Oh my God, is it really only the third day? We both woke up groaning this morning. And the truth is, I haven’t even been sleeping that well. How that’s possible I don’t know. We had to stop and ask a lot of questions just to navigate out of Cortina. Gabriel is really good at that. He will stop and attempt to ask anyone anything at any time, in any language. He’s fearless. I, on the other hand, am more the shy American, embarrassed to be in their country having no clue about the language when I know they’ve been studying mine their whole lives. So Gabriel asked for directions a million times and we finally got on the right road, the Passo Giau. That was 9 kilometers of a “very steep climb.” I was hungry in the first hour but promised myself I could have my energy bar when we hit hour two. Got very excited about that. The first bad thing that happened was that my Ganesh (remover of obstacles) charm that my friend Heather had given me, and I had tied onto my handlebars, fell off. I noticed right away and stopped my bike. But before I could even take one step to go pick it up out of the road, a car drove over it and smashed it. Totally destroyed. This could not be a good sign for the day.

We had more sun today, although always the ominous clouds. I was still suffering from yesterday and the climb was hard. A tour bus passed us. A woman in the front had a microphone up to her mouth and I imagined her saying: “And if you look to your left, you’ll notice two malodorous American fools trying to bike up this mountain.” Oh how I wanted to be in that bus. Farther along, a super-cyclist raced passed me as I’m huffing and puffing. “You go, shave-legged cyclist dude.” Shoot, I didn’t even bring a razor with me. We passed a field of cows. One had this black and white speckled face and I called to it “You look like an Oreo milkshake.” That was my animal friend for the day.

The climb was so hard. I was so tired, and honestly–over it. Why are we doing this? I tried to force myself to ponder the question. All I could come up with was: I don’t know, but this is the last year. I stopped to eat my energy bar and Gabriel looked up and said: “Hurry up, I don’t like the look of the sky.” Well I don’t like the look of you, Fuckface. How do you like that? We can say these things to each other, thank God. We had to keep going. As we neared the peak the view became so incredible. Green everywhere framed by those jagged snowy mountains. Yellow and purple wildflowers everywhere, and with the sun out it was like a whole different landscape than yesterday. Gabriel has taken to calling me “Specky” as in “speck”, as in a little tiny thing. And against this magnificent backdrop he’s right, I’m a speck and so is he. I kept looking to the wildflowers for strength. Yellow, purple, yellow, purple. Keep going keep going. My legs ache, my wrists tingle. The area between my shoulder blades is one big knot. Finally I could see the top, like yesterday. It looked so far away, but at least I could see it. As I finally crested the peak, a group of French cyclists sitting on the hill at the top erupted in a cheer for me. “Allez!” “Brava!” They even popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. I beamed and gave them the thumbs up. I believe this appreciation is a perk of being one of the rare females on these roads.

At the cafe up there we had hot chocolate (yes please!) and a grilled cheese sandwich. It was an odd place. There was inexplicably a sign near the bathrooms that said “Sex Stuff”. Also, they had mounted the head of a mountain goat, but on the other side of the wall was the other half of him, basically a big graphic goat ass. Was this…humor? I couldn’t tell. As we ate Gabriel told me: “We’re not doing the other mountain today (the Passo Fedaia). We’re too exhausted.” He was right. My movements were tortoise-like. I’ve never been quite this depleted before. I get huge hunger pangs but when its time to eat I can hardly get food down. I can’t be drinking enough water either. I think we do need to take it down a notch. I didn’t argue. Plus there were the clouds again, looming.

We bundled up, rode down. Stopped to put on ponchos as the rain started, then had to take them off when the rain suddenly stopped and we got too hot. There is a lot of stripping on and and off of layers that has to happen on this trip. We got to a little village that was supposed to be our halfway point that day and quickly found a bus to take us and our bikes some of the way to Canazei. Gabriel jammed those bikes into the luggage area and charmed the bus drivers while I kind of stood there in an exhausted stupor. Then we took the bus up the climb we were supposed to do on the bikes. No regrets about that, not one. The Passo Fedaia was abysmal. Horrendous. And rain-slicked. We got to the top of that one and the bus dumped us off. The rain was just a light drizzle and we had our ponchos on. We were right next to a lake and the sunlight was teasing in and out of the clouds over the mountains. We waited for the next bus with a bunch of school kids (or summer-campers) who were singing of all things “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Another inexplicable thing. Like the pull cord in the shower of our hotel room that has a sign: In Case of Emergency, pull cord.” Wow, okay. I’d really like to pull it to see what would happen, but of course I won’t.

After a half hour or so of waiting for the bus, and with the sun out again and baking the road, Gabriel deemed it dry enough for us to try to ride the 12 kilometers down to our destination, Canazei. After a minute he stopped by the side of the road. Back brakes are out. He did some adjusting and then said, okay let’s go. We made it down about half-way and then he stopped again. The adjusting hadn’t worked. He only had front brakes but we were almost there and he wanted to keep going. We did and we made it.

The bike shop in town fixed the brakes. The shower at our hotel was hot and dinner was good and I even had a grappa. I hope I sleep well tonight finally.