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June 21 Milano-very close to Milano :(

Woops. Neither of us heard Nate’s 6:30 alarm so we ended up waking up at 9:30. So much for an early start to today’s madness. The first thing we did was to make sure we cashed in on our free breakfast. With not much time to go, we had to air up the tires, pack all of our stuff, and look up different directions to a bike shop since the one I found was actually a motorcycle store. Not everything fit in our combination of the bob trailer and panniers, so we ended up throwing some things away. The bob trailer tire did not air up like we’d hoped, but with check-out looming we decided to just ride to the nearest bike shop. Little did we know that trying to find a bike shop would be an all-day adventure. We set out in the direction (that we thought) the desk attendant sent us. We ended up in a town called Gallarate and asked a couple people where a bike shop or Lake Maggiore was. No one seemed to know. We ended up finding an outdoor superstore at about 12:30. It was just too bad that they take a siesta from 12:15-3:00. We decided to wait and ended up catching some z’s in the alley by the store (by accident). When it finally opened, Nate went in while I waited with all of our stuff. It turns out that the best the store had to offer us was a less than adequate bike pump and none of the other parts we needed. Being a little disheartened, we decided to make the trek (on our low tire) to Lake Maggiore. So we set off in the directions the signs pointed, and four hours later we were in the very same place somehow. Our search for good directions, a map, and Lake Maggiore turned up nothing. However, we finally found a map which pointed us in the direction we had come from that morning. When we got there, though, the highway looked much too large for us to ride, so we found backroads that snaked their way towards where we were going. Before every major roundabout and T, we would pull over to look at our map. On one such occasion, a nice old man who spoke no English at all, pulled over to help us. He pointed us in the direction we had come from and said we could get on the busy highway we had been avoiding. We made it three towns into his directions and decided to stop for the night. We looked on the map and sure enough, we were about an hour away from our first hotel. I finally know why absolute value is an important mathematical concept. Even though we only made it about 10 k up the road, we actually rode about 40 k today, and no one can tell me that our progress was any less than that! Today we will get a good night’s sleep and since we have even seen signs for Lake Maggiore in this town, we will hopefully make it by nightfall. The first order of business, though, is to find a bike shop. Our little BOB will not make it one more day on its tire.

~40k

Mo