Category Archives: travel

03 Jul

Packing list critique

Back when we were packing for the trip, I made a post about everything I was taking with me. Now, for the edification of future bike tourists, I thought I’d go back and revisit the list.

  •  Ortlieb Backroller Classic Panniers – count me on the list of people who love their Ortliebs. Kept things dry in the rain, and at campgrounds I put our food in one and had no fears of small wildlife helping themselves during the night. The taller half got the backpack attachment for one of his bags, but I prefer to use the long strap and carry it over my shoulder. The backpack attachment is permanently fixed to your pannier once you add it, and needs to be rolled up and fiddled with any time you adjust your bag.
  • Orange REI stuff travel pack  – After the first two or three weeks, we almost exclusively carried stuff in this littlepack rather than pannier+backpack straps when walking around without bikes. It can hold raingear for two, lunch, and a camera, or quite a bit of groceries. Definitely glad to have this along
  • Upper body clothing – Having a button up shirt ended up being really good because I could quickly take it on or off, or leave it unbuttoned for temperature regulation. The taller half had arm warmers, but I tried to avoid single purpose clothing. The rest of the layers I wore at various times, but probably got the least use out of  the black long sleeve, because it was harder to take on and off quickly around a helmet. I did also find myself wishing for a tshirt length bike jersey instead of sleeveless, for sun protection.
  • Merrell Women’s Bare Access Arc shoes – Weighing less than 10 oz. for the pair, these were super lightweight and squishable into a pannier. I also found them comfortable for the walking we did, although the soles were thin enough that really lumpy cobblestones were worth avoiding.
  • Shimano mountain biking style bike shoes – Part of the stitching came undone, but since my shoes all scuff in the same spot, I think it has more to do with my style of walking than the quality of the shoe.
  • Novara Express 2.0 bike jacket in beautiful purple, black rain pants – We were lucky enough with the weather that I only wore the rain pants a handful of times, but I was glad to have them when I wanted them. The taller half didn’t bring rain pants, and was comfortable enough in leggings. If it had been any warmer in the rain, though, the steam inside would have defeated the purpose for me. The jacket worked great, and made a good warmth layer in the evenings or in the wind on descents. The visibility of the color I think was also a plys.
  • Lower body clothing – The gel pad on the liner shorts covers a smaller area than some of the padded shorts I left at home, but having the versatility was key. I was able to easily swap around between longer and shorter length of shorts and capris. However, I found that I wore the cotton pair of shorts more than the quick-dry synthetic ones, which I might leave out if we ever did a trip like this again.
  • Merrell Alexandra dress, which is so comfy that I sleep it in all the time, and black leggings to wear under it or on cold cycling days
  • 3x non-cotton quick drying undies, 2x Moving Comfort sports bras, 
  • 4x cycle socks – the two pairs of thinner smartwool cycle socks, which I bought new before the trip, quickly developed holes in the toes. A slightly thicker pair, looser around the toe box, from a no name brand which I’ve had since 2006 has no toe holes. Thinner socks seemed like they’d be better in the heat, but the smartwool ones were not a long term solution. Boo.
  • Bike helmet
  • 1x batik sarong for use as scarf, towel, skirt, etc and 1x purple tiedye bandana
  • Mess of toiletries/first aid, incl. one wee loofah, one bottle Dr. Bronner’s soap, one large bottle sunscreen, bandaids, neosporin, painkillers, hand sanitizer, tiger balm, chapstick, handwarmers
  • Small camera w/ case & battery charger – since the taller half took all the pictures, I took barely a dozen and could have left this at home.
  • Little blue flashlight – ditched before departure in favor of bikelight
  • Kindle, small notebook, pencil – I got a lot of use of all of these, although we had to acquire a pencil sharpener. The taller half had a tablet, and nearly every hotel and campground we stayed had wifi (everywhere in France and Spain, although Italy was more of a tossup), so I could check out ebooks from the library at home and update the Kindle. I kept a written journal of our travels.
  • Lady kit – ladies, you know what you need!
  • Shea butter and tea tree/vitamin E creme for prevention and treatment of saddle sores – I went on a fruitless search for Hoo Ha Ride Glide in the days before we left, couldn’t find it, and read on the Team Estrogen forums about the wonders of shea butter. I got 2 oz. of shea butter from Whole Foods, and transferred it from a fancy glass jar to a sturdier plastic jar. It was applied to saddle sore prone spots, used as chapstick and as skin moisturizer, fulfilling my desire for multipurpose items, and working fairly well on all accounts.
  • REI Halo 40 degree down bag and Women’s Prolite Thermarest – After the first week or two, it was warm enough that this bag was overkill. I have slept cold so many times in the mountains, though, that I found it really luxurious to sleep with a bag unzipped. The taller half had a much thinner summer weight bag and was occasionally cold; because I was extra toasty I was able to keep my bag unzipped and wrap part of it over him, giving back some of the body heat I have leached from him over the years. I returned a 1 inch Thermarest for a 1.5 inch pad before we left, and I have no regrets. Really, sleeping comfy in the tent for several weeks was key to a successful trip.
  • 3L platypus bladder – We were rarely without a place to fill up on water when we needed it, and the bladder was superfluous. On a ride through less populated areas, though, it would have been handy.
  • Sunglasses – Totally left my sunglasses in America when we left (on a rainy day) and had to get a new pair in Rome, because sunglasses are crucial.
  • Leatherman, multi-tool, bike lights, spare tubes, patch kit, chain lube – Somehow we were lucky enough to never have any flats, but we regularly checked bolts for tightness and oiled chains a few times. Even though we didn’t use most of the repair gear we brought, I wouldn’t leave it behind.
  • You can never have too many zip ties – Actually, yes, you can. I was absolutely convinced of the utility of these, but I only used a few to attach a papier mache rose to my bike after a holiday fair in Spain. I imagine most people could put two in their kit and be happy, instead of the twenty I had.
  • Bungee cargo net – The taller half got this and although I wasn’t impressed at first, I now find it one of the most awesome things ever. It held the tent to the back of my bike, and I could easily take off a layer and stick it under the net without having to mess with a pannier. When we had damp laundry, I put it in a mesh bag under the net to air out during the day. It was incredibly useful.
  • Cook set – We brought along the cook pot, teeny gas stove, iodine pills and whatnot that we take camping. We never used them once. Okay, we ate with our sporks all the time, because we consumed vast quantities of yogurt, but the pot? the stove? Shoulda left them at home, and never bothered buying fuel which we donated to the apartment where we stayed the last few nights through Air BnB.
  • Quick dry pack towel from REI –  Although small and yes, quick drying, I think I’d leave these at home next time. We got the smallest size, and constantly wished they were bigger and more absorbent. I started using my cotton handkerchief towards the end of the trip after showers, and liked it better. It absorbed more, wrung out as well, and was not unravelling at the edges.

Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on your trip duration, time of year, and location, but hopefully this is useful for those planning their own tours!

28 Jun

Laundry on the road

Laundry drying in Italy

One of the issues that comes up when you have only three sets of clothes and you are sweating in them most every day is laundry. Not washing your clothes really isn’t an option – you’re just asking for saddle sores, among other reasons.

Since we were camping or staying in hotels, there weren’t a lot of easily accessibly washing machines on our route. Actually, some of the campgrounds had washing machines, but we balked at the idea of paying 3 euros just to wash a load of laundry. Good grief, we don’t have that much! And I’m the one who decided to drive to the laundromat (and do other errands once a week) when the laundry in our last apartment went from $1.50 to $2.00 for either washer or dryer.

The first option was to rinse things out in the shower while you wash yourself. We brought a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s, and figured it would be good for washing pretty much everything. I knew about the shower technique because I read Andrew X. Pham’s description of just that in Catfish and Mandala. In campgrounds, then, we washed our innermost layers with ourselves in the shower, then hung them to dry overnight on trees or bikes. That worked okay, as long as it didn’t rain during the night.

Inevitably, though, after a few days it seemed like pretty much everything was dirty. Then we would stop at a hotel, and do a larger operation.

First, put all the laundry in the bath tub, fill with hot water and soap, and let it sit for a bit. Then, the agitation cycle, aka stomping and trying not to slip and fall down.

Human powered laundry agitation

After two rinses, the next step is to wring everything out, and try to get out as much water as possible so there is a hope of it all drying out before the next morning. After wringing and re-wringing, we would roll things up in a towel, and stomp on it a bit, to absorb water from the laundry into the towel. We created a fairly humid atmosphere in some places.

Even with the limited amount of clothing we had with us, this became quite a chore. Mostly the wringing. Stomping in a tub full of wet clothes is kind of fun. But you wring things out, and then you twist them up again and pull and turn and there’s always more water, but you start to feel something giving. Am I destroying the elastic? Pulling out seams? But if I don’t wring it out vigorously, will I be facing wet shorts in the morning?

The taller half got a blister from vigorous laundry-wringing. We gained a new respect for washerwomen of old. We also decided, by the time we left Spain, that the 3 euro price we’d seen for use of a washing machine in the first campground? Not so exorbitant as it had seemed at the time.

