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16 What Time Is It? Traffic was thick on Highway 1. Tons of trucks. There were no passive drivers in Italy. Trucks, cars, three-wheeled utility vehicles, motor scooters, motorcycles, mopeds, bikes, pulled out from every street into oncoming traffic. Drivers patiently applied their brakes or zipped around. No daydreaming allowed. At Sarzana I bought some blue cheese. From the container picture, I thought it was some kind of herb cheese spread. I was gaining a new appreciation for illiterates. The pictures on packages were deceiving. The cheese wasn't too bad after I got over that first tang. It did have a bite to it. The traffic lessened after Sarzana, and the scenery improved. At Vezzano Ligure, near La Spezia, we took a yellow road and everything got even better. We followed along a river so clear I could see schools of large fish lolling lazily. The sun shone warmly and we had a slight tailwind. It was a day tailor made for cycling. A park sign pointed to the river. We followed the one lane grassy path to a lone picnic table made from skinny poles. Sharon washed her hair and was tempted to go for a swim. The water didn't seem too cold and it looked relatively unpolluted. I watched from a safe distance. On a smoothly surfaced road we continued into the traffic free mountains amidst terraced vineyards and olive trees. Pink and white blossoms decorated the trees. Tiny yellow and blue spring flowers effloresced on the hillside. We climbed higher and higher. The auto strata, far below, went through the mountain. We went over. A challenging climb, but what a view! Villages clung to forested mountainsides. We had left the herds of racing cyclists in the flatlands and had the whole panorama to ourselves. Water gushed from a pipe in airy gurgles. Stopping to fill our bottles with the cold elixir, a woman came across the road from the house next door and told us it was only another eight kilometers uphill. Was she trying to cheer us up? She said it was cold for this time of year and that the tv news had showed it snowing in Siena. "We know. We were there," I told her. She smiled easily as I wiped the perspiration from my brow and filled three extra water bottles. Somewhere along the way, we had turned Italian. I had bought a liter of olive oil--in a thick glass bottle no less--and hauled it up several steep hills. I wondered what was wrong with the corn oil in the plastic bottle? We retrieved two five hundred millilitre plastic bottles from the roadside and transferred the oil. Sharon carried one in her bottom water bottle cage to keep it upright. Nothing like olive oil spilled in one's panniers. We went another kilometer and found a spot with a rolling mountain view. In six hours and one hundred kilometers we had climbed over four thousand feet. I could see a town across the way, built on a cliff edge. A huge bell tower that dominated the skyline periodically gonged the hour. Too late I learned we had the fortune to be near three competing churches. Somewhere below us in the clouds, one gonged, then the first of two churches above us got into the act. I thought they could synchronize them, but no, just in case I missed the first eleven gongs there were twenty-two more to set me straight. However, the gonging overlapped, really making things confusing. At one point I thought it was twenty-three o'clock! Was that 11:00 p.m.? |
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