook, we missed out on viewing “a monumental collection of toilets.” Perhaps the owner of this guesthouse was inspired by that collection when she selected the seat for this one. And let’s just say that why it is I seem to have a fixation on toilets on this trip is beyond me.

So … here we are after another short day of riding that began under completely overcast skies, the remnants of last night’s spectacular lightning and thunderstorm. I think I can safely say that I have heard more thunder in the past 3 weeks than in my entire lifetime. It was quite the storm that blew through, the gap between bolts and booms slowly decreasing – 14, 10, 8 – until KABOOM, there it struck, lighting up the church steeple half a football field’s length away from our balcony. A moment of awe followed by a moment of thanks that we were safely tucked indoors with no hairs standing on edge.

The sun and blue skies are winning out now though, bringing out the desire for a Radler on the town square. We’ve found our nice zimmer albeit with a very scary landlady who tried to convince us that our bicycles scratched her hand-painted mural (for the record: those scratches were already there) but who thankfully quickly moved on to berating the other guests who were not parking their car correctly (for the record: I’m not sure how many more millimeters he was going to be able to pull over against that trellis but she made him try … 3 times). Time to escape her watchful gaze and go enjoy the sunshine.