Peddaling IT ( a so lo and ng journey from Rome to Rimini)

It all started innocently enough with a gnawing drive to just get on the bike and go. It was meant to be at most a journey of four days of biking from Rome to Florence, close to main population centers so that i could get back on the train easily when/if finding myself unable to go any further. But as the kilometeres left behind amassed, so did the future plans of itineraries: a glimpsed postcard, a flyer, a bedtime perusal of the Lonely Planet Cycling Italy guide and tracing my route on the map only tempted further, with more possibilities now seeming closer, more doable. And so it goes that the journey grew thriple, both in days and (to be confirmed) in miles. And now that i am back, back in jeans and heeled shoes, wearing a necklace, it is hard to believe this even happened. I might have dreamed the entire thing. But the comically delineated tan line of the frames of my glasses, the calf hem of my shorts, the pictures of the dreams that have passed prove its having had been. Disclaimer: this is for me, so i remember; this is for You, in case in You are partly interested.

And here's a rough map of the route, still in the works of Day 2.

Day 1 (Via Cassia SS2 all the way, Rome to Viterbo, 80-ish kms)
And so, i left Rome as the skies made first tenuous promises of withholding their generous waters in months. i left Tuesday at noon, in a light drizzle. ( and it is again raining this Monday 2 weeks later) Cobbling it up to the Roman north, and a hectic exit from the city, followed by riding mostly along state what-felt-like highways and recurring strip malls. At times it was even beautiful, the grasses along the road barriers; passing through towns, on the sides of their rising medieval walls.
Below: 1.The small town of Sutri rising cliffwise has a Roman amphitheater carved out of tufa with what looks like very convenient boxy niches, inside and out, an impression of a wasteful shelving unit. 2. I believe this is the view of Vetralla as i am passing it by... well, i thought i was passing it by, but as it very often turned out to be the case, if it is a bigger town and picturesque, the road climbs to pass through it. 3. Llamas on board! 4. The promise of beauties to come. 

It is a long 80ish km to Viterbo, but i walk a round once i am there, as i have been there before within its convolutions of medieval alleys, piazzas, churches, fountains. I stay in Hotel Roma, in tribute to where i have come from. The above hotel is crammed with adolescent schoolboys who long into the night slam their doors and keep knocking on others' while passing through hallways, and talk forcefully through cardboard walls, which prompts the neigboring room's occupant to address to them a polite inquiry to quiet down, and then a few more, and then an outright screaming hysteria of his initiation ensues lasting a while. None of which helps of course, as i am trying to fall asleep on a bed that feels just as brick as the hotel signs here look. Either due to those box beds or daily base of adrenaline or owing to inability to escape what plagues no matter how fast and how far one pedals, i will later find it a fact that it takes me hour(s) to fall asleep each day throughout the trip.

Day 2 (SS2 and then Strada Provinciale from Viterbo to Chianciano Terme, 100-ish kms)
Day two continues the trend of grunting and winding towards cities and flying off their slopes; but bigger, longer, and much prettier. As i ride around Lago Bolsena, i consider the prior day's a pretty much throw-away ride, and its mental remainder is of dusty and barriered road shoulders of a highway. I admire distant hill cities as they appear on the horizon; then i realize that each of those cities i will have to work for. For each long climb, however, there is just as a gratifying a recompense.On descent from Aquapendente, i feel like i am entering Tuscany ( i am close enough to its borders) as the hills finally gather around themselves that unmistakable  patchwork quilt of green plowed, fallow and sewn fields. The climb towards Chianciano Terme is long long long yet gentle, and having worried about finding accomodations priorly, all my fears are swept away as the street contains nothing but hotels cascading from the central stretch to views of hills below. i have arrived into a resort town known for its thermal springs, and it is strange-- made to accomodate so many, yet empty. It is Aprli 30, and the season has not yet started, but the feel of resort town, mountanous, shaded, leafy, restful, helpful, determined...
Below: 1. Such is the pattern: spot a distant hilltop city, e.g. Montefiascone, 2. Approach and climb towards it. 3. A carved wooden sculpture stands upon the hills above Lago Bolsena. 4. Distant town, closer hills and immediate lumber mill. 5. View through resort town of Chianciano Terme onto its old center Chianciano.

I select and turn to Hotel Firenze, in tribute to where i am going, but unsatisfied with their prices, find a hostel on the same central stretch. I must be the only guest ( The hostel says it opens May 1st.) As i trace my covered route on the map, the Neapolitanian girl my age working the reception plays...Manu Chao, Buena Vista Social Club and...Regina Spektor!

Day 3.
I climb and bike-wander through the tiny center of "real" Chianciano ( not the modern Chianchiano Terme) and then a steep upwards climb to spectacular Montepulciano, a town they say not to be missed. And, it is not: and what a view! and what a climb! As it is may 1st, the tourists are laboring up it incline to the core of mounted narrow street tangles, vine covered alleys and the infamous Piazza del Teatro and Santuario San Biagio. I am actually afraid to descend it: the streets are steep, narrow, paved with cobblestones and quality family time. So, here is the dilemma of photographing while biking, then: during ascent, you don't want to stop, having built up momentum, as for descent: what could be nicer than cruising effortlessly and uninterrupted down that nice stretch you feel you have earned so well.
Below: 1. Spot that Montepulciano. 2. Climb that Montepulciano. Piazza del Teatro with old waterwell. Basking in the sun upon one are lions, upon the other is not as scarym but just as hairy a creature. 3. Same  Piazza: waterwell, Palazzo Communale on the right, Santa Marie delle Grazie on the left. 4. View from Montepulciano upon its hills and San Biagio. 5. That very San Biagio in transit to it.

