Sandro and I in front of the biggest Whiskey collection in the World at Hotel Waldhaus am See in St. Moritz. This hotel, from now on, officially accepts bitcoin as payment!

Summary on day 4 of Tour de Satoshi: Another win for bitcoin! And a detour because Alpine Pass is closed.

When I got up this morning to the breathtaking view of Lago di Como embraced by blue skies and clear weather, I knew it was going to be a great cycling day ahead.

Beautiful scenery at Lago di Como in Lecco!

Funny how things can change so quickly on such tours though! Soon after heading out, I found out that the Swiss Alpine Pass (Splügenpass), the very one that I was going to cross the next day, was closed due to heavy snowfall. This meant a change in my route, AGAIN!

In addition, today’s journey should have been called, “Vitus’ battle against headwind”. At times, I could only muster 10 km/h as the wind forced me backwards and I pushed against it, paddling harder and harder as the day went on. Thankfully, my knee felt better which was a relief.

However, a strong combination of inhaling dry air and exhausted panting led to an uncontrollable nose bleed and as I stubbornly carried on, my body gave out and started to vomit. I’ll save you the gruesome details as I think a picture can tell it better than a thousand words.

At least the weather was good :-)

Eventually, I got to Chiavenna at the bottom of the Alps and needed to decide how to proceed considering the pass was closed. After consulting the Polizia Stradale (Italian police), I decided to cross the Alps through the Julierpass which meant that I took a short bus trip (across Malojapass) to St. Moritz. As nice as the St. Moritz stay sounds, I knew it would be even harder to convince the hotels to take me up for the night in exchange for bitcoin, not to mention the Julierpass will be covered with snow in harsh weather conditions. St. Moritz was already covered in snow when I arrived.

It gets tougher every night but I get more and more motivated to pay with bitcoin. This time, success came with the lucky number 8. The hotel is called Waldhaus am See and Sandro is the owner who from now on officially accepts bitcoin as payment. It feels like a triumph every time. I can hear the background victory song play as I wait for the bitcoin transaction to go through from my wallet to the newly founded wallet of the nocoiner who just joined our community. Excitement takes over exhaustion and I am pumped to take on the next day ahead.

Here’s my bitcoin transaction for a night’s stay, dinner and breakfast. My stay in St. Moritz was naturally more expensive than the nights before so my wallet is almost empty and I need your help for my coming days. The next destination is Chur so to all my Swiss friends, please support my efforts by donating bitcoin to my wallet below:

bc1q87jy2c28snel5tj3c5q94fdfuy9xwhl0ljlysn

And my btc (legacy) wallet address:

1P3UwoDLhqJZbkYiZuKQZrmZvbB2GssLB

It goes without saying that your cheers keep me going and your support via the shares and likes of these posts make me forget the seclusion of the roads. So please continue to show me your love and support.

Peace.

Vitus