Day 18 { june 12th 2002 }
“Flatland and stress”
So, what happens when cyclists in the middle of nowhere can’t find a place to sleep when it is getting dark? Right, they follow the guide in a car on a highway!
We reluctantly leave the campingground the next morning. The sun is already beating down on us. This will be tough.
130 km’s to go straight through the Po-planes. Our target for today; Modena.
Let me mention it once more; the landscape is flat. Very flat. Agriculture is the main source of income in this part of Italy.
Hence the vast number of meadows.
Morale goes down after some hours. We drag ourselves over the endless tar roads. At one point, we encounter a road which has been ‘scalped’; no asphalt, just rubble. A large truck and a bulldozer on tracks block our passage.
We bypass these ‘wheeled walls of steel’ and push our bikes through the sand for about half a mile, muttering and grumbling...
The heat is shimmering in the distance. We take turns cycling up front. We don’t speak a lot.
“...feel our spirits revive”
We rarely encounter villages were we can re-supply our water and bread (most stores are closed from 12 till 4 in the afternoon).
Some villages are shabby looking, and one can only wonder who on earth wants to live over there.
At a given moment, we pass the mighty Po river and end up in the village of Guastalla. We need water and something to eat but all the stores are closed.
So we decide to wait till 4 and have some icecream in the meantime.
Once it’s time, we go to the supermarket near the railway
station and feel our spirits revive a bit when there is plenty to eat once more.
“...we head in the wrong direction”
We head off for an alternative road described by Paul Benjaminse. And that is where things go wrong... Because of faulty thinking, we
head in the wrong direction. We get completely desoriënted. We ask several people for directions, but although their intentions are good,
we can’t make head nor tail of it.
Eventually, Bianca manages to trace the error.
2 hours have passed by and dusk is kicking in: no
camping in sight.
We search and search, but in vain. Time passes by.
We have to switch on our lights. Cars whizz by in the meantime while we stand alongside a busy road. Two shabby looking cyclists pass by from the opposite direction.
I volunteer to ask for directions at a neighbouring house. A man opens the door and at first, I ask him if we can put up our tents at his place.
“No”. But he is willing to bring us there. “Aha, so it must be nearby then”, I think.
“Wait a moment, I'll be right back”, he answers.
To our amazement, he opens the gate, walks to a shed, drives with his car to the gate and sais (leaning out of the window): “follow me”.
Ehr...
“Where the hell is that guy leading us?”
It means we have to cycle alongside a very busy motorway, for several miles in the dark, trying to catch up with a car!
A strange spectacle unfolds; Rick races up front (quickly creating a gap of about 500 meters) desperately trying to follow the car.
Then there’s me, in the middle, pumping out a respectable 30km’s an hour. Behind me is Bianca, peddling her guts out.
Because Rick is going for an ‘all out dash’, I decide to stay close to her. Where the hell is that guy leading us?
“Expensive hobby”
Finally the man stops and gives us final directions as to where the camping is. Rick is still a bit angry, Bianca is stressed, and
I feel like an adrenaline pumped kid who just stumbled into an adventure!
We get lost once more, but end up at a very large Holiday Inn hotel.
It’s almost half past 10. We are TIRED.
I volunteer to go inside and ask if they can make a special price for us (I want to tuck in asap, no matter what the price is...)
When I come back, R&B decline the offer. Well, they are right... It would be too expensive. We head off.
“The asphalt jungle starts right here”
So, with the directions given to me by the receptionist (plan B) we end up at a busy roundabout at the end of a highway exit. The artificial lighting casts an eerie orange gloom over the place. No bicycle-lane whatsoever. This is dangerous. The asphalt jungle starts right here. But guess what? About 200 meters away is the camping, conveniently situated alongside a highway, neatly tucked into a traffic clover.
After we’ve paid the concierge (a guy who seems to be glued to a huge sofa, suffering from the ‘Icanonlydothingsslowly’ diseas) we head to a designated terrain to set up camp.
“They look like ghosts”
It’s very dark. The tents are pitched while using our torches. In the meantime, we hear large trucks whizzing and roaring by on the other side of an earthen wall, while the highwaylights turn the sky into a surrealistic scene. Bright lights, big city. It’s never quiet here.
Some trailer-people look at us while we complete the last feat of that day. They look like ghosts, sitting on their garden furniture at a table only lit by a flickering flame in a red glass. The people can hardly be spotted, but you feel their eyes poking your back.
My legs, arms, neck and face are sticky because of the sweat, sun-tan and dirt. Within 15 minutes, I’ve enjoyed a shower, put in my earplugs (a standard anti-Rick measure by now :) and float into the night. We are exhausted. Goodnight. “Euh..Marcel? You forgot your watch, your hat
and wallet in the shower. Here they are.”. “Thanks Rick” (one day, I will forget my own butt).
Goodnight.