I bike awhile through forests mostly devoid of cars, fields with rising outcrops of abbeys or castles. i bike through Pienza crowded by vacationers on 1st of May holiday, flooding the city square and the shops of Tuscan specialties, past the military band just dispersing from having played upon the main square. Populated isolas punctuate the road with the frequency of about 1 in 12 km, or about one an hour, thus giving me convenient marker and purpose. In Buonconvento, Sonya joined me, and together we rode through its historic center that i could not find in my hour of waiting for her train. She, the ever ingeniuos, has crocheted herself a bike water bottle holder and a camera pouch while either waiting for or in training (challenge: identify these in her photo below). Unfortunately, as we left the small town, so did a funeral procession, a woman priest carrying a cross, behind her a car moving slowly, followed by what seemed like the population of the entire town chanting a prayer ( and so that is what the stillness of the town was, and not due to siesta sequestering); it was quite the bit awakward to be two tourists speeding past such a private and dignified affair. Sonya and i made out ascent to Siena together, and deposited ourselves on our bikes upon its Campo. Having thus "conquered" the city, we commenced upon ringing upon hotels  in town and the hotels they direct us to to accomodate selves for the night; everything was booked, it being Thursday of the 4-day weekend, it being in Siena.
Below: 1. Buonconvento gates. 2. Everpresent vineyards and ever-expanding construction on the outskirts of Siena. 3. i'm headed for Siena's clocktower. 4. Siena's trademark tower shows through Siena's narrow streets 5. Only riding into the central square truly counts as arriving into town- me. 6. Sonya.
We cut our sightseeing and general aimless street-wandering short as a hostel on the outskirts of town told us we had to be there in 1.5 hours, otherwise, we lose our unguaranteed spots. The hostel is something of a mixture of a ski lodge, Socialist dormitory and modern theater: large, echoing, sharp angles and excessive staircases.

Day 4.
And so we ride off into Florence, Sonya and i, following that very own Chianti route which the Napa region of California so skillfully imitates, other than the lack of hills. And the hills are truly spectacular. Commonly described in guidebooks as "rolling", such they are, but only once one realizes that for each rolling off, there is work to be done, does the meaning of rolling actually mean. True to the theme, ascents are long long long though mostly gentle and inspiring of "oh, no! not again", yet descents are so heady, that one does not mind having climbed and is ready to embark again. There is barely flatness.
Below: 1. The "perfect" road all S-like. 2. Looking back to whence we have come past, the cypress forests. 3. The idea of a descent; redoubling down the side of the hills. The idea of ascent is usually the same idea. Here is looking from a tiny adorable trattoria right off the road midway through our descent, that served some simple and finger-licking baked chicken and peas pan-fried with oil (who knew that pan-frying peas yields such goodness!), highly recommende. 4. A typical panorama of Tuscany, very likely of Panzano. (Notice the vineyards by the road, it will be referred to later.)

Ah, Panzano, for You i sing a separate song. A town, like others, perched on a hilltop, sleepy and humming with heat in siesta time. As is my custom, i decide to detour through its center. The center of picturesque Panzano, from which You can see the all that requisite patchwork below, stands even more elevated from its already elevated self. I decide to ride up its only straight street up to the church, a street steeper than most, but not out of my  repertoire, especially compared to Montepulciano. A clang, a suspension of gravity- my chain has broken. No, it has not fallen off the gears as chains tend to. It's circularity is torn and hangs like a limp snake off my bike. It is Saturday, siesta, and Panzano is not big.
Below. To be fair, Panzano is beautiful. 1. The view with which i calmly eat a pear after my bike's chain broke. Where the vineyard ends below is the road we biked to the town. 2. The street heading up to the church that has broken my bike's back. 3. And to the stable my bike has been led, chained....or rather, un-, while Sonya and i proceed more upward by foot, where i commence 1.
In the nearby piazza, the middle-age stylish proprietor of a culinary academy (?) consults a much older toothless man drifting in the sun by the butcher shop on the otherwise empty piazza, and tells us to wait two hours until the only man in Panzano who knows how to fix bikes reopens his shop. Sonya and i walk back down to the new town center, where the road passes. It is Saturday, and there are many men bikers solo, couples, teams, all outfitted with topnotch skinny road bikes and proper colorful riding gear. We stop many to ask them where we might find a bike mechanic; they either know not of one, or point to Siena, or to Greve in Chianti, the next town over. So, we might bake for two hours in Panzano sun waiting for a mechanic that does or does not exist, or back track to Siena, or keep going. A couple of riders tell us that Greve in Chianti is only 5km away and 4 of them downhill. And so...it is! And so i cruise chainless all the way down! and my bike could not have broken in a better place! And a sign tracking car speed shows mine in the high twenties (maybe it's not mine, but it still is above any i could hit with a chain), and so i cruise downhill, and pedal, just for fun, and for amusement of any that might happen to look over and notice the absence of a bike chain. And when the going gets a little too slow, i propel the bike by rocking my upper body; however, never did the bike come to a complete stop. Laughing, laughing, laughing, i roll on my bike through the few (2) well-timed streetlights, and straight into mechanic's shop.  I stop breathless from laughter and says, "there is no chain" and pull it out of my bag instead. He seems much confused, if he was able to discern my words at all. A much younger worker comes out, and seeing my bike's condition, it's his turn to laugh heartily. I try to tell him i came from the next town over without a chain, ah, hell, i came from Rome without a chain!  Dropping  else things, if there were any, he fixes my chain and looks over my and Sonya's bike in general. i joke if he checks it well, i can make it all the way to Milan. Bless Your little heart, Greve in Chianti, for being so low of elevation, pleasant of the piazza and capable of the mechanics! Biking out of town, Sonya and i are about ready to find a place to turn in for the night, and are particularly curious about Tuscany's proliferation of "agriturismi", and inquiry at a few produces an impression of somewhat expensive and shady farm villas where wine and oil are produced small-scale, vended on premises, tasted and sought out by adventurous Italians looking for the taste that speaks to them. One particularly Marin-like fancy agriturismo has two particularly gigantic wine jugs particularly appealing for sleeping in. That suggestion aside, Sonya and i continue on the same road and end up on a very speedy highway- like stretch approaching Florence, propelled by the adrenaline rush of getting plowed over while sharing the same strip as cars. We get off at the exit, and tumble our way with directions from passerbyes to the hostel. The hostel is a large 17th century villa set back with a forested lane and bordering a vineyard, large reception hall, frescoed ceilings, sculpted mouldings, crumbling once-fancy wall fabric, wrap-around balconies, a spacious terrace reminiscent of the one where millionaires mill in the evening in "Some Like it Hot" set in San Diego's Hotel del Coronado. Campgrounds and hostel, holiday weekend or not, there was no shortage of space. The hostel was mostly overrun by flirty groups of Checzh teenagers, while our room- a composite of American girls in between something and other.