Throughout France we visited self-service laundries, where we found prices ranging from 3 to 5 euros for 5 kg capacity washer, and another 4 euros or so for a dryer. There were often machines that took 1 euro or so to dispense a cupful of powdered soap. In Italy, the self-service laundry was rarer, but still available.

These little laundries were not too much like American laundromats. Most only had a few machines, 3 to 5 on average. And they are of various sizes, 5 kilos, 7 kilos, 10 kilos, maybe as large as 14 kilos. The price for using the machine is graded accordingly. There is not a slot on the machines to put in your coins, though. There is a central paybox, where you put in your coins and then push the number of the machine you want to start up. Every time I triple checked the number, frightened that I would waste 4 euros by pressing the wrong button.

Then, I would wait for 40 minutes while the washer went through its cycle, writing in my journal or my novel (oh yes, I’m working on a novel, but no, it’s not about bike touring in Europe), and people watching on the sly. In Narbonne, France, I had a chat with a (probably) German young man about how the machines worked. I also had a non-conversation with an old lady who asked me questions in French that I couldn’t understand. In Cavaillon, France, I listed to the squishy foam rubber sounds of talk between a Portugese woman and her mother while they waited for their clothes to dry. In La Spezia, Italy, I had a half-conversation with a group of four tourists who were trying to figure out the system of the paybox. After they began talking amongst themselves, I realized they were Spanish, and we probably could have communicated better in that language than my pieced together Italian. I’m sure there were locals using the laundries as well, but they are certainly a boon to the traveler.

Now that we’re back in the States, we have a washer-dryer unit in our apartment, and it’s pretty amazing. I never have to look for change, or worry about wandering away while the load is running. And I can read all the instructions.

13 Jun

Cats of Italy

So, once we really got into the meat of the tour and started biking every day, I ran out of extra energy to make blog posts. And we had issues with our electronics. But of course we had more adventures, and I did manage to keep a paper diary, so there will be some retroactive adventure sharing coming soon.

In the mean time, here I am with a selection of Italian cats.

I have the habit of addressing pretty much any cat I see, and we saw plenty of cats. Some of them ran away, some of them were extremely busy napping, some had been told by their mothers not to talk to American tourists, but some were interested in international friendship missions. As we like to say, they were willing to subscribe to our newsletter.

Enthusiastic subscriber in Monciano, Tuscany

Possible subscriber in Pitigliano, Tuscany

Purring and Drooling subscriber in Manorolo, Cinque Terre

Napping too hard to move or subscribe in Corniglia, Cinque Terre

18 Apr

The waiting box at Toscana Est

If you’re ever in Livorno/Leghorn Italy and looking for the Grimaldi Line ferry to Barcelona, it is not where you think it is. It is a couple miles north. If you don’t speak Italian, this may be hard to understand as you go in circles for a while and are turned away from the entrances of two different cruise terminals by Italian folk who look like this may be the first time they have heard of a boat going to Barcelona from their city.

Or maybe this look was because its the first time they had encountered a pair of cyclists looking for a boat to Barcelona and they knew already what we were about to find out. As one review of this trip by an earlier traveler said, this port is not optimized for non-car traffic. We went in vaguely the direction we had been pointed and followed signs that sounded something like what we thought we had been told until we got to the point where the way we were pretty sure we were supposed to go was an on ramp to a highway that had pretty clear signs indicating no motorcycles under 249 cc, no mopeds under 149 cc, no bikes, no pedestrians and no horse drawn vehicles. So tough luck to us.

We decided to take the other option, because although it died not have the same name as the terminal we had been directed to, it did match one set of the directions on the ferry line’s website. These directions are helpfully provided for drivers to get to two different terminals in Livorno, although no mention is made of which terminal you should go to if you are going to Spain, or which if you’re going to Sardenia, or wherever else their ships go from this port. And no, of course there was no information on our printed ticket either.

So forward we went, as there was no point in staying when we were, on the side of a wide road about to turn into an elevated highway. We followed a road which went around and under the highway and after a bit to a roundabout next to a a bar and restaurant full of big rig trucks. We were well into cargo territory now, with the port and all. Towards the restaurant looked like one way with loaded trucks coming down, so we went with the other option, and eventually came to what I thought was a weigh station for the trucks, but the taller half looked a little closer and noticed a hand written paper sign in the window that said something like Barcelona check-in.

And on the other side from where the trucks where being weighed was a dingy window where a woman took our printed confirmation and gave us official tickets, and we discovered that despite the high price we paid for tickets for an outside cabin (no inside available and 20 hours with only a deck chair space sounding extremely unpleasant) we are assigned separate cabins. On account of cabins having the capacity for four, and our being different genders. This is not the way it works on trains, of course, where you share a sleeping compartment with a mixture of people.

