Technically we are in Italy but everything about this region is Austrian. No one is even speaking Italian. The signs are in German. The waiters at “Binderstube”, the restaurant we went to last night, were wearing Lederhosen. But they did make great homemade spinach ravioli, and the local wine is amazing, so I guess its the best of both worlds.

Backing up, we flew to Bologna yesterday from Barcelona after spending a week with Gabriel’s mother, Carmen. We basically did nothing but eat and sleep in a constant rotation so we are now plump and rested and ready to ride. The only glitch is the weather. Back to that in a minute. We were both in kind of bad shape yesterday morning, waking up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport after finally having gotten our body clocks on the Spain timetable. (The jazz concert we had gone to 2 nights before started at midnight and ended at 4…) Also I think I ate too many melocotones (peaches) that Carmen bought from a guy selling them out of the back of his van. They were delicious. Anyway, neither of us had slept much the night before and my stomach felt like someone was clutching it in their fist. We got to the airport way early, dragging the bikes in their gigantic boxes as usual, heads turning at the spectacle of us, as usual. But we got everything checked in without a fight and then had a couple of hours to kill. I found it necessary to walk in circles around the Duty Free area to try to distract myself from my stomach pain by looking at bright and shiny objects. Finally we got on our flight (much turbulence, more stomach issues, plus fear of imminent death) and arrived in Bologna. From there we stuffed our bike boxes into the rental car (a dusty clunker with 80,000 miles on it) and programmed the GPS for Fie Allo Sciliar, about 300 kilometers north. We pretty quickly drove straight into a hailstorm and had to pull over to the side of the highway to wait it out. (“We’re going 120 kilometers an hour on an Italian highway, in a Ford Focus, in a hailstorm. I vote we pull over.”) We waited a while and when the hail seemed to let up slightly we continued on.

The rain stopped and started as we drove but the scenery was stunning. We passed through the Trentino region – vineyards everywhere, Medieval villages, castles…The Dolomite mountain range began to emerge through the rainclouds. The peaks were these aggressively jagged points piercing the sky, some snow-capped. The rain started coming down hard again. Visibility was difficult, but I could see to my right a fast flowing river churned up by the rain, and I started to have a medium-size concern that we were going to get swept into it. Stomach still clutching. Then worse, the GPS instructed us to cross the river on a bridge/tunnel that in terms of size, I assumed had to be pedestrian-only. But no, they do that in Europe: teeny-tiny tunnel spaces that look like they can’t fit a car but somehow they do with maybe an inch to spare on each side. So we drove on this rattly wooden bridge over the raging water because the GPS told us to and because Gabriel said he saw a sign that said “2 ton limit.” (Implying that cars under 2 tons were more than welcome). Needless to say, by the time we started up the rain-slicked one-lane road up a mountain, where you had no visibility of anyone driving that same lane towards you from the other direction, I was kinda done. Finally, finally, we made it to our hotel.

Next hurdle: we had to drop off the bikes at the hotel and then turn in the rental car in Bolzono, the only town around of any size–about 30 kilometers away. And the question being, then how do we get back to Fie Allo Scilliar? By bus, was the plan. By now it was about 7:30pm so we decided to put off the errand til the next day, borrowed umbrellas from the hotel, and walked over to Binderstube to eat some homemade pasta.

This morning it was still raining and forecast for more. This was supposed to be our first day of biking: Fie Allo Scilliar to Selva de Gardena. But Gabriel–out of concern for our downhill bike safety–nixed the plan. Instead we drove the bikes to Selva de Gardena, dropped them at the hotel there, then drove to Bolzono airport, turned in the car, took a taxi to the bus station, then a bus back to Selva de Gardena. At least the scenery was lovely. After we ate something, Gabriel took on the heroic business of re-assembling the disassembled bikes, me handing him tools and feeling like a total chick. In the end, we had to take the bikes to a local bike store for some maintenance anyway, cos we have this crazy idea that somehow we are going to ride tomorrow even though there is nothing but rain forecasted for the foreseeable future. And by the way its cold here, too. Like curl-up-by-the-fire cold. We are walking around in our down jackets. I really really want to ride tomorrow. But if the weather doesn’t let up I guess we are going to get to know the bus system here really well.