Day 5 (unbikely day, mostly; well, within 10kms to be fair)
Sonya and i do our touristy things of Florence. I lead her astray in a diametrically opposite direction from the center on bikes, but once we are there, i strain to remember what it is i remember of Florence. We pass by the basics: bustling San Lorenzo clothes market, the double-floured food market that matches in its green-white-pink color sheme the lacy Duomo and baptistery, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, Uffizzi Gallery, Piazza del Signorina, Piazza della Repubblica, Ponte Vecchio, and hide in the shade of some private garden opposite of expensive Giardini di Boboli.
Below: 1. Looking onto Florence as approaching its downtown. 2. The matching baptistery-Duomo set, don't You want one? 3. Inside the metal yet pink-and-green market. 4. How without the Ponte Vecchio? 5. Some of the multiple statues at Ufizzi Gallery are taking a rest.

A lot of the time is spent in exhaustive search of the recommended as best gelateria. Although the pilgrims to the gelato mecca are perched on bollards, steps and sidewalk, its location in a tiny alley makes it hard to find and we spin circles around the same neighborhood, although everyone we ask seems to know and approve of its existence. The yogurt gelato is ridiculous, we get doubles, and our mission in the city is thus complete. After more street wandering, Sonya leaves back to Rome promising to email me the route she thinks she saw from Florence to Bologna upon her return. I backtrack my way to the hostel and am given a room all to myself on the other side of the villa. Although i have only aimed to make it Florence, and did, i wanted to keep going. I wanted to finish on a different note, the less crowded, the more mindless; it is addicting to set own pace of pushing my body, thus turning off the mind into one long-held concentrated note of silence versus the usual jumble. There is another reason though, particularly about heading north, versus, say, acquiescing with the prominent westwards contender ( the coast, Pisa, Livorno, Cinqueterre): my parents will be arriving within the tourist group to Milan. I might not have enough time to make it to Milan, but as i estimate with application of two-three fingers of my historical daily distance to the map, i should be able to intercept them within 3-4 days in Padova.

A MUSICAL INTERLUDE Upon completion of the trip, i found out that Sonya has created a soundtrack for her biking experience out of the songs she had bouncing around in her head while her bike was bouncing on Tuscany's terrain:

 

Day 6.
I set out early for Bologna. The aforementioned ride from Florence to Bologna turns out to have been a sleeping dream believed real. There is neither any information or routes on the internet on crossing the Appenine range, only that it can be done, but that reason outweighs pride in matters of traversing two low-elevation cities through a 980km hump, and trains are usually taken. I have nothing better to do, and i decide that the color of the Tuscan hills on the terrain map is good enough preparation for ascending the range with one added elevation color. There is a sharp hill right out of Florence that i cannot but get to the middle of, and doubt my decision to continue. <insert cliffhanger here, while i am climbing that very same cliff ridden by the very indecision>

Commercial break:
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But continue i do. I figure i can always turn back and cruise down. There is never such a steep single climb again, but a climb it is nonstop and unrelentless. The vegetation changes noticeably to mostly trees, somewhere brooks flow, while i climb higher leavng behind a panorama of hills. There is only one-two bikers i encounter during this day,  (aside: however, throughout the trip i have not seen many. Primary bikers are men, particularly "swallow men", thin men made of muscle for the purpose of racing, riding fast in close-packed teams. On Chianti route there are perhaps the most bikers: couples and guided touring groups of families and older men. Only once during my entire trip do i see a woman who looks like she is on a long journey solo, and only a couple more that are out for the day rides.)
Below: 1. Florence receeds quickly down the hill as i up. 2. Water sluices, sluices? in the brief valleys after some hills and before some HILLS, i ponder about how easy it is to bike in the Appenines, but then doubt myself "am i there yet? am i there yet?"...and then i see them rising against the horizon...i am so not there yet.  3. Ok, maybe i am there yet: typical panoramas, hills, fields, cows, lonely roads.