Anyway, the ticket woman indicated we should go back and take a left at the bar. Which we did, after figuring out there was an option which went not onto the highway, but under it and along the other side. We went and we got to a point where we could see the ship, but we were definitely overshooting its location. So we went back, but we had to stop a bit at a gate where a lone of big rig trucks were coming out. Then as we started off again I looked and realized the trucks were bringing cargo from the back end of what had to be the ship we wanted!

When we entered this gate, a security fellow came up to tell us we couldn’t be there. We showed him our tickets. Oh, okay then, yes. We should wait and he would call us. After a bit he sent us around the corner to a bare and temporary little building unit, the sort of thing that is the office at a construction site. It had chairs (blue, in connected sets of three) and lights (fluorescent) and that was it. It was a waiting box, and so we waited.

About when we were done wondering what miracle had led us to find both the check in office and the boat itself, a man in a brightly colored and official looking jacket and hat came and led us to another man who scanned our tickets and turned us over to a third man, who directed us to put our bikes in a little room marked luggage deposit, just off the car deck.

And now we are aboard, waiting til the ship sails to see if either of us has bunkmates, but so far, no, so maybe we get one more bit of luck. We’ve already looked at Google maps for Barcelona, and thank goodness it doesn’t look half as complicated as this was.

I should mention, though, that since Friday we were staying in a small Tuscan town with an Italian friend I made when I was an exchange student in high school, and she and her boyfriend made everything wonderful. Then, today, as we took the train to Livorno, we met two Italians in the bike/luggage car and chatted with them. The young woman got off at the same stop with us and said her way home was on the way to the ferry, so she led us from the train station first to a sandwich shop for the local favorite food – chickpea pancakes with pickled eggplant in a focaccia sandwich – and then to a grocery store so we could get food to survive the ferry journey. Cecilia, I only know your first name, but you are an angel and I will have to help twenty lost tourists when we get back to Seattle.

10 Apr

Hope lost and found, bikes broken and fixed

This morning, after camping somewhere that was less campground in the American sense and more trailer park (but the trailers all the sort of camper you can tow behind a car) near the town of Orbetello, we found it to be Tuesday morning, and an auspicious time to find an open bike shop. For the record, the Saturday before Easter in Italy is a poor time to figure out that your derailleur is a little bent. Not much is open on Easter Sunday and, as we found, not much is open on Easter Monday either. But this morning we found the little hole in the wall bike shop in Orbetello, Giro Bicycle on Via Dante Aligheri for those who might be looking for it later, opened for the morning at 9 and the beer-bellied man inside looked over our bikes, adjusted a derailleur here and trued a wheel there for 18 euros. And when we said we were headed to Barcelona he suggested we take the train. Anyway.
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​We took only one or two wrong turns and with minimal backtracking had a sunny day biking from the coast through Tuscany, or Maremma, which is what it says on the maps we got from the tourism office in Orbetello. (By the way, they had an awesome packet of ride descriptions in English with maps there.) Green pastoral rolling hills with vineyards, sheep, the occasional horse or picturesque villa. Very nice. I think there are probably lots of postcards featuring what we saw today.
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​We culminated in a 8 km/5 mi moderate hill climb to Marciano, a medieval hilltop town, with a big ol’ stone tower fortress thing on the top. The town features many narrow and steep streets that are probably highly defensible against the Ottomans, or the Visigoths, or the Medicis, or whoever. We arrived at the town and started up one of the streets, at which point there was a sort of chunk noise and the chain just plain fell off the taller half’s bike. “Shit,” I said, and picked it up. He looked at it and laughed a little in bemusement because what else can you do when your chain gives up on the third riding day of a two month tour.
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​We started up the hill top on foot and wound our way through increasingly narrow streets, receiving looks from Italians of various ages. Have I mentioned that my bike/rain jacket is vibrant purple and his is a fluorescent goldenrod yellow? Many Italians seem to go with black leather jackets so we kinda stick out. That and if you look closer and see that other than the freckles I am whiter than white, its kinda obvious that we aren’t from around here.
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​We follow the signs marked “i” which should be information. This leads up and up and around, to the fortress on the hill. Along the way we see exactly one bike. It doesn’t seem like a bike friendly town, topographically. Either you’d kill yourself going up, or you’d kill yourself and several of your neighbors on the way downhill. When we reached the final approach to the edifice atop the hill, the taller half said, “I’m not going up that.”
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​”I’ll go,” I said. “You wait with the bikes.”
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​The stone edifice currently houses a museum, and the reception is also the tourist information office. The woman at the desk didn’t speak English, but she wanted to help. I trotted out my best Italian, which is really Spanish peppered with the Italian words I have picked up in the last week.* “Hay una problema con la mia bicicletta. E una… negozione par las bicilettas? Riparazione?”
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​She made some phone calls while I consulted her dictionary. “La caneta e romperato,” I tried.
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​”La caneta e rata,” she said. There was not a bike shop in town, I understood from her, but I should go to a place called Gobbini, where they have… she fumbled through through the dictionary. Tractors. Someone at the tractor store fixes bikes.
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​”Penso chi a bisogno una nuova caneta,” I said, hoping to communicate this might be a problem a tractor mechanic would not be able to fix.
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​She made another call and handed me a sticky note with a name and a phone number. Simone. Okay, I said, and reviewed what I understood. Simone is a mechanic. Simone is at Gobboni. Gobboni is on Via Delle Fonti, but she couldn’t tell me a street number. She drew me a line on the map of how to get to the beginning of the street and then began pointing to arms and legs and asking me something. Eventually I caught the word “cada”. Did I fall?
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​”No, non cada,” I verified, and added some additional info with words I had looked up while she was on the phone. “La bicicletta chi rota e la bicicletta de mi marito. I mi marito non cada. Solo la caneta a cada!” Then I said “grazie mille” a bunch of times. I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t know how it would go over.
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​A bit later and the taller half and I found Gobbini’s “machine agricole” and Simone. On one side of the lot, which was indeed full of tractors and agricultural machinery, was a small building absolutely full of bikes. Carbon fiber bikes, mostly. And wheels and tools and piles of parts, making up a bike shop to make our spoiled Seattle hearts proud. And ten euros and ten minutes later, the chain was fixed and we had a chain tool and spare links for each of our bikes.
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​Then we checked into a hotel, went to a restaurant and ate too much pasta and gnocchi and came up with a blessing for all bike tourers: May there always be a bike shop where you need one most.
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​*If you actually speak Italian, I apologize for the broken-ness of the pseudo Italian in this post. If you don’t speak Italian, I can’t recommend using these phrases unless you’re really stuck.

