Bella Italia Stage 19

Bojano to San Marco dei Cavoti

Strava: 51.9 km, 1,377m, 4:03, 236 shifts, tons of mud

With a shorter day planned today, we relaxed at breakfast at a café and did a little bike cleaning before leaving at 9:45. The first four km was easy on a paved road. But then the gravel course designers struck. Their first few km were surprisingly good, lots of time following the purple line on the Garmin riding across fields with very little evidence of previous travelers. Soon though, it got rocky and muddy which meant some pushing and slipping. It was so slippery I crashed, then Wytze did and later I crashed again. Andrew slid into a bush. All were low speed losses of style points only, no injuries whatsoever.

After slogging for a long time, making very little progress measured in km, we somehow talked Wytze into an alternate route. Andrew couldn’t even believe it. But we got to climb a 15+% grade for a long time instead of dragging our bikes through more mud. And at the top we got to coast down, drying our sweat. I remember thinking, “This is what bikes were made for.”

Then more steep climbing and I was getting low in the power department. In a tiny town we looked for the restaurant but first found a fountain with a hose, brush, wash cloths and a bath tub. It took some time but we cleaned our bikes, shoes and us. I found a long piece of metal in my back tire. I held my breath pulling it out, but no hiss. Amazing. Atop a 20% grade was the rumored restaurant. We had yesterday’s pizza with drinks and cupcakes for dessert.

After lunch it was more of the same and one of the descents was so crazy. The dirt stuck to our tires. Those with less clearance (Daniel and especially Andrew) had their wheels stopped. I made it down laughing at the huge number of mud clods being sprayed everywhere as I tried to steer down the viciously steep path. Sorry no photos…

There were two more 300+m climbs and we finally arrived at our town. It’s beautiful here, but steep. We had to walk our bikes down several million stairs to find our apartment. Again, it was a day where the number of km ridden or meters climbed don’t correlate well to the effort required.

My brakes have been squeaking since yesterday so today Andrew and I did a real bike love session including our brake pads. Mine were gone – I’ve never had to replace them after so few km. The terrain here is not like anywhere I’ve ridden. The steep descents just kill your brakes, even for a guy who always brakes minimally!

It was nice to have that done, and our laundry outside drying in the sun. Finally at 6pm I lay down to relax a little. “Easy days” are not necessarily easy.

Later we walked around town and went out to dinner. We didn’t realize how big the town was. Dinner was in a pizzeria with beer and a couple of bottles of wine. And delicious dessert of ice cream with nuts. At dinner we decided to have a rest day tomorrow. I think we’re all very happy about that decision! It certainly answered a lot of questions like “Another bottle of wine?” and “Should we stop at this bar for Amaro?” and “Another round of Amaro?” and “Gelato after all this?”  Anyway we finally made it home around 11, very happy to be living this life.