On another particularly unremarkable hill, my chain breaks again, and here i am with no bikers and very in the middle of nowhere hills with rare passing cars. i pull my bike to the side of the road... I know nothing about chains; i know not even how they weave through the gears. In the sun, i study the book under the hot sun, and in a while longer than these sentence can tell of, i finally figure to look for the missing pieces on the road, how to pull the chain over, under and around, and how it should look when fixed. And so i try to squeeze together the rivets of both sides of the chain between the two picks of the multi-purpose tool, and lo! it looks like a circular chain again, and does not break when yanked upon. i cannot believe my luck--i had fixed a chain all by myself, and without a mystical chain-breaker tool! i remount the bike and continue uphill; in three turns the chain falls to the ground again. Fairly confident to as its round-abouts, i bring the chain together again and apply more pressure to hold the rivets in place. Again, two turns, and the chain is back on the ground. Three, i decide, will be my last try, after that...ummm.... i'll look for alternate solutions. For trial number three, i apply to it all my force, employing rocks by the side of the road to push and hammer against rocks making up the side barrier; i puncture and rip the nail off my thumb with slippery and unleveraged picks. The chain holds; i have given it all i could. And then! i realize, i had slipped the chain over the latch on the sprocket of the rear derailer, versus under ( the terminology, i am not clear on yet, but i know i had done it wrong!) But as i had just connected the chain together with all my force, i do not want to apply this same force to rip it and redirect the chain....So i try to unbend the latch to let the chain throught into its rightful place. I can't; i am finding my useful-looking muti-pupose tool rather pointless and lacking in leverage. I unscrew the derailer some then, realizing i might be taking on a more dangerous task for myself by engaging with yet another part of the bike i know nothing about. And so it works, and so i go, and so it breaks. And so, i walk. As in, i continue in the direction of biking, upwards and onwards, to the the next populated area. i realize it is a dismal situation; i am on what barely qualifies as a biking passage in a sparcely populated area of the Appenines, and i am 6 km from the first pass, Passo della Futa (elevation 903 m)  and it is Sunday. Sunday nothing works- no bike mechanics, no supermarkets, no busses on this road, no nothing. In about a km, there is a car that has broken down, and a towing truck is backing up to pick it up. Car hooked, i try to  ask them whether they are headed and whether i can come along if they are headed towards Bologna. The teenage son of the mechanic tries to fix my chain, does it skillfully, proclaims it done. i ask him to ride, it holds long enough for doubt to birth hope, then breaks. The communcations, however, are in breakdown. Partially, they already have passengers of the broken car to take with them, partially, i don't know what i want. I would feel rather cheated if car window in passing is how i surmount the two passes ahead. And the first one is only in 6 km, and the next one is not to far off either. And if i have been climbing all this time, that means, at most after the second peak, it must be all smooth down-hill cruising. And so they leave, and so i walk. Higher up there is a house, a small and humble bed and breakfast in remodeling. I peak into the hall and the plasterer comes out, a young hairy Italian man, who now offers his services to fix my chain. He brings his hammers and wrenches, and cigarette in mouth, goes to work on my chain, driving in rivets with hammers and picks, while i hold my bike down like an animal to injections. An elderly proprietress lady shuffles by, smiling and kind asks me where from to where and alone and how! i belive in the power of hammers to have fixed what i could not with my hands; it looks better already. He, however, the amateur biker as well, has made the same mistake now of having the chain pass over the latch on the derailer, versus on the sprocket. i point it out to him, he says "after", that i understand. And off he rides onto the flat courtyard, and so the chain holds, longer yet. And breaks. This time it breaks unfixably, tearing metal apart into the jagged teeth of the links ( which will forever remain a mystery to me: would the chain have held if he had fixed the mistake left for "after" before?) There is nothing to be done to fix the chain now. After much gesturing, i understand that the proprietess is inviting me in to wash my entirely black hands, upon which she pours dishsoap galore and finds me a throwaway rug from under the sink. And so i go, walking my bike, chain in backpack. Although signs leading to it are ripe with guesses of great vistas, Passo della Futa is anticlimactic: a hote/restaraunt solitary on the road with many motorcyclists dismounting for a beer. No cars stop to ask, and some honk, for what reason they do so, i will never know: as an acknowledgement of a biker? as a nudge to move further off road? Do they think i am walking my bike because i can't take these hills? And so i walk embarassed--i could totally do these-- yes there are many, yes, they never seem to stop-- had there only been a chain! Passo Raticosa was more exciting, it felt like the place where it snows in the winter, the view, the everpresent motorcyclists celebratory of their  presence atop the pass. Where i can, just as off Raticosa, i cruise downhills, dismayed at their taper at no effect that spinning my pedals produces, pedaling by habit, forgetting about the chain.
Below: All pictures, even horizontal, are vertical! I am in the mountains after all. These are the sights along my path as i walk that bike. 1. A mountain, that unlike biking in Tuscany, i do not have to ascend to descend to pass through. 2, 3, 4 and 6 are literaly self-explanatory. 5. is also, but i like to think of it as the pole linking mountains together.
I guess it is about 2 when i start walking, about 7ish i decide to look for lodging. I have by then, combination of mostly walking and downhill chainless gliding must have covered about 30 km, from about Santa Lucia to Monghidoro. It's approaching sunset, and a kindly man points me to the only hotel in Monghidoro. Monghidoro is pretty, it has one central piazza on the hill with a supermarket on it that will be open come Monday--that means, i want to stay there. There are, however, no rooms available. i get directed to Loiano, 7 km away. However, as i am riding on my bike down the hill i just walked up, there is a bus. I ask it where it is headed, and--to Bologna! Even though i have already walked through the second pass, the expected cornucopia of downhill effortlessness did not materialize. I decide to take the bus the rest of the way to Bologna, and there, come next day, fix that chain, rather than spend another day walking. And so the bus cheaply and briskly whisks me away to Bologna, as the sun is setting over the Appennines, and i swear, it looks like there are very orange suns. I watch the terrain like a hawk, pained when the bus is heading down hills that are rightfully mine. Its mechanical ease makes a mockery of my prolonged journey. Depositing all passengers on the final stop, the bus driver offers to drop me and my bike off at the train station, and i feel so special, alone on a night bus through Bologna, a bus that detours from its course just for me. The train station might have, however, been a poor choice of a destination; the area, filled with wandering sleepless souls who make comments i do, but pretend not to, understand, seems discomfitting by nightime and strangely devoid of budget accomodations. After a while of possibly circling, i find a hotel where the receptionist is so snooty (and probably horrified at my paying yet muddled presence), that i can't wait to get my unwashable hands, grimy fingernails upon their white crispy towels.