08 Apr

Kitties and gender bending sculpture and Mark Twain, oh my!

​Another day, another ruin in Rome. Ho hum. Look at this one, another set of eroded columns-hey, a cat!​Oh look, another one. And another… wait, these are the best ruins ever! They’re full of cats!

Thanks, Wikipedia, for this picture of the cats!

That was pretty much my thought process when we stumbled upon Largo di Torre Argentina, a full city block of partially excavated remains of four temples, which have in the past been built over as churches and an opera house. You can read the Wikipedia page as well as I, I’m really here to tell you that there is an enclosed city block in Rome filled with dozens of cats. As it was a sunny day, they were all draped on the rocks or adorably curled up in the grass. For several exciting minute though, all the cats in one area sprang into action and one of them caught and tortured a large grasshopper, in the careless way that cats play with their prey.
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​On one corner there is an office and medical facilities for a volunteer organization which feeds, spays, and finds adoptive homes for the kitties. We went down for a bit to pet the critters, then went on to see Piazza Navona (many fountains) and the national museum in the Palazzo Altemps, which had lots of statuary and really excellent signage about which Greek bronze statutes they’d been copied from, and which limbs or heads had been added by later sculptors after the originals were lost. One particularly interesting piece was put together by a sculptor who added breasts to a male torso and used a head of Apollo to make a representation of Psyche, and added a female (Sappho style, apparently) to a male torso to create Eros. (Eros and Psyche is one of those complicated god and mortal love stories.) Apparently at the time they were into gender bending.
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​Yesterday we went for an early morning tour at the Vatican, which meant that we got up at 6 am, but also that we got to be the first tourists to walk into the Sistine Chapel that day. I’m not going to try to describe any of the Vatican. There’s no way. It’s so much so much. But yesterday I got a copy of The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain and started reading what he wrote about visiting Rome.
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​What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?–Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here.

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​That is fairly well what I have been thinking, but to read his vocalization of it, I thought about it a bit more, and perhaps this is the American way to approach it. So much of our national history is predicated on discovery–we celebrate Columbus and spend large portions of our schooling on the various explorers who discovered new lands. Now there is the modern recognition that indigenous people were there first, but we still fixate on the idea of going places that no one, or at least very few other people have ever been to. That’s the charm of travel, I think, that dies in Rome for Mark Twain.
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​From the New World perspective, we’re just not used to being one droplet in the endless wave of humanity that has swept over this metropolis for millennia.