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March 27 Monday Bicycle touring Italy from Gubbio Italy to past Lucignano Italy Mailed postcards and Sharon's first looseleaf journal home. She is writing on individual sheets now, in order to keep the folks back home updated sooner, rather than having to fill an entire notebook before we send the result home. We seem to rarely have time to write postcards anymore. Besides, we just repeat what we've written in our bike touring journals anyway, so this kills two birds with one stone. I asked Sharon to come into a grocery store with me this morning so she could see what an Italian grocery store was like. It was early and no one was inside yet except the shopkeeper. Sharon hasn't been in one grocery store in Italy yet, fearing that her lack of showers will be repugnant to others while she's inside closed quarters. So she makes me go in to do the shopping ... as if I smell any better. Anyway, as we were looking at items on the shelves, a woman came in. She pushed by us in the aisle, and almost made my eyes water from her pit smell. As we exited the store, Sharon said to me, "I don't know what I was worried about." And the woman didn't even have the excuse of cycling all day. Europeans just don't have the same degree of hygiene expected as we do back home in North America. Bought another 'oops' at the grocery store. The jam looked a blue colour and the label had what looked, to me at least, like a picture of some type of blueberries with a strange split down the middle. It turned out to be prune jam. It is awful strong and tart. I now know why prunes keeps one regular -- your body tries to get rid of them as soon as possible. Yuck! Even cycle tourists have to draw the line somewhere on what they eat. It was quite cool and a cold wind to make it even more miserable. It's almost the end of March, so warmer days have to be not too far off. Ate brunch on a little side road that lead steeply uphill to a logging area. A chainsaw buzzed across the valley from us. Sounds just like back home in the forests of BC. Hardly any cars on the road we are cycling. We must have cycled for nearly an hour without anyone passing us. I sat on a sharp thorn that poked through our ground sheet which was being used as a picnic blanket. Yow! I'm actually surprised the thorn penetrated my buns of steel. Finally found a 500 gram size of Nesquik chocolate. We ran out a couple of days ago and I've looked in about five stores. All they had were the 250 gram size, which were very expensive. Even I have my price limits. They don't eat much chocolate in Italy on a day to day basis. As a consequence, chocolate bars are horrendously expensive and I've had to chop them from my caloric intake. Surprisingly, right now the stores are getting chocolate eggs for Easter and they are the largest I've ever seen. I mean these things are huge. If I put my arms out to encircle it, they may just reach around the egg. Seriously. And the egg is about a metre tall with fancy decorations on it. I haven't asked, but they must cost at least a hundred bucks. Maybe that's why Italians don't eat many chocolate bars -- they buy one of those suckers every Easter, the whole family eats until they are green, and they all swear off chocolate for another year. Or maybe they eat a little each day and the monster chocolate egg lasts a whole year. If I bought one, I'm not sure how I could carry it on the back of my touring bike. I guess we could always just eat it there. Would you like a bag for that, sir? Naw, I'm going to eat it here. I bought a hazelnut cream liqueur log (hazelnut is in lots of the sweets in Italy). At the cashier, a customer behind me, says that if you eat that you will get fat. I said fat chance. Sharon said to me, "Who in America would ever say that to someone in a store?" Little did the store customer know that that was but a little 500 gram snack for my benzina fuel belly and with it, I would eat 700 grams of chocolate chip cookies and half a jar of jam. And the reason I only ate half the jam was because I didn't like the taste. And I'd still lose weight. People don't eat much junk food in Italy. They seem more aware of proper eating habits -- so they don't get fat, but they wouldn't get far bicycle touring. Sharon thinks that it is just a price reflection and if junk food was cheaper, they would eat more, too. It's just a matter of economics, she explains to me. I have another theory. Parents don't buy sweets or junk food for their kids. The kids grow up without developing a sweet tooth or taste for junk food. If they do, it's once again curbed by the high cost. Of course, the less they eat, the higher the price becomes from supply and demand. Anyway, what I've noticed is that the end result is not much selection and higher prices for Neil. In Castiglion Fiorentino, a small town with impressive brick tower architecture, we counted sixteen churches on the board of the town map. They have a very tall wooden studded door that opens through an archway into the walled town. Had a good downhill run out of the hills toward Castiglion Fiorentino, looping gracefully down the mountainside on our overloaded touring bikes. I have mentioned previously that on these rural Italian roads they don't put 'slow to however many kph' signs on the corners, so I've learned to read the road now. As I approach a corner I count the number of black rubber skid marks. The more there are, the slower I go. Four or more means brake hard or go over the cliff! It started to sprinkle and the wind was blowing it earnestly in our faces We pulled our touring bikes off the road beside a high walled, and locked, graveyard by some trees. But the wall and trees didn't block much wind or rain. As we huddled together, wrapped in our cycle touring tent's ground sheet (converted momentarily to a windbreak rain poncho), Sharon lamented that she would take a good old North American fir tree any day over these ornamental jobbies. She also commented on how wimpy we had become. We don't even want to ride in a little rain anymore. "Yep," I agreed. "When we were cycle tourig in Oregon I used to pray for a day like this." "Well," she replied, "it sure took us a while to get it." Yep, we're definitely not quick learners. Filled up our water containers in Lucignano, then cycled onto Hwy 326, just as rush hour was heading home. Lots of trucks, too. The truck drivers wave, honk, and flash their lights to greet us. We cheerfully wave back. Nothing like having lots of truck driving friends when one is on a long distance bike tour. In a couple of kilometres there is a dirt road. It leads to a logging area. We push our bikes along a foot-high ruts until we come to a flat, spindly-treed area down in a small gully beside a trickling stream. Who thought we would find this while bicycle touring in Italy? As we cook frozen chicken Cordon Bleu in the dark, a little Bobcat-sized caterpillar lurches by us, its tracks screeching, its headlights and amber flashers blazing away in the dark. It lurches down a path I had checked minutes earlier that looked to me as though it hadn't been used in a long time -- so thick was the growth of vegetation on it. I don't know where he went, but we haven't seen him since. I washed up with half a pot of heated water, and now I feel great. The wind died down and it feels warmer this evening than it had during the day. At a grocery store (I've been in three today), a guy told me it was usually around 20º C this time of year. The temperatures we're hitting are about half that It was about 10º C today with a horrible wind. Mystifying. Not great cycling touring weather. My nose drips unexpectedly at inopportune moments. I have two huge aching, burning, cold sores on my lower lip. My left eye has a red spot on its lower lid. Sometimes both of my eyes feel like they're burning. Pollution? The molar that I broke while chomping homemade sausage in Sardinia is still chipped. Only my ears are still working properly. What's that, Sharon? Okay, so maybe one is plugging up a little. And, of course, even after all this time spent on a touring saddle, my butt is always a little saddle sore. Wow. Swell time. |
