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March 6 Monday Bicycle touring Italy Sardinia some bushes on the high plane past Laconi Sardegna to Perdasdefogu Sardinia Most of the snow has melted. The sun is peeking through the cloud cover sporadically. The wind is more or less behind us. It is still cold. But we are out of food. We get out of our bicycle touring tent and prepare to pack up our cycling gear. I snap a photo of Sharon with the little bit of snow left on her bike cover. Guess I should have taken a photo when the white stuff was a foot deep, but I though, Hey, I've seen snow before. And not the first time on a bike tour, either. We get sorted, hop on our fully loaded touring bicycles and pedal off down the road. When we pull our touring bikes to a stop to buy groceries in Villanova Tula, the store people can't believe I don't speak Italian. "Momma and Poppa Italian?" they enquire. No. They look confused. I'm certainly as dark as most Italians. A perplexed look furrows their brows when I respond negative to their repeated enquiries. It usually takes people a second or two to figure out why I don't speak Italian so well. We ride away on our touring bikes, looking for a place to eat. We find one in a sunken town square that is somewhat protected from the gusting wind. I cheer each time the sun pokes through the cloud cover for a few minutes. We mail home rolls of cycle touring photos and our bicycle touring journals. We look for a gas station to refuel our bottle as we've run out, but find none. It's a fast downhill on our heavily loaded touring bicycles out of town. Sharon's brake cable is sticking in its housing and her rear brakes drag after she's used them. She stops after major downhills and readjusts them. On small downhills, she just uses her front brakes. We zoom onto the valley floor and begin an arduous climb, constructed, from the looks of it, by some sadistic goat herd, winding and dipping. An hour of bike pedalling later, we can look across the valley and see Villanova Tula. It has a striking church tower to one side. After all our hard work of pedalling our touring bikes up the wicked grade, Villanova Tula doesn't look all that far away. It isn't. It takes a long time to cover twenty kilometres on our fully loaded touring bicycles to Esterzili. As we struggle to climb into town -- our bikes feel especially sluggish today for some reason -- we pass an elderly woman with several trees carried on top of her head. We pull our cycles to a stop at a little town park with benches. Sharon is not feeling well. The water tap in the park has been turned off (some towns only have water for two hours a day because of the prolonged drought). Sharon is doubled over, her knees huddled to her chest, sitting on a concrete wall. She complains of a stomachache and a headache. The woman carrying the bundle of wood comes into view around a corner. She stops at a house below us and hoists her load onto a thick concrete wall that surrounds her property. As she opens her gate to gain entry into her backyard, I grab two water bottles off my bike and hurry off to meet her. As I approach, she is adjusting a colourful woven blanket that helps cushion her head from the heavy awkward load of large sticks. I notice that three of the sticks in the bundle have a diameter of six inches. They are each about four feet long. An assortment of other good-sized sticks are thrown in for good measure. I'm thinking I should offer to move the bundle to her storage for her. But I keep silent, wondering if I would be even able to lift the huge bundle off her high fence. The old woman's arms are like tree trunks themselves. She is obviously in very good shape, having just walked a long ways up that near-impossible steep hill (she doesn't appear to be fatigued in the slightest). When she has the load of wood repositioned atop her head, I ask for water. She points me in the direction of a spigot attached to the side of the house. I am halfway there when she starts peppering me with questions. By her tone and volume I'm not sure whether she is admonishing me about something or asking me about the frivolity of riding a bicycle up the mountainside. As it turns out she was asking me what was wrong with Sharon. In a few minutes I spew out all my relevant information in garbled Italian. She nods approvingly. As I return to my bike I can hear her repeating the news to newly-arrived neighbors. There is no gas station in town. After a rest and some water, Sharon feels well enough to get back on her fully loaded touring bicycle. We continue to climb out of town until we're on top of the wind blown plateau. We descend towards Escalaplano. At an intersection, we turn our bicycles for Perdasdefogu. As we bike across a glittering river, Sharon wants to camp. I thought perhaps we could make it to town to buy gas if there is a gas station. We ride on ... much to Sharon's disgust and whining. However, the road meanders skyward once again and even in the cold wind we are soon soaked with perspiration. Out of the sun, in the shade of the mountain, it is decidedly frigid. We pull our touring bikes to a stop to investigate camp spots on three separate occasions. Nothing. I am now lamenting that I didn't stop at the perfect free camping spot by the river. It is getting dark. A truckload of guys, returning home from work probably, go by. They obnoxiously lay on the horn as they pass us. Maybe it is getting too dark for us to be on the road without any lights on our bikes. Finally, after checking a fourth spot for free bike camping, about three kilometres before reaching the town of Perdasdefogu, at the end of a dead end grassy road overlooking Nuraghe Arras, we pitch our small bicycle touring tent on a small level outcrop of land. In an awesome display of nature, the setting sun strikes the multi-coloured leaves of a handful of trees below the nuraghe. A burst of light spreads forth prismatically. We're freezing from the cold wind. Since we're soaked from the uphill exertion on our touring bikes, the cold feels like it is sucking the very marrow from our fragile bones. With freezing cold fingers, we erect our cycle touring tent as quickly as we can, and jump inside for shelter. Wind shakes the tent, buffeting it back and forth crazily. And this is a sheltered spot where to chose to erect our cycling tent. Wet with exertion, our body temperatures quickly drop, even with our wind jackets, and our gloves and hats on. We zip the fabric on the tent doors to block the wind. Sharon is still sick. She says she's not that hungry. I peel a couple of oranges and huddle under my sleeping bag. A prickly feeling enters my fingers. I shove my hands under my armpits. I eat cookies and yogurt while thinking that something hot to eat sure would be nice. But we are completely out of fuel for our Whisperlite stove, so we can't even boil water for a hot chocolate. We have cycled over 75 kilometres on the tiny island of Sardinia without seeing one gas station. I lay awake a long time staring at the ceiling of our tiny bike touring tent, thinking of steaming, creamy, hot chocolate while listening to the exhausted body next to me snoring raspingly. |