Day 7.
I get treated to the best obligatorily included breakfast yet, and come out to the streets of Bologna early, asking its local and very biking population as to the location of the nearest bike mechanic. Maybe i have finally began to understand italian enough, but i actually find the place based on their verbal directions. The pot-bellied jolly man wants to know all of who-how-when-where and alone-why and warns me multiple times of the mean Italian men who want to give me a ride, which so far has not been the case, even when walking long with a broken chain. I mentally rehearse a literal translation of the phrase "why would i need a ride when i have a bike?!" Devoid of bike and armed with 5 hours, i walk Bologna.
Below: Gosh, i really like Bologna (even despite its name, so unappealing to me, the non-eater of "strange meat") 1. Piazza Maggiore, where everything is, or if it is not, it is but a stone's throw off. 2. Facade of a palazzo on Piazza Maggiore, 3. A fun closeup of a Neptune fountain on Piazza Maggiore. 4. The unfinished church on...Piazza Maggiore. 5. Due Torri, the leaning and unequal towers of Bologna. 6. A church facade-d elaborately with drawing of moldings versus.

Below: told You, i really like Bologna. Not only have i been warned that this would happen to me specifically when i see this city, Bologna is also the first big Italian city that i have not been to before.
  I walk up to San Luca, the many-porticoed (each one numbered up to 658 and dedicated, while supposedly 8 more are unnumbered, making the total 666) and staired church on the hills above Bologna, so many in fact, that its zigzag to the top of the mountain makes a 3+-mile one way journey that pilgrims walked. I try to imagine their journey, walking, crawling in this heat, to the top of the hill on never-ending stairs, passing into a thoughtless or meditating state as the cross op top  comes into view a welcome relif of the journey. In fact there are two people, a youngish woman and a youngish men, whom i separately see three times ascending and descending the last stretch of the stairs--i cannot tell if they are modern believers or people trying to get in shape. Back at the mechanic's shop he still wants to know all, advise continuously about the dangers of biking along, and a postcard. But he does put on a beautiful new chain, letting me go on to Ferrrara, possibly the shortest journey yet, as i set out well after 3. The mountains left behind, the terrain is entirely flat...so flat, it's boring. I do bot have to work for my descents, and my snacks feel unearned. It being flat though, i am convinced in spite of rationality  that i will get to Ferrara (50km) in 20 minutes. it takes about just as long--only 3 hours throught flat terrain that has found its calling in rearing tree saplings. Ferrara is beautiful; i am among mine, and my bike is among its.It is miraculous, as though i have come to another land. It feels wrong to walk in this small city; everyone is on bikes: young men dressed stylishly, old men wisely, young women in high heels, older women in hls, very old women in flats, couples, people who bike with cellphones to the ears, while singing, while wistling. Something always seems to be floating through Ferrara-- poplar down, which has drifted its way even inside buildings, soap bubbles of unknown origin. Bikes are everywhere, like sucklings side by side in ubuquitous and varied bike parking, stood upright leaning on own third leg, leaning onto columns, doorways, each other, unlocked.  It brings me such joy to see this utopia of public transportation, bikes along busses and passerbyes and the scattered cars in the city's center that are emphatically secondary and yeilding, that i cannot repress my stupid grin, my laughter at seeing all this. Me and my packing mule have come to the land of groomed horses! Now i don't stand out for the mere fact of biking, i stand out because i'm not dressed stylishly enough while at it! i bike around the city, because that is all i can do in this city,by its cathedral that looks cobbled from three eras, busy streets  around the castle and the deserted ones just off. The hostel, as hostels are tending to, looks interesting enough in itself, like a palazzo where the former glories are concealed and peaking out: the remnant of fireplace, a moulding, its spacious rooms dwarfing the beds. Here, in Ferrara, Appenines past, Padova already so close, i let my parents know that i am planning to "surprise" them the next day.

