To Margherita di Savoia

April 27, 2023

OK. Enough crisis management. Let’s get back on tour. First though, we both want to express our deep gratitude for all the expressions of sympathy, tips and ideas, and offers of assistance that have come in through comments here and direct outreach. This is such a special community and we feel fortunate to count you all as part of our family. Thank you.

So we have a plan: we’re going to use Xoom, a cash transfer option integrated with PayPal, to wire ourselves a cash transfusion for pickup in Manfredonia, our destination for tomorrow night. We’ve learned that Xoom will let you send up to €999 for cash pickup in a single transaction, and permits one transaction per day up to some monthly limit; and the cash can be picked up at any Ria location (another new business entity we’d never heard of before), generally within minutes of the authorization. There are thousands of Ria locations in Italy, and by chance there’s one within a few blocks of our hotel in Manfredonia. After that the next one isn’t until we reach Termoli about a week later, when we can do this again, and then just Xoom and Ria-hop our way to Bologna.

In the meantime we still have the use of our credit cards, because we haven’t cancelled them yet. We’re monitoring our account several times a day for fraudulent activity, but we’re three days in now and it’s looking more like the wallet and cards really are lost rather than stolen with malicious intent.

So at the start of Day 3 of the rest of our lives, that’s the plan. What could go wrong? In the meantime, let’s get back on the road!

Today’s ride is super-easy, one of the least difficult of the entire tour: 28 miles, mostly downhill, with only a few incidental rises on the way. Our end point is Margherita di Savoia, a small seaside resort on the Adriatic coast. We leave right at 10, the checkout time, with the idea that we’ll get to Margherita early and then Rachael can phone the Xoom customer service line to get clarification on a few points before we send our first transaction. She tried to call this morning, but their office hours are on Pacific Standard Time and they were closed then.

We’re met on the way out at the gate by our host Angela, who expresses her sympathies again and says she’ll keep her fingers crossed for us. A fit-appearing woman, she tells us that she does a bit of cycling herself - in fact, she’s a triathlete.

Surprisingly, the only other guests at the B&B are leaving at the same time. Surprising, because they also are leaving by bike. They’re from Netherlands and on their own tour, biking their way home from Greece. More surprisingly, they’ve got the same destination today, Margherita; and beyond that they’re also biking around the Gargano promontory, as we plan to do; so there’s a chance we’ll see them again. They don’t seem inclined to linger and chat though, and after a perfunctory exchange are underway. They get off to a slow start, pushing their heavy-looking loads and e-bikes up the very steep lane from the B&B. He pushes his up, then looks back to see that she’s stuck in the middle of the road and unable to push up herself because it’s too steep and her cleats slide on the pavement. He walks back down to help her out, and soon their e-bikes kick into gear and they’re off.

We push the first bit too, partly because the first part is so steep, partly because the next bit is one way and we’re swimming upstream, and partly because I need to stop for a last look over the edge at the impressive views.

The views from Minervino Murge really are impressive. Its nickname is the Balcony of Puglia. Here we’re looking north toward Monte Vulture, with what looks like a second volcano off in the distance.

I was surprised to see this photo when it came off the camera. I wasn’t wearing my glasses (but they’re not lost!) and hadn’t seen what a forest of wind generators is out there.

The first half of the ride is excellent and delightful as we drop a thousand feet in the first ten miles, nearly all a steady, gradual descent on a rough farming road. The scenery is interesting and attractive as we drop though a shallow ravine, the walls of which look like they’ve been quarried for stone in the past.

Dropping toward the sea. The high ground ahead is the rocky and rugged Gargano promontory that we’ll reach tomorrow night.

Much of the next ten miles looks like this. Not a bad way to ease back into the tour, eh?

We’re dropping through a narrow but shallow ravine.

I sums this is an old quarry site, but that untouched rock shelf is interesting.

Poppies abound. This feels like the ideal time to be here.

I almost stopped to photograph this colorful house. I was glad to find out later that Rachael snagged it with her GoPro.

Approaching Canosa di Puglia, a place that looks well worth a look. We’ll have to put it on the itinerary if we’re ever back this way. It’s an ancient town, allegedly founded by Diomedes, one of the heroes of Homer’s Iliad.

