Seven Winds

Life is a mighty experiment. My grandma always said, “Lighten up, sweetheart; it’s all learning.”

I never met my grandma. My mom adopted me soon after the loss of her mom. But if I had met Grandma in person, I would have told her I agree. It’s all about putting one paw in front of the other.
Hiking allows me to practice living while satisfying my primal urge to walk.

This hike took me to Punta Setteventi, the "Point of the Seven Winds", located approximately 40 miles north of Brescia, Italy. On the north side of the mountain, the foehn wind was so strong we could barely walk. Mom struggled to stay upright.

On the south side, however, the wind was nonexistent, and it was warm enough to take a nap.

A structure that looks like a spaceship lies right on the tippy top of nearby Dosso dei Galli, the “Hill of the Roosters”.

It hosts a former NATO facility that belonged to the Allied Command Europe (ACE) High System, a long-range communication network. Designed in the late 50s, ACE High connected northern Norway to eastern Turkey. After France left NATO in 1966, new facilities had to be built to keep the network connected without using the stations on French soil. The spaceship on Dosso dei Galli was one of these new stations. It became operational in 1969 to connect Italy and Germany; this specific location in the Italian Alps was chosen to bypass neutral Switzerland.

Located in the Black Forest, the nearest German station lies 200 miles away (as the crow flies) from the Italian station at Dosso dei Galli. Due to the Earth’s curvature, no line of sight exists between the two stations. To communicate with the German station, the NATO folks at Dosso dei Galli aimed their signals at a portion of the lower atmosphere (technically, the troposphere) within the line of sight of the Black Forest station. The troposphere is full of irregularities that scatter radio signals in all directions, so a tiny portion of the signal would hit the receivers at the Black Forest station. Of course, the Black Forest folks could leverage the very same principle, known as troposcatter, to communicate with the “Hill of the Roosters”.

I only discovered the true nature of the Dosso dei Galli spaceship after we came back home from our hike. At the time, waking up from my nap and staring at the “Hill of the Roosters,” all I wanted to do was bark at it.

In Memoriam

Bicontinental Dachshund was inspired by the dog diary my grandma wrote for her daughter, my mom. This dog blog is dedicated to her and written in her honor.

 Susan Saxton D'Aoust
 August 9, 1939 - October 27, 2010

"I have moments, moments when the veils between living and dying disappear and all that remains is an exquisite ecstasy."

We love you.

Roll Over

Tootsie and Fluffo in conversation on the streets of Livigno, Italy.

From a Deep Dream

Engadine deserves its reputation as one of the most scenic valleys in all of Switzerland. It’s certainly one of the most famous, courtesy of St Moritz.

Engadine makes you feel as if you stepped inside the heart of the Alps. Strikingly craggy mountains rise on either side of an astonishingly green valley punctuated by alpine lakes.

We stopped in the town of Sils, which has an alpine lake with roe deer at its shores. The Waldhaus Hotel, a chateau that advertises in The New Yorker, overlooks the town. A peninsula sticks out into the lake, and we walked out to a point where another family with a big black dog was reading a plaque.

From a deep dream have I awoken:—
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day has thought.

"That's the Midnight Song from Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra," explained the big black dog with a loud bark.

"That's wotten-waven," I replied with a series of yips that were shushed by Dad.

O Man! Take heed!
What says the deep midnight?

Not sure what the deep midnight says in Engadine. We would have needed a bank loan to spend the night there.

Dach-sound Finance

As you know, I am long and short. And my bicontinental status means that I have a perspective on both bulls and bears. In Switzerland, there are cows everywhere, so I'm confident I'll find a bull market where I can go long. In Idaho, there is no shortage of bears, so I can always go short.

As part of the 99%, I support OccupyWallStreet. I was shocked to read Naomi Wolf's piece about her arrest in The Guardian. Still, I find the dynamics of stock markets fascinating, especially given current volatility levels. The Dow is my favorite bellwether, but only if spelled D'Aoust, like my last name.

If you are into dividend stocks, I recommend Walgreen shares, because their ticker symbol is WAG. Because I make occasional piggy-pog grunting sounds, I follow Harley Davidson shares, whose TLA is HOG. I'm not planning to get into commodities any time soon, but the iPath Dow Jones-UBS Livestock Subindex Total Return ETN, which trades as COW, looks pretty good if you wish to gain exposure to live cattle and lean hogs.

Disclosure: I'm long on WAG, short on HOG. I have no positions in COW and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I am also a dog.

Disclaimer: This is a dog blog. These yips should not be construed as professional financial advice.

Being Cheesy

What is the favorite cheese of a college instructor?

Being Cheesy sounds prosaic, I meant to be caseic.

La Panoramica

Some 20 miles north of Lake Como lies Bregaglia, the Swiss valley where Alberto Giacometti was born. We drove over in a rental car early on a Saturday morning to hike the "La Panoramica" trail.

Near the town of Soglio, we saw a number of Japanese artists at work. They had sketching materials and tiny folding chairs, which were sized just for me. Some used oils, some charcoals, some pencils. Mom looked over their shoulders. One picture was a charcoal sketching of the town where the artist drew the mountains to look like town church spires.

I barked at one of the painters to show my appreciation of his drawing of Pizzo Badile.

My parents took this as bad form and reprimanded me. But my yip was meant as a joyous accolade.

"La Panoramica" winds up and down the mountainside and passes by several waterfalls.

Several sections have stairs.

Hikers on "La Panoramica" were different from the intense alpine trekkers we often meet. More relaxed. One man asked, in German, if the hike was too much for me. I appreciated his concern, but he doesn’t know how far these four short legs can take me.

I met several dogs, and one asked for my phone number. I also ran into the Cheshire cat just outside his Swiss residence in the hamlet of Roticcio.