Buona Sera

When I was preparing to leave Winnipeg this summer, Ben Wride told me that he was looking forward to keeping track of me on my travels through this blog, but at the same time, he was hoping that I would be able to disconnect from the online world and live in the moment. That’s some real talk. Switzerland feels like it happened a lifetime ago, yet, I was there two and a half weeks ago. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess! If you’ve been keeping up with the photos/instagram page you will know that I have made it all the way south through the Rhone Alps of France, through the Riviera, and, that I am now on the Eastern side of Italy. How did I get here? My time since leaving Geneva has been quite the adventure! There are much more hills and mountains than I was expecting in this part of the world! My second day out of Geneva was cut short due to pure exhaustion from climbing hills in the heat. When I say heat, it’s not like it is 30+ degrees, but even 20 degrees feels exceptionally warm when you are cycling for 6 hours straight. I had a new “first” on the way south from Geneva to Nice, the first time I have wild-camped two nights in a row! More often than not I find campgrounds to sleep at. I can not emphasize enough how nice it is to have a shower at the end of a day of cycling! I had poor luck with campgrounds in southern France. The first night I had planned to sleep on the side of the road -- I had a nice spot on the side of the highway, beside a dried up creek bed, in-between villages. The second night was not planned. When I was starting to get tired I was at the bottom of a 400m hill. Rather than be subject to cycling the hill in the morning, I chose to cycle to the campground at the top of the hill. This campground turned out to be closed for the season. That is how I ended up wild-camping two days in a row. I had the same problem with closed campsites when I got to Nice. I cycled past the first campground that showed up on my map in hopes of getting a little closer to the city center. I tried three campgrounds, and all three of those were closed. This left me to backtrack nearly 10 kilometers, part of which included a 15% hill climb. While cycling through the promenade in Nice on my way towards Monaco and Italy I had the opportunity to chat with an Irish national living in Nice, who was out for a bike ride. He was interested in what I was up to, where I had been, and where I was headed. At the end of the promenade he was kind enough to direct me towards the right road heading east. I hugged the coast of the Mediterranean as best I could on my way south and east to Levanto. Levanto is just on the outside of the Cinque Terre National Park. Cinque Terre is a series of 5 seaside villages dating back far as the turn of the previous millennium. All five are now linked by road and rail now, but there was a time when the only way to get to any of the five was either donkey trail, or boat. I spent my first full day in Levanto travelling between villages via boat, and spent the second day hiking along the coast to the villages I did not have time to visit the day before. I spent three nights in Levanto before transiting over the mountains to Italy’s other coast near Venice. I was far from prepared for the amount of elevation in my path. For the most part the roads in Switzerland are masterfully engineered so there is minimal climbing, instead you find yourself at the bottom of deep valleys when travelling between major cities and towns. My plan for Italy had me going straight across a mountain range with few/no valleys to take advantage of. The day I left Levanto I travelled just over 80 kilometers, and am convinced that I also climbed around 2000m in that stretch. I wish I could say that all has been smooth sailing over the past two weeks, but that wouldn’t be very true at all. I’ve been plagued with some more minor bike issues - well, issues that I hope are minor. Just outside of Genoa while on my way to Levanto I started to hear a noise coming from my front wheel. It sounded a little like someone was placing a card in my spokes as the wheel turned. The noise was not occurring during the whole rotation, rather, just a spurt of three cricks (for lack of a better word) not unlike the noise made by a ratchet. I did what I could to remedy the problem in Levanto even though wheel are a little out of my wheelhouse. The noise was incredibly unsettling when I was barreling down hills at over 50km/h headed straight for a switchback. I reached out to the people at Natural Cycle in Winnipeg, who built the wheels, as well as two different bike shops in Modena, and one more here in Marghera. So far no remedy. I’ve done what I can to ensure all the spokes are tight, and have already checked the placement of the rotor and brake caliper to ensure no rubbing. No remedy yet. I am spending the better part of the morning waiting at a cafe beside bike shop number four, in hopes that the people there will be able to tell me something I don’t already know. The previous three shops could suggest that I was weighing the bike down too much, and that the bike was not made for transporting all of my gear. To a point that is true. But, I find difficulty in understanding why the noise would lay dormant for nearly 4000km of riding, only to pop up now. I think the wheel may have fallen out of true, but finding a bike shop that is capable of understanding/fixing that problem seems to be a difficult task. That’s where I’m at. The plan for the coming week or two is to leave the Venice area and make my way South again. Forli, Florence, Rome, and Naples before making my exit from Italy via Brindisi. I recently crossed over the halfway point on my time in the EU. As of the 29th I have 45 days remaining to be in the EU. I continue to be ahead of schedule! I have averaged somewhere between 58 and 60 kilometers per day while in the Schengen Zone, and should be on track to spend a longer period of time in Greece if I want to! I post less drawn out and more frequent stories from the road via instagram on the photos page if my blog posts are too long and boring for you! Best, Gavyn. 

Ps. When I eventually head back to Canada I wonder if I will retain the snippets of language that I have learned while abroad. Snippets of language that are generally limited to the following: Do you speak english, Hello, Goodbye, Thank-you, Please, and Excuse me.