Day 2: "You are Bike!"

Yesterday was a little lifetime in a day somehow: 100 kilometers, a Greek temple, counting 117 other cyclists on the road with us (almost all were fancy men in fancy Lycra), making a friend with one named Giovanni, our first night out at a proper restaurant, and for me, wasting away until 1am without sleeping. 

Learned there that a big meal of mussels and two glasses of wine at the normal Italian eating time (they didn't even open until 7:30pm) will ruin me. Eeking around on 5-hrs sleep today after a tortuous night has made me especially grateful for the ability to take it slow (it is Domenica afterall) and for Matthew's endless patience and care. 

It was amazing to see the big families with young children pouring into the restaurant at 8:45pm to start dinner. The children waved their pizza slices around and made squeaky noises just like kiddos in the states, but apparently putting the kids to bed early isn't a thing here. 

That stop for the Greek temple was for Poseidon, the God of the sea, and Matthew put it best: "the history has history here!", meaning that when the ancient Romans moved in they would have found EVEN MORE ancient Greek stuff left over. Like a temple. Incredible.  

On our ride yesterday we said "ciao!" to a cyclist who was going slow enough that even loaded us could pass him. He gave a hearty "ciao!" back and said some other Italian things. Of course which we couldnt understand. But riding at the same pace, we shouted back and forth a bit and we knew enough Italian to figure out he wanted to buy us a coffee. 

And so we made friends with Giovanni. He had 100 words of English and we had 30 words in Italian, and so we put our few belongings together and communicated like 3-year olds. This felt incredibly invigorating. We could point at things and say, "come sei dice..." and so I learned words for parts of the bike. 

We finished our coffees, thanked him, shook hands all smiles. He gave us a big thumbs up and as he left he said, "You are bike!" Indeed, the connection among cyclists breaks bounds of even language. 

Another favorite part of the day was a tall climb up to a sleepy hilltop town overlooking the ocean, then descending with switchbacks so packed the map looked like a bundle of string. The sun sparkled on the teal ocean below and we marvelled and slapped ourselves over how beautiful it was.