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Feb 23 Thursday Bicycle touring Italy Sardinia from past Olbia Sardinia to a creek before Nuoro Sardegna Great view of the bay while eating breakfast at our free wild bicycle touring campsite. We load up our cycle gear and find that just around a corner the rows of mountain ridges stack beside one another creating another amazing view. We pulled our fully loaded touring bicycles to a stop in Saint Teodore to get a cash advance from the bank. No problems with the hours this time. I open the door to the bank and am in a space where I have to push another button to buzz the tellers inside the bank. They look over and decide okay I can come in. They push a button, the door buzzes and I open it to enter to main part of the bank. In some countries the door into the bank will not open until someone has left the bank. They only allow a certain number of people in the bank at one time. An armed guard stands watching by the door. Sometimes there are armed guards outside the door before the bank and sometimes there is another guard who hangs around the Instant Teller. I got my Visa credit card out and handed it to the teller while saying, "Cash advance." She asked how much and then phoned for authorization. She took a credit card slip and types it out, banging away at the keys of a big old manual typewriter. I sign the form and then have to present it to another guy who is behind glass and bars, enclosed in a birdcage, who doles out the cash. Prego. Sharon is oiling the bike chains as I return. Just as she is finishing, a fellow walks over. Seeing our Canadian flag, he says, 'Beautiful.' Jean says he worked in Ontario for thirty years as a dry cleaner pressing clothes. He took us to a nearby cafe for a shooter coffee -- one ounce of liquid. Two tiny spoons of sugar barely dissolve to take away some of the coffee's harsh bitterness. Jean has a son going to school in Halifax. He gives us the name of a Canadian woman in a town, Budosi, near Saint Teodore. He tell us that everyone in town knows her husband, Batista, so just ask for directions to their house when we get there and writes some info on a scrap of paper for us. We cycle off to Budosi where we stop to buy groceries for lunch. Pizza and oranges. The mandarins are expensive compared to what we have been paying. Lots of seeds, too. I ask the cashier for directions by showing her what Jean had written and she, with the help of another patron, point me off to the correct location. We cycle down the street as per their directions. At a tourist office I stop to check again to make sure I am on the right trail. I go in and ask the girl working there for the house of Batista. Christine, whom we are looking for, is coincidentally visiting with the worker. When I ask for the house of Batista, she says, "I think you are looking for me." She invites us home for spaghetti. She lives above her sister-in-law's ice cream gelati shop. Christine tells us the peak tourist season is July and August. All one's money has to be made in those two months. The population of Budosi swells from 300 to 40,000! Unbelievable. Batista is a house painter. He arrives home for lunch. He consumes a humongous plate of spaghetti in the time I have just about got my first strands wound around my fork. I looked over and it was gone. The guy's a human spaghetti vacuum cleaner. Batista's parents live in another town on Sardinia. They gave the house to him and the ice cream shop to his sister. Batista and Christine's three year wedding anniversary is in two weeks. They ask us to stay, but we want to be in Oristanto in time for the Sartiglia and if we have any hope of making it, we have to put on some bicycle touring miles. When we return to our touring bikes outside, we discover the wind has picked up another notch. We cycle doggedly to Siniscola where we stop for water at a gas station. The woman working there tells us the water is not potable. She runs to her car and comes back with an orange for each of us. Christine also told us the water in her house wasn't good for drinking. We finally got to ask someone why the water isn't good. "It has chlorine in it," she tells us, "so it doesn't taste good." We're churning away into the wind on our too heavily loaded touring bicycles on a small rutted road paralleling Hwy 131 when a farm tractor passes us. Wind blocker! We race to catch up and then pedal behind it out of the wind. It is almost as good as riding behind Loran, a brother of Sharon's with wide shoulders. We hope it is going to Nuoro -- that's only about fifty kilometres away. Unfortunately, the tractor pulls off at a gate for a field and we're left to slug it out on our own. The mountains are steep. Purple grey rock rises vertically from the valley floor. We pull our sluggish touring bicycles off the road by a placid little creek and find a fairly calm spot to pitch our compact bicycle touring tent. Around 1 AM I am awakened by the jingling of sheep bells. The nocturnal critters have come for a drink. "Don't these critters ever sleep?" I ask and then come to the conclusion that they are probably sheep-walking. They must wear the bells to wake themselves up before they fall off a cliff in their nocturnal wanderings. "I've been walking in my sheep again," they say. Sharon thinks my mutterings are sheep dip. Fully loaded bicycle touring into an all-day headwind will do that to one. |
