June 8, 2005: Bright Sunshiny Day

Yay! A bright, sunshiny day...singing the song this afternoon into my helmet, "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone....it's gonna be a bright, bright, bright, sunshiny day!"

The view from the Grande Hotel Nazioni was as it should be for this sun-worshipping commune. This morning I jogged on the beach - a ritual I hold to on Baker Beach in San Francisco, but am hard-pressed to continue when I travel - for the first time on this trip. The locals were out collecting mussels dislodged from the rocks during last night's storm, and a fisherman caught an eel - common here - about a foot long as I passed. I stopped to watch him reel it in. It was all muscle, like a snake, and it fought, but lost, and will be his lunch.

The sea laps like the Mediterranean here, there is no huge tide pull and the dislodged mussels lie among glistening green seaweeds and bleached white shells, dying because they are gathered and also because the waves are too small to pull them back into the breakers.

Wandering town - a beach town - colorful, busy with the business of pleasing tourists from Italy and Germany, Great Britan and America. The European men are all in speedos no matter what their shape or size. Likewise for the women - tiny bikinis, whether they're 18 or 80. Tanning is an art, here. A meditation.

Across the from the beach is the town with its cafes and restaurants and shops where you can buy blow-up rafts, flip flops, sarongs, fish nets, hats, shorts, bathing suits, suntan lotion. The air is clean and tangy with salt and minerals and the sun is bright and glittering from every surface - the sea, the cement, the tile, the asphalt. It is only early June and the heat hasn't really come yet, the breeze is cool and I am comfortable walking in flip-flops to the tourist office, the Internet cafe, and back on the beach again to the Grande Hotel Nazioni to pack up and ride in the bright sun. I like these beach towns before the season - everyone is relaxed and slow and not tired of tourists. In August this place must be a madhouse. Europeans get a month to 6 weeks off each year and they all flock south. I'm glad I'm here in June.

This area is in the province of Emilia-Romagna, the Parco Delta del Po, which is a rich fluvial plain that feeds the Adriatic Sea and its abundant life - bird watching is popular here (Flamingos migrate here each April to October), harons, avocets, gulls, and other birds feed here, too. Everywhere I see bicycles atop cars, and bicyclists on routes through the flat valley and estuaries. The woman at the tourist office gave me a brochure of "7 itineraries cycling tourism" and another of the "Strada dei Vini e dei Sapori," which is the wine and gourmet food route.

Highway SS309, which was so tortorous yesterday, was lovely today, beautiful, bellisimo! I crossed bridges - little rivers feeding the sea feeding the grasses feeding the birds feeding the fish...

I tried the Autostrada for a while - fast but unsatisfying - so returned to the Route Adriatico and navigated through seaside villages that had been built hundreds and hundreds of years ago and built upon and built upon until now there are Agip gas stations and SuperMercados and businesses of all sorts from cafes and restaurants to car dealerships, from hair salons

to insurance brokers and always the signs to the Mare, the sea, the beach, the camping.

South, south, warmer, sunnier, faster, the motorcycle and I become one and I am following Italian motorcyclists splitting lanes through traffic, jumping ahead to the front of the queue at lights, and I know I have become an Italian motocicliste when I forget that I am riding and then look down and I'm going nearly 150, passing traffic, moving left to pass, then right, left, weaving, dancing on the autostrada and through town.

The Breva likes 6K rpms, she's responsive at 5K at high speeds, 4K at low speeds, in 2nd, 3rd gear. 5th is for the autostrada, for the 130 and above clicks. I make time, but I can still look around, and I don't get tired. It's a comfortable bike, more comfortable than I thought it would be since I'm used to cruisers. And she makes a great rumbling noise, low and strong.

Ahead and to the east is a huge cathedral complex and so I turn off and wind up curvy roads, hairpin turns, still one with the bike until I finally find Loreto, which turns out to be a famous site for worship and healing. Parking the bike outside the city I am not prepared for the throngs of tourists inside - busloads of them come to worship or ask for mercy - in the literature - badly translated - I get that this is where it's supposed that the remains of Mary rest. THE Mary. And that people who are on the spiritual healing circuit - Lourdes and etc. - come here, too.

It's fabulous, all stone and mosaic and stained glass. Thousands of years of effort - time and money - spent on building a structure and a philosophy. When I pass though the inner sanctum to see the main shrine I am astounded - it looks like the black shrine of Vishnu I saw in South India in 2001, in Tamil Nadu, and then I start looking around at the structure, the icons, and they are eerily similar. The outside is different but inside it's the same - all color and incense and prostrations and then you finally get to see the idol high above and protected by glass and decorated with flowers - and it gets to come out in a procession each year - wheeled around in the town square and people go into a trance and start speaking in tongues and get healed. Jesus, Mary, Vishnu, Shiva, Buddah, Allah...when you travel it all gets so confusing.

And then I am back on autostrada and suddenly I see the Swiss Alps and I think, oh shoot, I've gone north instead of south! But there are snow-capped mountains in the South of Italy; I've never seen them before, they're fantastic and I want to stop - where is the Vista Point? - there isn't one - this is Italy and when you're driving you're driving, not looking at mountains.

So east of Pescara, where I am staying in a fabulous suite at the Alba Hotel for 70 Euros a night (see accommodations) because it started raining again after this mostly sunny day - thunder and lightening outside again - I hope this only happens at night - there are fabulous Alps and I want to turn inland and explore the mountains of the Marche and south. Italy is full of surprises. Every time I'm here I see something else around which I need to plan an entirely new trip.