Travel Time: Ciao Italia !

June 1, 2005: San Francisco Int'l Airport de Luxe
June 2, 2005: London Heathrow Airport Gourmet
June 2, 2005: British Airways Flight 566
June 2, 2005: Hotel Villa Malpensa
June 3, 2005: Stop at Como by the Lake
June 3, 2005: Mandello del Lario and the Breva

June 1, 2005: San Francisco International Airport

At the new spa just inside the international terminal at SFO they're euiped to pamper. They'll give you a pedicure, manicure, foot massage, neck/back massage, and several other treatments for quite reasonable prices. I opted for the foot massage – heck, I had two hours before my flight so what better way to spend twenty bucks? (Had I known about the pedicure I wouldn't have bothered doing my own yesterday.) Then I floated down to Il Fornaio at the end of the terminal for a glass of Echelon Pinot Noir in peace and quiet – a long walnut bar separates you from the bustle and so it's just you and the opera music and the bartender with the sexy accent (Brazil?) and the very complicated beard pattern and an expansive view of the international terminal parking lot and the freeway far beyond. So the trip began very nicely and I'd only parted with about thirty dollars — no, I forgot to mention the 10 pack of San Francisco keychains to give as small mementos on my motorcycle trip around the Adriatic — so let's say forty bucks and I was on the plane.

I was lucky on the plane, too. An aisle seat with two thin, undemanding women in the center and window. Beside me was Teresa, a young woman anthropologist on her way to Barcelona for a week's vacation and then on to Kyrgyzstan to trek up to the mountains to monitor cattle grazing patterns and collect material for a global warming proof-piece. She works for a non-profit funded by the Christiansen foundation and normally studies textiles (she explained the process of making felt) but is branching out now into other areas. She gets to travel a lot for her job and her favorite place is Central America and Mexico's Copper Canyon, which makes me even more antsy to take a motorcycle ride there along the Ruta Maya. Soon! Soon! But then she said that her second favorite place was the American Southwest and that's been on my list, too.

We talked a lot about solo women travel and customs and malaria pills and the weird things that you just have to go with, like, she said, don't you just hate it when they do something like bash a goat over the head with a rock and serve you the eyeballs because you're the guest of honor?

Yeah...I just hate that.

June 2, 2005: London Heathrow Airport

The scene at London Heathrow sure has improved in the decade or so since I'd last had a layover there. Terminal 1 stretches on and on possibly 50 restaurants – grills and bars and cafes of all sorts and an international health food smoothie and salad place (and the Burger King). Most attractive was the seafood restaurant smack in the middle of the floor with piles of fresh seafood under glass Thirty more bucks (or was it Euros?) later I had happily consumed a sample platter and a nice glass of dry French white.

Later I plopped myself down at a crowded bar to watch the gate announcement board (they don't announce them, it seems, until the last possible minute). The man on my right was about 70 and wasted no time in flirting uncontrollably. He was absolutely charming, really, Russian with sparkling blue eyes and dressed crazily in a surfboard patterned Tahitian style shirt in earth colors and a bright white cap with black polka dots. "I must tell you I can see that you are a woman of adventurous spirit," he professed in a deep voice and heavy accent. Hmmm...did he guess that from my camera cases, laptop, motorcycle boots? Oh well, twenty minutes later I'd be on a plane to Milan. "I am a famous author," he confessed, as if I had asked. "Here is my name and book title, you will see." He wrote his name for me, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "Eugene," he said. "Where are you from?" he asked, one of the two questions he posed to me in our entire 20-minute affair. "Ah, San Francisco. I knew Ginsberg, you know, all the poets there long ago. We were friends."