Day 8.
I decide that Ferrara is pretty much perfect. Aside from the current of bikes that makes every street look like residual Critical Mass, its smallness seems to contain everything, just about one of everything, and a good one: a mouthwatering supermarket-deli, a fabric store next to it, a large bookstore on the piazza next to it, a tiny crowded bookstore that sells tecnicolor postcards of Ferrara in the 70's, bikeshops i lose count of, a pharmacy and shaded peaceful park--what else does one, i, need? Oh, right, a medieval castle surrounded by a filled moat. And a castle that besides housing a museum has found its modern-day use as a medical reasearch facility, morning workers scurrying up its draw bridges to the office! Yep. That's it.

Somehow, i leave. The flatness between Ferrara and Padova is not as memorable now, but some of it covered in blossoming and oh-so-sweesmelling trees. I get a flat biking on the shouder, and pulling over find both a large metal spike that has deflated my tire instanteneously and my multi-tool truly useless. I cannot move the screw that holds the back wheel in from its earthly orbit, for a long time,  ever. A man from the nearby house waves to me to come over, offering me help. I persist trying to fix the flat on my own. I find out that you don't actually need to remove the wheel from the bike frame to fix a flat, and feel thrice ecstatic for the discovery, incredulous that no one told me this before, and perplexed at the amount of time i have spent taking off-putting on by notorious back wheel in San Francisco. I do come to the man though, to thank for his offer, and ask him if he has a pump better than mine to top off the fixed tire. And he does, and kindly pours water on my hands from a garden hose thereafter. Nervous about my tire, but without further adventures, i make it to Padova. On the way, i eat my lunch by the river, two churches beating out the time, and make a stop in Montelcino, a town i see approaching by  a road with regularly placed structures upon it cinching the hill diagonnally to the top. A humble church with a luxurious blossoming  pink chestnut tree greets at the bottom. Up to the top is a tunnel narrowed by two walls leaning in and stairs to yet another church. From the square of the clearing, the road lead yet up, through elaborate gates to that very road cinching the hill. The regular structures are small churches, identical in their smallness enough for two people to kneel on the threshhold to the icon, slightly different in decorative elements of columns and facades. There are 6, each dedicated to either a Saint (i.e. first and foremost is Virgin Mary), a couple of Saints (i.e. Peter and Paul), or an idea ( Holy Cross in Jerusalem)--i would have thought there would be a categorical adherence among just 6. And crowning, yet another church, much more elaborate and familiar in church-identification, a palace. Yet more up, taking the stairs and behind the gate is a crucifix with Mary and Joseph (John the Baptist?) kneeling in front of it, made so much more touching by the fact that the wooden figure of Joseph (John the Baptist?) wears a real black, torn man's frock that is too big for him, rather than the carved wood-folds akin Mary's. I arrive to Padova, and accidentally onto a square hosting a crowded market of very international airs. The international airs are not metaphorical; there are indeed the fumes of german sausages rotating salaciously above the fire. Concentrically and outwards, the square is grass, walkway, statues, water channel, statues, walkway, grass, fair booths, people ( which are everywhere but the channel surrounded by the statues, to be fair, but here their concentration is umm...concentrating), fair booths, street with cars, palazzos, in that most definitively approximate order. The large booths, more like cortyards or storefronts earch, are in no particularly approximate-able order: German meats, German beer, Italian breads, Sicilian pastries, dried fruits, Belgian sweets, interspersed with few booths of the French macaron, world spices, local antique, commonplace sourvenir persuasion. I let my hungry self what is called in Russian a very versatile word "stroll", both for the beyond-assuagement of the present hunger, refueling of snack supplies and authentic-Italian-flavor presents for my parents.

Day 9 ( entirely unbikely day) wherein the multiple hoardes of Venetian tourists are strained against, an inconvenient wedding is witnessed, and a group of grasping Orthodox jews are encountered emphatically grasping for the hands of Russian men tourists to sing unbelieving praises to a solitary God. Above all for the riches of Venice, as succinctly put in my cycling book, Venice exemplifying the twin talents of Italian craftsmanship and plunder. The floor of the Venetian duomo is captivating, subjected to frequent flooding, it too has assumed the shape of the waves. The walls are ceilings aren't half-bad either, covered in gold wherever can and in the charming crude style of Byzantine boneless body representation.