Our excellent farm road comes to an end just beneath Canosa di Puglia at its junction with SP231. The first half of the ride was idyllic, but the second isn’t. In fact it’s pretty crappy, one of the least pleasant riding experiences of the tour. We’re on busy and shoulderless SP231 for a couple of miles, looking forward to our turnoff onto another minor road; but in fact that road stinks too, with a surprising amount of traffic - including some very dirty and uncomfortable traffic, a series of gravel trucks shuttling to and from a nearby quarry. The ride as a whole deserves no photographs, and gets none. There is video though, including of us passing those Dutch tourists we finally catch up with on the only climb of the day.

Video sound track: Non è la stessa cosa, by Fabrizio Moro

There’s a small hiccup on our road to fiscal recovery when we check in at our B&B and discover something we hadn’t noticed before - it’s cash only. Not the best news when we have only €100 to our name, but fortunately it’s dirt cheap and sets us back only €35. Phew! Our pleasant host doesn’t have change for a fifty, so she tells us to just leave it on the table when we leave. Rachael heads out to the store later, buys a yogurt for breakfast tomorrow for €1.10 to make change, so now we’re down to our last €63.90.

We’ve been awake since 4 AM, so it’s a good use of the afternoon to take a nap. A few hours later we’re out the door for a walk through town and along the shore, getting a look at the nearly deserted resort and on the hunt for an open restaurant. It’s still very early in the season and nearly everything is still shuttered. We’re starting to get anxious when a woman looks out the door of a restaurant we’re eying the menu of and waves us in. It’s nearly empty save for ourselves and a few other diners that look like family or friends. It’s an appealing scene, watching parents and grandparents watch over a toddler pedaling his wagon around the room and under a table that barely clears his head.

And the meal’s fine too. Rachael has a fish fillet, I have spaghetti with clams, and we share plates of grilled eggplant and focaccia. And fortunately they take plastic when we leave, something we foolishly didn’t think to ask about first; otherwise we’d be down to just about our last euro. Fortunately, we should be made whole again tomorrow in Manfredonia.

Afterwards we walk next door to the gelateria for desserts (takes plastic also!), sit outside to polish them off, and then walk back to the room.

I was taking this photo when I was startled to see that I was standing in the goal and a ball was coming my way.

Surprising how oblivious those pigeons seem.

On the Adriatic - miles of straight beach and sand ahead, our route for tomorrow’s ride.

Calling it a day. Back to the room to order ourselves some cash.

Before dinner Rachael called Xoom to clarify the few points we had questions about, and all sounds good. So what could go wrong with our plan? I settle down to dish ourselves up a heap of cash but soon find there are still a few boulders in the road. First, there’s the scare that when I try to create the transaction it ends with the requirement of information from our debit card, which we have not got. That wasn’t the plan or expectation. We’ve linked into our bank, and I’d understood that it was just a straight cash transfer. There’s a brief moment of panic about that, until I start tweaking the request and stumble upon the issue. I’ve designated the withdrawal currency as being in euros, but apparently that kicks it out of the direct withdrawal loop. I’m fine if I specify withdrawal in USD, something that I confirm once I’ve got the Xoom help desk on the line.

And why is the Xoom help desk on the line? Because there’s a second Boulder in the road. When I come to the page where I enter the ‘contact’ information (if you’re new to Xoom, contact is the payment recipient), I get a popup saying to phone them if I’m having trouble entering contact information. The only trouble I’m having is that this damn popup won’t go away and I can’t proceed past it.

It takes a pair of phone conversations to clarify what’s happened. The first rep says to try closing out, maybe shutting down the iPad, and starting over. I’d thought of and tried that myself already, so that’s not the solution. They suggest instead that I try again on a different device, and I agree to give that a try and we end the call.

So I try again with Rachael’s iPad, and the same thing happens. It’s not the device then, so maybe it’s my account. Maybe I’ve tripped something by all the different trial transactions I’d initiated trying to understand how it works. The second phone call answers the question though. After I walk through the entire scenario with the service rep, he puts me on hold to call their tech support team. He’s back shortly with the news that I’m not the first to report this problem. It’s a software bug apparently introduced with a new release, and they’re busily trying to repair it. There’s nothing to be done in the meantime, but they hop it will be repaired tomorrow. Frustrating of course, but I’ll note that we’ve had the Xoom help desk on the phone three times now, and all three encounters were excellent. It’s one of the best over-the-phone customer service experiences we’ve had.

So at the end of the day there’s still no cash on the way but we aren’t panicking yet. We still have €63.90, and our room in Manfredonia is prepaid.

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Ride stats today: 27 miles, 500’; for the tour: 761 miles, 42,400’

Today's ride: 27 miles (43 km)
Total: 795 miles (1,279 km)

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