Day 5: Verona to Treviso (87 miles)

Today was a long riding day that reinforced a lot of touring/cycling rules.

I wasn't expecting the ride to be 87 miles but I needed to make some detours in order to find strade secondaria per Treviso (secondary roads to Treviso). This is my first rule of touring. The smaller the road, the better. Unfortunately, I didn't do so well following this rule today. I ended up on the autostrada or something similar I believe. When this happens you definitely get a contact high and start ripping it on your bike (exceeding 20mph) but it's a treacherous game because cars and trucks are passing you at likely 60-70mph. All we cyclists need really is a shoulder to cry on (pardon the double meaning) but still it's very stressful to be on those types of roads. When a guy in a truck screamed at me something to the effect of "mafabafaguoloio"...I realized it's a road I shouldn't be on. The challenge in touring is finding the small roads because maps just don't show them. And Italians, god bless them, they know about as much direction as they can see in front of themselves.

Generally speaking, a good rule of thumb is to ride through the center of each town because it will then put you on the smaller roads to the next town, and so on. The problem is you get sucked into the ease of the bigger roads, which have less traffic circles and chances of getting lost.

The second rule that was reinforced this ride is what I like to call the "law of twenties". Each 20 mile increment in cycling becomes progressively more difficult. For example: 20-40 miles is pretty easy; 40-60 miles becomes challenging; 60-80 starts to put definite pressure on your muscles and limbs; and 80-100 miles it feels like body parts are going to start to fall off. Combine the physical feeling of being on mile 80 with the mental feeling of being lost and rain falling from the sky and you can imagine how I felt toward the end of the ride. Luckily, the rain stopped and I found my way pretty quickly. Things can change in an instant when you are on your bike (and in life).

My Italian is progressing but it's definitely two steps forward and one back. At this stage I would say that I'm pretty proficiet at asking and answering most things. However, if someone tries to break into a conversation, I'm toast. Had a pretty funny encounter today with a waitress at a restaurant. When she gave me my bill, I saw that my 0.5 litre glass of coke was €5! I just wanted to point out an interesting tidbit of how much more expensive coke is in Italy. But unfortunately, I got way ahead of myself because there's no way for me to communicate any type of tone to the conversation. At this stage, it's similar to trying to communicate tone by e-mail or IM. I practiced what I was going to say in my head. This was going to be a tall order trying to put two relatively difficult sentences together in my head. I fired away (ps, this may not be written correctly bc the study guide I'm using is listen-only so I'm not sure how to spell certain words!):

ME: Mi scuzzi (excuse me)
HER: Si (yes)
ME: Le posso dire cualcozza? (Can I tell you something)
HER: Si (yes)
ME (pointing at my check): Nelle Stati Uniti, due litre de coke solo costa un euro!
(In the United States, two litres of coke only costs one euro!)
HER (with a perturbed look): Well, siamo en Italia (Well, we are in Italy).

ZING!!! She obviously thought I was complaining. But doing my best Larry David impression, I was determined to explain to her that I only told her because it was an interesting fact. This was going to be difficult.

ME: Allora, Senora, solo digolo era tropo caro perque interesante (I only say it's expensive because it is interesting).

She smiled and said "va bene", which means "it's okay" but I have no idea if she actually understood what I was trying to say!