Day 10
Debating between spending a day in Venice hopping islands from glass (Murano) to lace (Burano) museums, i decide to decide once within Venice range. This is the hairiest, scariest part of the road by far, since it is also the longest. It is roughly equivalent to biking on San Jose Avenue around SF City college on the lane with cars coming off John Foran freeway, no road shoulder, at night, no lights, no helmet. Which is an experience that i am unfortunately, and at least Sonya as well, is familiar with. Which sounds rather like the Hemingway's supposed retort to why the chicken crossed the road: "to die. in the rain. alone" Which is to say, pedaling as fast as You can, and never never wanting to repeat the experience, if even for the unmatched rush of adrenaline. Meaning, you know are subjecting yourself to that horrible noun of "stress", you can just taste it, feel its spiking rate of destroying your body while you are in its grasp. i actually attribute this single stretch to tiring me out prematurely (?) and slowing me down in milleage-willingess on subsequent days, this pedaling as fast as i can next to several lanes of speeding cars and trucks for ? kms, all the while feeling like i am doing something illegal, that any time now my unpracticed "at the police station" Italian vocabulary section might have to be put to use. And beyond the multiplicity of vehicles is the feeling of infiltrating a border: a crowdedness of buildings, posts and detours of unclear functions, are they checkpoints of documents, are the fares? Adding to my unease is that yesterday when traversing the same road i saw on the bridge a biker set upon by police, for reasons unclear: am i not allowed to bike the thin bridge connecting mainland with Venice, or did he not pay a toll ( as the tour bus did)? I am naturally afraid i will find the reason out too, on my skin. But lo, a bike sign and a dirt path leading to the bridge, directing to the sidewalk barriered along the road. Did the biker get caught for riding on the road? And so i ride the peace of own road along tourbuses, gazing onto them as i have sat gazing onto this very walkway just the day before. And it smells so very much like the sea, penetratingly salty and rather awfully stale, water spanned by nets of green beardy growth, every now and then a ruin of a wooden shack/pier. Abruptly my path shows that i have to lead the bike; is THAT why the biker was stopped? And so i lead my bike the rest of the way, asi i am so close to Venice i care not to risk it.

Uncharacteristically i decide not to "conquer" Venice ( which just involves leading my bike from Tronchetto terminal to Piazzale Roma, the actual setting of foot in town, and i decide not to hop islands from one museum to another on such a beautiful day. I am not in the mood to brave hoards of tourists on stifling streets, look for lodging for the night in a swamped city, when it could be just me and my bike, free, going.
I have made a timely entrance to Tronchetto for the car ferry to Lido, where my bike is again a lone one. i decide that the best view of Venice is from without it looking on, judge for Yourself. There you can remember it as a remarkable magical city (something about parasols), an illusion i find hard to sustain on its unpassable streets. Lido, a long island facing Venice is so quiet and humble, it seems remarkably unaware of its vicinity to the popular cousin. People here 1) bike 2) smile. Once i switch from a central road to bike on the other side of the island; but the detour is not much, you can see both sides of the island going down its length. As it gets wooded and solitary, the ferry appears, with a few more bikers--all seemingly middle-aged German-speaking couples, all asking each other and me where to get ferry tickets. When the ferry arrives, i remember how amazing and ridiculous this arrangement of island living is: buses come off the ferry and keep going, an ambulance comes off the ferry, flashes its lights and offs to its saving business
( an ambulance, that most urgent of vehicles, must wait for a ferry to transport it between islands?! won't each island want their own ambulance cars?) Instead of talking to the couple of which the husband continuously and uncontrollably seems to affirm himself by shouting "Ja!" when left alone, i start talking to the couple from Sweden. I learn from them that you can go on tours, self-guided, self-paced, by buying a trip as a set of maps and hotel accomodations made for You, phone number for bike health emergencies included ( had to ask, as the question loomed so big in my mind). "See You at the next ferry" we say and part, and i speed off and feel so proud, as i bike the length of Pellestrina. A stone wall ( behind it a wide and dry ditch, then another wall, then the Adriatic Sea) runs alongside my bike as i watch the wedge of the island narrow to the point of a cemetery. Next to it is a tiny and bobbing platform of a ferry docking, a man is fishing on it, and his implements get tossed about violently with a passage of any motorized boat. Which, admittedly is not often, the area is of sleepy and determinedly Middleastern-fishing feel ( as i imagine, the feel not being a familiar one). The encountered couples do not arrive for this parting of the ferry, and it carries me and my bike alone again through waves, a view of the sea partitioned by the wall that  Pellestrina has needled to Chioggia. The middleastern feel: sea, sun, small fishing boats and multitudes of unassumings yachts, a Virgin Mary  with an umbrella of a metal halo buoyant on her post at the entry to the port. The port: a central street leading from ferry landing out of town, barely any one on it, inhabitants ducking into sides of buildings from heat, everything, everything being closed during siesta-time, withered like the sun-tanned creases on the face of a fisherman. I set out on the bike again. The signs have stoped being as helpful, still indicating direction, but not distances, and so i keep on biking, unsure by Mesola whether i can make it to Codigoro, the site of the Youth Hostel. It all seems so close, but i am not reaching it! I wish i could see the Po Delta as clearly fractured as it appears on the map-- a tree, bigger limbs of different Pos, smaller branches to the sea. Instead, once in a while, the road rises slightly to become a bridge to cross a Po di Levante, Po della Pila, Po di Venezia, Po di Goro, and i get treated to sights of trees submerged trunkwards in stale and rotting pools of water. Codigoro Hostel is a huge and largerly unoccupied complex of uniform brick buildings, only the last of which beckons with a hostel logo, surrounded by woods, fields and functional horse stables. Apparently, it used to be an institution for the orphans of World War II, that became unneccesary once the youngest grew to be 18. The deserted halls of the hostel, the large echoing dining room are remarkable only in that there seem to be two other visitors excepting me. Noticing my perusal of Maps and Cycling guide, they motion to me. They are a pair of older English-speaking women, whose relationship to each other seems to me the sort of how a driver - boss would interact with each other. One speaks nicely enough but forcefully, laying out my route for the next day, planning my itinerary, snapping judgements. She is infomed about the Comacchio area, but points to the wrong lake repeatedly ( the other woman and me, in an instantenous bond, gently point out the correct lake in response. I keep battling urges to physically move the woman's finger once she again and again detects us incorrectly on the map). She stops once in a while to refer to the other for confirmation, more of a tick, rather than a genuine solicitation for opinion. The other nods readily, quiet and pleasant, and speaks when asked. Having planned out my next day in all detail, the first seems to lose all interest in me, and i am free to go to my orphan bed. They have very kindly left me their map and recommendations of what i just can't miss in the area, otherwise why bother biking.

