May 15, 2023
Now to plan D on a Bluebird Day.
Parma to Pontremoli
I found a bike shop not far from our Air bnb and successfully navigated there using my new friend google maps. The guy in the bike shop couldn’t have been more friendly. He put it straight up on the stand gave the wheel a twirl and a poke and delivered some bad news. ‘Mondo’, my bike has a serious injury, not fatal but definitely an issue. I have a crack in the wheel rim and 2 spokes about to pop. He does the best he can as he doesn’t have a wheel to fit my bike. He thinks with gentle riding, praying and luck I should manage the last week of this trip. He removes the tube without splattering himself with the sealant and asks me if I’d like to keep it tubeless when he replaces the tyre. I offer to pay double if he could put a tube in instead. Finally I’m back to two tubed tyres.
After dodging rain clouds for the last few days we wake to a beautifully sunny still day. As Franklin described it “It’s a bluebird day”. He was somewhat surprised we had not heard of it before, as it was apparently a classic Aussie expression that his daughter Katie, who lives in Australia, had told him. I think rip snorter, bottler or cracker are the top three candidates but bluebird? I don’t think we even have bluebirds.
We are up to Plan D after deciding to change our route yet again. There’s two days of heavy rain forecast, the epicentre of which is likely to be directly over the area we were heading for further East. Instead we change tack and head south towards the Ligurian Sea. That also changes the topography just a tad. We’ve got some big hills to get over, much to John’s chagrin.
By the time my bike is patched up, we grab breakfast and provisions for the day, it’s another tardy start almost certainly guaranteeing a late finish again. Getting out of Parma is no easy chore with busy roads, little shoulder and Italian drivers that by law must hold a mobile phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Having left the city it’s again quiet roads and tracks for an hour or so until the first climb, a lazy 900 metre jobby before dropping down into a valley and then two more smaller climbs before we hopefully see the coastline.
Lunch at the summit of the first climb is our traditional bread rolls prosciutto and cheese with a bottle of coke. It’s actually quite warm which feels so good. Almost all the traffic on the climb has been bikers, mostly pretending they’re in the Moto GP.
The last two climbs had a more forgiving gradient than the first and the views were again spectacular. It was indeed a bluebird day. I spent half of the last climb chatting to an English bloke who stayed regularly with a mate that lived in these parts and was just doing a lazy 120 kilometre loop that had 3200 metres of climbing. This was also his last hill.
There was a bar right at the top that was about to close, but not before Franklin ordered three beers. They were well earned and despite the rule of no beers until the last ten kilometres an official exemption was retrospectively given.
After climbing most of the day, a screaming downhill on perfectly surfaced roads is the highly anticipated reward for all that effort. For me it was a whimpering downhill as I nursed Mondo gingerly downhill. I wasn’t game to go over twenty five k’s for fear of my rim exploding a là the tubeless incident on day 1. That seems so long ago now but still lingers painfully in my memory. John and Franklin waited patiently for me at the first town over the hill. They’ve picked Pontremoli as our end point which is a further five kilometres away. They fly down in record time whilst me and my Zimmer frame tootle our way to the bed and breakfast they have already found in my absence.
It’s another late finish to one of the best days cycling of the trip. Pontremoli is a very old town. Our apartment is on the top floor of an 18th century building overlooking a small square. Theres a pasticeria and a little trattoria that we eat at straight away as our place is not quite ready. No one speaks English and the limited blackboard menu has many words we don’t recognise. We’re too tired to use google translate so we let the bar owner decide what to serve up. It was an odd mix with a delicious vegetable frittata, a potato bake, some undercooked chips in a paper cup and a big plate of extra salty whitebait that desperately needed a sauce. Franklin and I had a glass of local red that our guy enthusiastically talked up, and watched excitedly as to my reaction to the tannin explosion that was happening in my mouth. A close inspection of the bottle label revealed it was a sister winery to Chateaux de Wagga Wagga. Definitely a wine to put down and walk away from.
Tomorrow we had scheduled a rest day anyway, but as it turns out there’s heavy rain forecast so we’ve decided to head to Lucca on a train and spend the day there. I’m hoping I can get a new wheel there as I’m not confident my current one has much life left.
Today's ride: 88 km (55 miles)
Total: 1,438 km (893 miles)
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11 months ago
11 months ago
650B is between 26" and 700C. It would seem that this wheel size has not become popular in the area where you are now. Did they mention the wheel size when they sold you the bike?
11 months ago
11 months ago
11 months ago
This might be a stupid comment and something that you’ve already done, but try a shop that sells/specializes in mountain bikes, 650b / 27.5 is much more common for mtb’s, even in Europe, than for road bikes.
11 months ago
11 months ago