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January 30 Monday Bicycle touring Italy from a seaside ledge with Serpentara Island in the distance on Sardegna to a row of trees past Cagliari Sardinia Yesterday, as we rounded a bend on the seaside mountain road, we came face to face with a herd of goats. They stopped dead in their tracks. The lead dog barked up a storm, the middle dog in the pack just stood there, and the goat herder had not yet made his appearance over the edge of the embankment. The goats made a quick 180º turn and beat a hasty retreat back down the road just as the herder popped his head over the bank. He saw this stampede of goats coming towards him and tried to head them off by flapping his arms and yelling, but this only made the lead goat veer off the road and run up the bank ... the rest of the herd right behind him. The shepherd was calling and throwing rocks as we went by. We shrugged our shoulders and shook our heads. Sorry. Last night, the surf pounded the shoreline endlessly in loud crashing waves. The wind flapped our tent fly ceaselessly. Definitely a two earplug night. The oranges are cheap, sweet, and juicy. Dried pasta is fairly cheap. Most other things (that we like to eat, anyway) is two or three times as expensive as home. Yogurt is very expensive for a little container. I saw a small box of cornflakes for an unbelievable amount. Even fresh pasta is quite expensive. In Cagliari, the island capital with a large population, we saw flocks of flamingoes on the lagoons. Some were pink, but a lot were white. We filled our three plastic 1.5 litre pop bottles in the morning and then lugged them up and over many scenic lookouts on our fully loaded touring bicycles. At least the water tasted good. We had to cycle across a long bridge out of Cagliari to hit SS195 down the coast. The wind was fierce, so we pushed our bikes along the narrow side of the bridge and were pelted by roaring sand and grit. At the other end, the guardrail came to a close. The only way off the dead end sidewalk was to lift our bikes over the thigh-high guardrail onto the busy road, as cars, vans, trucks, and buses thundered by. The women at the mini market were helpful as we picked out our items. We had our first ice cream bar as the sun poked warily through the clouds. It is warm when we are out of the wind. I had a nut-covered bar with a strawberry centre. When I was finished I went in to get another one. "Piccolo," I told the woman and she laughed. I could get used to these. Traffic was heavy on SS195. We stopped at a gas station that advertised washrooms, but Sharon didn't get to use them. "Reservado," she was told. Still 100% in Italy for washrooms. We cycled into a wooded area by an AGIP gas refinery and set up our compact bicycle touring tent in the last row of trees. No less than six people saw us, including one avid jogger who went by us four times, no doubt trying to figure out what we were doing there. |
