Italia a duo

So its been a wild couple of days on the road with the cowboy.

After jetting to Milano, we pushed it north to the edge of the Alps, camping one night near a lake, mounting some mountains for breakfast and lunch the next day, and camping on a second, larger lake the second night. No days under 100 km. We also dropped in on a little bike shop looking for cycle caps and were welcomed like heroes. Trulz the spirit of bikelove is international,; the folks there at Bramati Point wouldnt let us leave without giving us a full team uniform - jersy and shorts, and a discount on some sweet campagnolo hats.

We then pushed it south to Venizia.

Let me warn the bicycle traveler to venice. Don't bring your god dammned bike. Its a beautiful city, though overrun by tourists to the point of feeling like disneyland, but wandering aimlessly between the canals and the tight winding streets is an unreal experience, one magnified by the fact we arrived at night. The downside of course is that every canal is bridged by a steeply arching bridge. Made of stairs. meaning portage. If you have ever portaged a fully loaded touring bike 40 times in 2 hours, you'll understand why I say leave your bike at home. If you haven't, you dont want to. 'the rats nest' is what we started calling the place. We ended the night camping it in a clump of bushes at the farthest end of venice before catching a ferry over to a peninsula that connects to the mainland on the other side of the bay, and riding towards a bike festival that tim had seen a poster for earlier in the week.

We arived at cyclomundi knowing it was a bike festival and nothing else. It turned out to be a touring festival. We rolled in on our loaded bikes and were once again the centre of attention - many photos were taken of us all loaded up, everyone wanted to hear our story, and we were asked to give a brief summary which was translated into italian for the crowd. They fed us, housed us, and treated us like gold. Even better, we got to meet a lot of experienced tourers - cats who had circled the border of europe entirely, had ridden from finland to greece, from italz to japan - we watched a presentation by a woman who had toured the entire world in 8 years.

Even better, we met an italian framebuilder at the festival who told me that he could re-weld the crack that had recently developped in my right seatstay. Stayed an extra day to have the job done and got to check out his sweet factory/workshop full of beautiful frames. Thanks Carlo.

Then eastward once more. Through Trieste and into Slovenia. A couple of truly badass thunderstorms. Then into Croatia. Two borders in one day. We're on the island of Cres now, on the Croatian coast (apparentlz the Holy Grail of bike touring... and so beautiful you believe it) planning our route southward. More dispatches as possible.

(ps, the balkans are pretty chill. No gun toting civil war grudgers so far, just really old ladies who feed us wine when we ask if we can fill up our water bottles)