Later I looked him up and he is indeed a famous author. This review just about sums up what I determined about him in our 20 minutes together:

Yevtushenko's real life strains credulity. A literary superstar in Russia since his teens, he attracts stadium crowds of up to 30,000 for his poetry readings. He moonlights as an actor, director, screenwriter and political activist. And his passion for life includes filling significant parts of it in the company of women and good wine. Appropriately for someone whose achievements seem larger than life, he is, at six feet, three inches, larger than most people around him, dresses in an eclectic, electric manner that would do the lead singer of a rock band proud, and, with his famous piercing blue eyes undimmed at age 61, has just as much stage presence. As befits someone who has spent close to half a century being acclaimed, Yevtushenko has an ego in keeping with his achievements. "I am the spiritual grandchild of Pushkin," he says, cheerfully likening himself to the man generally regarded as Russia's greatest writer.

June 2, 2005: British Airways Flight 566

On the London to Milan route I scored a window seat in order to gawk at the landscape — the English Channel, then a city that might have been Brussels, then through the rich farm country of northwestern Germany and eastern France, and beyond the majestic Swiss Alps rising first in brown jagged spikes from the plains and then higher and higher and covered in snow and with their own little weather systems, clouds clinging to crevices spooned out and crumbling around the edges, some formations chopped out vertically like a giant axe had been taken to the earth, others smooth and graceful and I wanted to ski there and saw a ski village far below that I think I must have visited when I lived in Lyon years ago on the weekend when I would go to the French Alps or in the warm months to the higher Swiss mountains and even Mt Blanc to ski on the lovely icy glacier.

The captain announces that we are approaching the Po Valley and fasten your seatbelts because we will land in 20 minutes and then there is the graceful curving snake of the Po River that empties out into the Adriatic Sea with which I will become intimately familiar during this next five weeks.

June 2, 2005: Hotel Villa Malpensa

At the elegant Hotel Villa Malpensa just a two minute shuttle ride from the airport to an ancient villa-turned-hotel and I have an aperitif of Campari and tonic with lemon just as I like it, a wireless connection to the Internet, dinner of Petrale Sole with fresh Asparagus accompanied by a Pinot Grigio-Chardonnay blend followed by a chocolate cake confection spiced with pepper and a sweet digestif and then some talk about motorcycling – men, they use their arms, whoosh whoosh they muscle the bike right and left with their biceps and women, whoosh whoosh we finesse the curves with our curves, our hips. We all laugh, no no, they say, si si, I say, and they are clearly shy and so then it's bed, sleep, blissful sleep until the 9am wakeup call when the porter will drive me himself to Mandello because with all my gear it is just too complicated to take the buses and trains.

June 3, 2005: Como

It takes an hour to drive from Milan to Mandello. Corrado and I stopped in Como to have lunch and kill some time as I was not expected until 2:30. As it was a bank holiday there were lots of tourists, Italian and foreign, strolling around the lake having gelato and getting on boats and even sea planes. I love this area and I couldn't wait to start motorcycling around it.

At Lake Como, in the outfit I'll be wearing for a month: black, black, and more black. On the bike it's all white. Go figure.

June 3, 2005: Mandello del Lario

In Mandello I found Alis the same as I had the last time, in 2001, on the phone, smoking, and having discussions about parts and repairs with the mechanics. Always doing several things at once, I just like to watch her as she juggles tasks and groans and laughs. I don't know Alis very well but she has that easy manner that makes you feel like an old friend.

The Breva was all set up for me and I was anxious to ride it. Soon! Luckily, the owner of the B&B was picking up his bike shortly and we'd ride together. Unluckily, the B&B was only 5 km from the shop. It was a nice twisty Italian hills road though and I got to test its reponsivness (without my luggage), which was quite nice and better than I'm used to with the touring bikes I ride. The Breva is low and slightly sporty, with the pegs and shifter back farther than I'm used also. The handlebars are straight, yet they're not proportioned so that you have to lean down too far. I found that I need only rest my hands lightly on them, something I hadn't expected.

I followed Massimo up a winding road high above Mandello and around one final hair-raising hairpin turn going straight uphill and then we turned into a steep driveway and there was my room with a balcony and view over the lake. Whew!

That evening was dinner with friends of Alis from Australia and England, here on tour to motorcycle, all interesting, well traveled people with many stories to tell. It was a bit of a wild night, and since a picture's worth a thousand words here's a small photo gallery of the evening. (Needless to say I did NOT ride the bike back up the hill.)

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