a little more about my weekend....

ok so now i am in the student center at school.
no longer surrounded by creepy internet cafe creepers. so i can write more about some insights of the weekend instead of a blast-through itinerary.

thursday, i went out for the Roberto ride, which was lovely but still very hot.
the climb to Offida takes about twenty minutes at a moderate effort; i wanted to enjoy the scenery and didnt have anyone to attack, so what's the point. i stopped acouple of times to take pictures and some video (which i havent figured out how to post here, maybe youtube in the next couple of days).
after you reach the center of Offida, you have to climb some more. after the newer center of town (i remember it by the petstore) you start to a set of medium length, sharp rolling climbs that take you to Spinetolli Centro - actually past it, i think. this part of the ride is really lovely because you can see the road you took to get to Offida which is across the valley. you then descend out of town with a huge wall to your left. (the term Centro is the historical center of the town, usually marked as a piazza.) like most of the towns around here, it is built on a hill, so there is a massive wall that seems to rise out of sight and is dotted with houses and clothes hanging to dry and flowers and hundreds of years of humanity.
then come the switchbacks...
then first one comes up really fast and totally blind. i forgot about this first one and grabbed my brakes really hard, shifted my weight outside and leaned in hard. as i exited, i looked at my speedometer and was doing 25mph! (i thouhgt i scrubbed off more speed than that!)
the second one is built for speed and has enough room for rally cars to slide thourgh. it also has spectacular visibilty, which allows you to see how big your balls are. if there is no traffic coming up the hill and you cut in toward the apex as close as you can, you can feel your body drop, almost like you caught air off a BMX jump. i think exited that at about 32mph.
after that you get back on to the main raod and its like 108 for 20 or so km back to Ascoli.
but this part is no less interesting for one major reason, traffic.
people areound here KNOW how to drive around and near cyclists!! the main road, like i said, is like 108 (b/w newmarkt and durham); very little shoulder, vegetation grown very close to the raod, in short, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. however, when a car passes you, if you were to stretch out an arm, you wouldnt be able to touch the car going past. and that situation is the same even if there is traffic travelling both directions at the same time! it is truley amazing to not be heckled and bitched at for riding your bike on public roads.
and of the 9 or ten people i saw riding on thursday night, only two were wearing helmets- i was one of them.
so that was thursdays ride.


then we had to be at the bus at 7am, for a 5 hour ride to Sorento, on friday morning. uhhh....
by then i knew i was going to get a cold b-c the scratch at the back of my throat was still hanging tough.
the ride was long and borring; bet you could have guessed that. but parts of it were lovely. like all the tunnels and the landscape, and finally getting off the bus!
Pompei was, like i said in a previous post, a death march and i think what really took my cold from a 3 to a 9 (on a 1 to 10 scale of suckage). we were all somewhat dehydrated and exhausted after the tour. the tour itself was led by our art history teacher, Christina (?) who commuted from Rome to lead our bedraggled group.
pompei was nice but its just generally dusty and grey. it was also a tough mental exercise to try to recreate a giant city in you head when all you see is ruins. the majesty was lost on me, or maybe i just couldnt see it through my haze of suffering.
after that we went to Sorento- actually the town next door, Sant Angello- where we stayed in hotel over-run by british tourist. we ate dinner, we slept.
a note about the food; its good but i am not blown away by the culinary masterpieces that await you in every nook and cranny of every alley and back alley. the food here is like food anywhere, you can eat it. maybe i am just asying that b-c i am jonesing for a bacon blue cheese burger the size of my foot but, i have yet to blown away by the local culinary offerings.
so, Sorrento is a touristy town as was Amalfi. this does not detract from the beauty, but it does however subtract alot more euros from your wallet. i will let my pictures do the talking b-c the rest is just tourists looking confused, puffy, raw and sunburnt.

Sunday we went to Capri. this place is not only worth a completely separte paragraph but also an entire day of exploring. it was just a beautiful place that defies words. the water is blue and clear; when we were swimming - after the jellyfish stings- you could see the bottom but would have to dive down much farther than youd would think to touch the bottom. at Marina Piccola, i floated at the surface of the water and listened to the waves clink the rocks of the beach, the people jumping and splashing, boats. it was the closest i think any human can get to paradise.
in order to get to Marina Piccola, you have to hike up and over the middle of the island, past a 5-star plus a little 'L' for luxury hotel, shops (fendi, prada, blaine&harmot, 2 dolceandgabana's, and all the fanciest stores money can buy), and throngs of sweaty tourists. the best part is Via Krupp, which is a road/donkey-path built by a German (maybe a nazi) in order to connect his house to Marina Piccola. it consists of about 10 to 14 switch back turns and a ton of elevation change. Maybe google ould find you more specific data about it, but what i saw was just unbelievable; once again no words can describe it.
so after our swim (Charley and i shared bathing trunks all weekend, so i think that means we're dating) Cristian and i walked back up and over to the Centro or Piazzeta to meet Kai and Charley (Charley is the resident professors husband, and Kai is their 12 and half year old son) who had taken the bus back.
oh yeah, in there, during our privately charterd boat ride around the island (after we bought tickets to a mega tour, Cristian bargained a deal with a local fellow who ran a smaller tour company) i got stung by jellyfish on the foot, arm and leg. it hurt. but makes me way more badass than the rest of my groupmates!
that evening, Charley, Kai, Cristian and i met up and went to a very nice restaurant in Sorento where we continued to suffer - a joke we started during our lunch of octopus salad and fettecini in a creamy salmon sauce - suffer in the buddhist sense that everything is a form of suffering that purifies the soul (i think) - over local fare and wine until about midnight. the waiter took a shine to Kai and kept bringing him extra little peices of food and sweets.
the next day, we went to naples for two hours b-c everyone was sick, exhausted or both. the best thing about Naples was that we left two hours after we got there.

the bust ride home was about as good as the bus ride there; again the best part was geting off the bus.

the whole trip was lovely, hot, loud, tiring and beautiful. but all in all, it made the whole group appreciate Ascoli for its lack of tourism and choas.

wow! what a long post. i think i'll go food shopping b-c much like at home, i am always hungry, go ride a little and........ uh.... study.