Day 11
I follow up on their leads to the Abbey of Pomposa, a pomposing complex of a bell tower, chuch, chapter hall and other buildings that remain mysterious due to their inaccessibility. The abandoned deconsecrated abbey is as abandoned-feeling as it can be: it is just me and the poplar down, peaceful as it was when monks walked in this garden, hands folded in the back in contemplation God. I have seen so many churches, ai! I don't mean to blaspheme, they are amazing, they are spectacular, what man can accomplish in the praise of God is ridiculous: i forget how this one differs. I remember being impressed at the--ah,yes-- the halos that seemed to be made of clay/cut from stone/applied mould-like protruding above the fresco-flat apostolic faces. I remember the vision of hell where the sinners vividly torn from limb to limb have such bored ininvolved faces that either hell's torture is not so bad afterall, or the portrayal of pain has not been undertaken yet. And the devils look incredibly like "Where the Wild things are". I am trying to make the boat that goes out into Valli di Comacchio to see the fishing stations. I get to Comacchio with 15 minutes to spare before the boat departs, and Stazione Foce is not too far away, but i happen to ask an Italian man for directions, which more inevitably than not, leads to an involved conversation most of which i am straining to understand, especially the part about how it is 12 km to Stazione Foce when it cannot be more than 4km no matter which map i consult, and how in 15 minutes i can totally bike 4km, and do i stand there listening to a local about 12 km to Foce, or do i trust myself and go, and i am missing the boat, i'm missing the only time (11am) i can make the boat, i'm missing it. I trust the local, and it is too late anyway. If it is 12km, and i get there and i have missed it, i might not want to backtrack to actually see Comacchio, and then bike those 12km again to Foce to continue my path  around the lake. so i backtrack just a bit, to the center of a small town, central square with unwavering fishy smell, walkways by the canals, the small and elegant Treponti Bridge buit on the juncture of 5 canals, the streets, the clocktower. I stumble upon a tourist office, where i find out i can indeed yet have a shot at the boat trip at 3pm (as opposed to well-intentioned but slighly underinformed woman told me yesterday of the trip she had herself taken that day) and that indeed Foce is about 12 km away, as the bridge on the road linking Comacchio and Foce had fallen down, has not been repaired, and a detour must be made. I also find out about the eel marinating factory-museum, not so far away ( but then, nothing here is far away), and i walk there, and now i am so very glad i stayed.

Pomposa
Comacchio
Anita

Day 12
Commacchio
Ravenna

Day 13
Cervia
Rimini

Epilogue:
But as i am impatient, i will break the end of the story, for every story has an ending, especially a happy story. Within two days of my return to Rome, my bike was stolen. Somewhere within those two days of rain- it picking up where it had left off, as though i had never left- the bike was departed from its stable-post. I am amazed at both that i was able to complete this trip on a bike i thought i had bought, when instead i had rented it from the universe, and how quickly the evidence of my journey fades. Throughout the entire trip there was only one day--while i in Venezia with my parents--that the bike has stood untouched. The next day, there was a thin and single strand of a cobweb spanning from the handlebars to the seat, uncapturable by a photo.  Two days might have been too long for the bike to handle in desolation, when accustomed to everyday workout. So it may have left, the horse that it is, to traipse along by itself, venture further, riderless. Was the bike not my means of journeying the country, but i its? And as for me, i took it sadly, and personally: no happiness is lasting, or untainted, as though i haven't just learned that lesson! Like the hills of Tuscany, for every flight, there is a climb; for every groveling climb, an equally dizzying recompense. So, am i one for one? Am i to exhale "oh no!", buckle up, and start pushing uphill again, hoping?

To my bike, yet another companion on a journey that we can never again.

What i would have brought along: a small bar of soap
Casualties: bike chain (1), a carterpillar in a chain crossing the road on Chianti route (1)
Most common roadkill spotted: hedgehogs, awfully enough!
Most commonly encountered alive animal: lizards, mostly indentified by a scuttling noise at the bike's roadside route throughout entire trip; otherwise, a lazy lizard that has not gotten away is visible. I hope the rest were lizards too.
Most mystifyingly encountered animal: a large white hen pecking something or other on the side of the highway, with nothing but industrial enterprises and gas stations in sight.