June 7, 2005: I Am Not A Duck...
Venice to Lido delle Nazioni (Ferrara) in the Rain

A seaside resort is a sad place in the rain, all the umbrellas furled against the weather, the shutters closed, a society built on the worship of the sun prevented from doing so. I rode around soaking wet doing my grocery shopping, getting my tourist information, finding money, and finding shelter, pulling gloves off and back on again, finding that my helmet isn't quite waterproof, feeling that cold leaky feeling when you're not quite sure you're wet or it's just the temperature.

View of the Adriatic from the 6th floor of the Grande Hotel Nazioni

My old Gortex has absolutely had it - it's soaked through. Because of this I've found that the Olympia Moto Sports outfit is at least water resistant, because once I installed myself in the Grande Hotel Nazioni (well, it was grand about 50 years ago), I was quite dry.

Maybe I shouldn't have left Venice. Venice is supposed to be fabulous in the rain. Call me a spoiled California girl, okay, but especially in Italy where most everybody tailgates and even if the roads are 95% fabulously maintained there is that occasional pothole and the manic motorcyclists who pass on the white line down the middle straight atyour left handlbar and even some of the smaller cars do it, too. The best strategy is to stick to the right tire track of the vehicle in front of you (forget what you learned in motorcycle school) and let the maniacs who want to pass you pass you and scan your rear view mirror and get out of the way of those guys on the superbikes.

The water taxi ride from the Hotel Panada at St. Marco's was a sunny and warm and I was happy because it promised a beautiful day. But it was a lie.

Water taxi from St Marco's to Pz Roma

I started dreading this ride about 20 km into it when the mid-afternoon sky darkened on the long land bridge out of Venice, Highway SS11. So instead of heading straight down E55/SS309 to Ravenna I had the bright idea of turning inland toward the sun to the little town of Mira, then going south on SS516 toward Piove di Sacco and cutting over to again to the highway again at a place called Cornecchio, hopefully navigating around the rain.

Mira was absolutely charming but the rain threatened and I realized that it simply wasn't the kind of rain that one could ride around, so I headed south, fast. The road follows a canal lined by trees and big old houses, some of them agroturismos. The campground for Venice is here and, unlike many out-of-city camping spots, looks quite civilized with bus service right outside the gates, and boat service quite nearby.

It began to rain and so I pulled into a big TOTAL station with a car wash and a bar to check the oil and decide what to do about my route. I had a cappuccino at the bar and the barmaids laughed. One had been to London and spoke a little English. When I told them where I was going they had all kinds of advice for me and so did a workman who was drinking a Campari and Spumanti.

(For those of you who haven't experienced an Italian gas station bar, they're simply snack bars with zinc counters where the Italians order coffees or alcohol, toss them back quickly, and go to work again whether that's construction work or driving. Great idea, huh?)

They all agreed that the route I was planning to take was fairly ridiculous - it would take me forever - too many stop signs, too much traffic - so they advised that I backtrack and continue down the E55/SS309, which is straight straight straight so to get to Rimini in a couple of hours. I did, and it rained, and there were millions of trucks and two winds fighting - one racing from the plains of the Po Valley and the other from the Adriatic - and aggressive driving by people who wanted to get home for dinner and huge trucks, one I followed was from Austria, and it wasn't very much fun. I rode a hundred km or so and started looking for options and, after a stop for gas, chose the Lido delle Nazioni, a seaside resort that promised camping, bungalows, or an hotel.

At 6pm the tourist information booth was closed so I rode around the rainy, empty streets and found a grocery store (Market Beach) to buy some bread, ham, cheese, fruit, yogurt, wine, and juice. When I asked a clerk's advice on lodging the cashier, the stocker, and the produce woman (eerily, a dead ringer for Susan Sarandon), all consulted with one another and nixed the camping, also the beach bungalows, (because of the rain), finally resting on the Grande Hotel Nazioni on the lagoon and the beach. No English spoken, still we understood one another with the aid of some funny linguistic gymnastics and sign language.

Okay, the hotel it would be, and they also gave me the weather report for tomorrow (maybe rain, maybe no rain), and directions to the BancoMat because having spent 14.25€ on groceries (including a very nice bottle of Barbera d'Asti that would have cost 5 times as much in San Francisco) I was down to my last 10€.

As I sit at a table at the window of my room on the 6th floor of the Grand Hotel Nazioni I am glad I am not camping or in a bungalow on the beach because the lightening is piercing the sky and the wind is battering the glass doors and the sea is crashing on the rocks. Monica, who works here, has brought me a chocolate cake and some peaches and a liter of water and says she hopes for sun tomorrow for my ride to Rimini and Ancona, but I may have to stay another day because I am not a duck and I don't like riding in the rain!