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The Price of Admission The night was one of our worse for fly flapping. I couldn't even get to sleep with ear plugs. Sharon got up and removed the plastic covering the bikes, which helped some, but the fly and tent still beat each other senseless. We should have known that the top of an exposed mountain wasn't smart. We got suckered in with the great view. And we had paid for it with no sleep. Everything in life had a price I couldn't sleep so I thought I may as well get up and enjoy the sunrise and view we had paid a sleepless night for. The view of mountains and sea was splendid for twentyfive kilometers down the mountain. We dropped three thousand feet in twenty kilometers. My hands were cramping from braking on hairpin corners. The wind gusted into us all the way down and I had to be careful to avoid being blown over the edge. Sharon's bike was shimmying like crazy, so she stopped to see what was wrong. Her headset was loose again. She had been checking the wrong bolt previously and once she finally succeeded in tightening the correct adjustment the shimmy disappeared. She was able to pass me on downhills again. Drat. She was happy. I wasn't. The valley we dropped into was lush and filled with orange groves. A group of thirty female racers thundered towards us. I wondered how I could join that club? Maybe they needed a masseur. We completed our loop of the western end of Crete and arrived back in Khaniá starving. We bought groceries, then saw a sign proclaiming "best souvlaki," and had to check it out. Their pitas were so good we each had two. They fried the pita to make it crisp, then put in mounds of thin slices of meat, firm tomatoes, zingy Spanish onion, crisp French fries, a generous dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of spice. Delicious! It was hot riding the hills-much warmer than when we first arrived in Khaniá. At twentyfive degrees Celsius there was no snow left in the mountains. Heading east along the coast towards Réthimnon we were within twenty kilometers when we spotted a beach. We were exhausted from not sleeping the night before and decided to camp. The water was cool, but the sand was great. There was an astronomical number of stars. The milky way was one long streaming cloud. |
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