Saddle hardly touched

 We left under perfect circumstances. The weather was fine, the valley wonderful. After some 24 kilometers, on a remote cycle path along a mountain stream, Eveline complained that her ebike wasn't ok. I checked and indeed, the on board computer gave “error code 500”. The display was working, the battery indicated that it still was full, but the drive unit remained dead. I made several phonecalls, to no avail. We continued with the now heavy ebike to the nearest town, which happened to be not far, Villadossola. Pretty soon we found a bicycle shop and the owner even appeared to be a registered Bosch-dealer. Although it was lunch time (don't underestimate this, lunch is important in these regions!) he checked the ebike, connected it to the Bosch system and concluded that the engine's software had a failure and that this is beyond repair. There we go! We make sure that we are equipped with the best material that can cope with extraordinary circumstances and then this happens! 

To make a long story short:

The shop owner took us in his car to our car (fortunately on this side of the Simplon pass), we collected our bikes from his shop (after lunch!) and continued to this second awfully nice and romantic B&B that we had booked before. We contacted our good friend Gino in Torino and, as expected :-), he started working for us. Now, a couple of days later, we are in Torino, the ebike is in a shop from another very co-operative Bosch dealer who will try to change the drive unit within a week. In the mean time we will rent another ebike from their shop, same brand, make the greater part of our planned tour, and pick up Eveline's bike on return. We are now spending three days here, which we had planned anyway, though under different circumstances. We are happy to spend some time with Gino and Anna, whom we have known for so long now. Torino is a wonderful historic city with very nice musea and miles of shady galleries, beautiful squares, fantastic coffee bars, restaurants, shops and markets. Tomorrow we will drive up for lunch to Frassinere, where Gino and Anna own a family house on the mountain side, alt. 1000m. 

The plan now is to pick up the rental ebike on Monday morning and continue our tour. So, to be continued...