Italy By Bicycle, Sola -- My summer tour

Hi blogger world. It's been a while. I'm well, of course, and wanted to share this li'l piece I wrote for the blog SaltCycle about my short bike tour in Italy last summer. Check it out:

Tales from the Top Tube: Italy By Bicycle, Sola.

The first night on my bike I slept in a little trench on the retained side of a retaining wall. It had poured rain for three hours, the nearby ocean dumping its contents onto the coast. I was exhausted. It was around 1 AM (I sat out much of the rain under a bridge), I had just biked through the treacherous sprawling city of Genova, Italy, and the campground signs I had followed up a big hill and past an eerie cemetery led me to a very closed “terreno per campeggio.” Not feeling up to sneaking in on my first night, I opted to riding further up the hill, battling the overwhelming desire to drop right where I was, and not exactly sure what I was looking for. A few hundred meters along I saw the retaining wall and the overhanging trees. Perfect. I tossed my paniers onto the 4 or so foot wall, laid out my tarp, took off my wet shoes and socks, and curled up inside my sleeping bag, half of the tarp folded over me. Loud raindrops dripped onto the tarp. I was asleep in seconds. 

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Being a girl, etc

[this blog is something I wrote for another blog I'm part of, SaltCycle.com] 

In 6th grade I was playing goalie at recess when I got hit in the face with a soccer ball. You know that feeling, a sharp throb prickling like thousands of needles. The numbing sting made my eyes water and lip quiver. But I didn’t cry. There were boys around, including the one who kicked the ball and I knew I’d get more respect or maybe less crap from the boys if I didn’t cry. [click more for more]

Pics phrom phone update

My brother got married in SF in August so my whole family minus one bro-in-law went out for the wedding. It was spectacular. On our last day there we rented bikes (like 12 or so of us) and rode them across the bridge. SO epic. Doing things like that in huge groups is insane. I was pulling my baby nephew and niece in a trailer the whole time. Fun and tiring and good and happy and I love my family.

A week's adventure by bike - Italy

(I know the pictureless paragraphs look boring, but the words tell of all sorts of beauty. So take heart. Pictures will come soon.)

It has only been one week since I left my adopted family in Savignone to venture off by bicycle. I've met some great people and seen some beautiful land.

It was really hard to say goodbye to the family I was staying with for two weeks. I blinked back tears (sneakily) as we drove away from the farm to the train station, Claudio waving goodbye from the driveway. I less sneakily blinked back tears at the station as I said goodbye to Renza. What wonderful parents. Marta and I took the trenino, a tiny train, to Genova, and bought some paniers and a helmet and a few other bikey things at this euro-outdoorsy place called Decathlon. We loaded up my bags, I gave her my trusty green backpack and told her to love it, then after one last gelato together we said goodbye. I love that family so much.

I hung out In Genova for too long because there was a cool "manifestazione" going on. Ten years ago when there was a G8 meeting in Genova a young man was killed by the police during a protest. So last Saturday there was a huge gathering of all types of beautiful alternative Italians and they sang songs, danced, gave speeches, etc. Cool. I ended up playing

Bike tour through Europe! Go!

Check out the cute little old bike I bought today for my tour. I think it'll be a good companion on the road. Let's hope. That link will bring you to a SLC bike blog I am a part of (check out the "who we are" tab to see some of the other contributors). Wish me luck family and friends. I'll update again when the first few days of my bike adventure have passed! Ciao!

Savignone, Italy; The End of Part 1

It’s been about 2.5 week since I last posted and many wonderful things have happened. It is hard to make an update covering that much time so I’ll post some pics, write about them, and hope that this covers a lot.

I spent 2 weeks in Bernareggio, near Milan (Milano). I wrote about the first week in my last post, and the second week went by incredibly fast. I was teaching tiny tiny kids, and this is a picture that one of them made for me. It say 'Gessi da Gabri' which is 'Jessie by Gabri' (Jessie, spelled as you would in Italian, is Gessi. They don't use the letter J. G makes a J sound when followed by an E or an I. Italian is cool). I liked working with the little kids. I didn't think I'd be good at it because

Week One in Bernareggio, Italy

Blogs are funny because they have to start somewhere. I guess I’ll start with now. In this moment I am sitting on a pink couch, that funny fuzzy type of material (which probably had it’s boom in the 70’s or so), wanting to write a blogpost but mostly being distracted by motogp, motorbike racing on tv. It's incredible. I probably won't ever have a car, but I wouldn't mind having a motorcycle when I'm all grown up.

I am in Bernareggio, Italy. Bear-neh-ray-gio. Trill the second ‘r’ a little bit. Yes, perfect. Perfecto. Italian is interesting. And difficult. I am beginning to understand more of what I hear, but composing my own sentences seems impossible. And I feel like anyone could understand as much as I do. English shares a lot of Latin words with Italian, so many words are recognizable or guessable. But the speed at which they talk is crazy. Quick Italian lesson: Verbs in Italian are conjugated, similar to Spanish. And there are regular and irregular verbs, of course, and some of the more useful/common verbs are irregular, so you just have to memorize every version of the verb. Then there is present past and future, which I haven’t even begun to figure out . But I’m learning. An example of a regular verb: parlare; to speak: parlo (I speak), parli (you speak), parla (s/he speaks), parliamo (we speak), parlate (you (plural) speak), parlano (they speak). Non parlo Italiano. Oh, plus there are 3 types of regular verbs, -are, -ere, and -ire. So it’s tough. But fun. It makes me want to stay in Italy for the few months I have here rather than move on to other countries. But I want to ride my bike through Germany and Czech. So I’ll have to study Italian in the states for a couple years then come back. If I wasn’t teaching English all day every day I would be learning much faster. But so it goes.

Bernareggio is a tiny town halfway between Milano and Lecco in northern Italy. In the distance to the north are the Italian alps, the tail end of the Swiss Alps. My host parents are Nello and Lucia, sort of typical small town Italians. I like them and feel pretty comfortable here. My host father

Ciao Cernusco!

Saturday (Sabato) June 25. So much to say with no time to say it. Huge bummer. I will add photos to this post later, hopefully :)

I am about to go to the train station here in Cernusco to head to my next camp. It is near here, half way between Milano and Lecco. I don't know much about the camp yet, but it is much smaller, about 40 students, so there are only 4 tutors this time, and one of them is Anthony, someone I've been with since orientation. I'm happy about that. But there are so many known unknowns, like my class, my camp director, my new host family, the town. It's exciting and terrifying. It's amazing how comfortable