A Swiss Commute
 

OK. After seeing how Nathak's ride was, I was forced to take my digital camera to record what *my* trip looked like.

Although I did end up shooting a couple of shots of myself unintentionally, it was a nice day, and I ended up taking about 10 extra minutes to play photog...

There are a number of pictures here, ending with me being at my place of work, the University of St. Gallen...

Enjoy...
Tom

As I had to drop off our tandem at the bike shop to get a brake overhaul, I didn't ride along the train tracks to work, but still ended up looking at...cows!

Remember, this is in Eastern Switzerland, land of the cows...

Now, it's down the hill (heading to the church where my wife and I were married)

now we're in the forest...one of the most dangerous portions of my ride in the winter...dark, and twisty!

My neighbor upended his Porche near this section...I just rode past, as it was pouring rain, and he was being attended to (and I didn't realize it was him!)

Coming out of the forest into the sun...

The forest road follows the river Glatt...

Can it be? YES! More cows! Even today, (lots of drizzle) my ride was ridden to the sound of cowbells...even when traveling along the Autobahn!

Here we're riding heading towards Gossau, along a nice two lane road.

I took this shot for two (oops...make that three) reasons:
[list=1][*]Woman on a bike[*]Public Transport (Train Bridge)[*]Sheep (they don't only have cows here)[/list=1]

yup! I did say sheep!

Lots of trucks share my commute with me. Swiss truck drivers are quite excellent, and I've only very rarely had problems with them (as opposed to car or scooter traffic)

Note the cyclist waiting for the trucks...

Here's a death traffic circle which recently got added to my commute. Swiss drivers just don't get traffic circles, and indeed, some will actually STOP on the circle to let those who must yield onto the circle!

Here's where I got pegged last April. Buses AND bicycles share the far right lane, other traffic the other two lanes.

A nice shot of a fairly often seen bike lane JUST WHERE THE TRAFFIC HAS TO STOP.

It's not like the cars always keep it free, however...

Again, nice bike path, which keeps cars a bit away from one. In the winter, however, this can be much smaller, due to snow and ice issues...

The ride is a mix of farm and industrial and the weather was nice for a change...we've had nice weather, but there had been a number of rainy days recently.

Here's a nice shot showing bike signs. Switzerland has a number of decent bike paths.

Like I said before, my commute paralells the Autobahn. Trucks are much nicer to deal with here than back in the States...

If any of you have used XP out of the box...do I need to say more?

This is taken from a largish bridge that I have on the commute facing north. Bicycles have to share with foot traffic.

Sometimes, the lanes are narrowed even further for work on the bridge.

Sights like this make it a joy to ride in in the morning. The mountain range is called the Saentis

Here's one of the buses that I play tag with. The drivers are quite nice, as long as you play by the rules (let them go, they let YOU go)

Note that it's an ELECTRO bus...

By the time I got to this bigish climb, I'd managed to catch the bus in the last picture. I ALWAYS end up waiting at this light... :mad:

The climb takes me into a neighboorhood zone where you can only go 30 km/h