Lucca to Venice - A Bicycle Tour Across Italy, July 2000

It's an ideal vacation. The perfect pairing of place and mode of travel. The scenery along the backroads of Italy's northern regions (specifically, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna) elevate bicycle riding from a form of recreation to a true pleasure. And when you travel by bicycle instead of, say, by car or train, you move at a more relaxed pace, a gentle wind continually cools you, you are totally immersed in the sights and scents of every field, vineyard, grove or woodland. These sensations, coupled with the modest effort of propelling yourself to each night's destination — punctuated with stops to liven the morning with a strong cappuccino, to cool the afternoon with a fruit-flavored gelato (limoncello and pesca were two of my favorites), and to break for a substantial mid-day meal at some historic site — adds up to a sense of fully being in Italy.

Of course, if I say that a 12-day bicycle tour (with nine days of actual riding) was pure pleasure, it must mean that someone else handled all the dull logistical details: choosing the destinations, booking hotel rooms, transporting luggage, providing most dinners (with excellent food and unlimited wine, I might add), planning and marking the route, and serving, when necessary, as interpreters and guides. All of these functions were performed commendably by the tour company ExperiencePlus, based in Fort Collins, Colorado (with European headquarters on “the farm” near Faenza, Italy). Thanks to their shouldering the burdens, all that we 21 riders had to do was ride and watch the scenery, keeping an eye out for the chalked arrows that marked our route at all intersections along the way. Each morning as we set out from a town I kept pace with some of the more energetic riders. But often by the time we reached the town's outskirts and passed into open country I yielded to the urge of my restless legs to reach their accustomed cadence and, with a surge of exhilaration, pulled ahead of the slower (mostly older, I must add) riders. At other times, when my obsession with religious and historic sites cast me as the last to leave a mid-day stop, my speed advantage allowed me to catch up with at least some of the group before the next destination.

Cycling in Italy

I have always had a bicycle since the time in childhood when I progressed beyond training wheels, and even during the years I had motorcycles I never stopped pedaling a bike from time to time. My outings included a couple long hot rides to the beach from Glendale during my college years, Saturday morning rides with my friend Gayle in the hills of Griffith Park in the mid-80s, and Sunday rides around UCLA or Pacific Palisades when I lived in Santa Monica. Since moving to the Bay Area I have used a bike regularly for transportation around Berkeley, with occasional recreational rides in the Berkeley Hills, including Tilden Park. Among these are rides I might describe as “exhilarating.” But not until I rode through the countryside of Tuscany could I say that riding has actually been a pleasure. A bicycle ride in California cities and suburbs (at least the places I've been) is frequently a vibrating, teeth-rattling, bone-jarring experience, due to potholes, gravel and other debris. And is almost always charged with the stress of traffic. Riding within the city demands a continuous alertness for abruptly maneuvering vehicles, cross-traffic, changing signals, opening doors on parked cars, and jaywalk­ing pedestrians. Riding on the more open roads of hillside parks and distant suburbs may eliminate much of the cross-traffic, but still impatient drivers continually rush past at high speed, and the potholes, ruts and the uneven roads make gliding downhill a bone-jarring ordeal.

In Italy I did not expect the amount of vehicle traffic and the condition of roads to be any better. But, to my surprise, they were. It was evident that the tour company carefully plotted our entire route to take advantage of narrow, less traveled roads. At times we rode for miles along what seemed to be a single-track bike lane; then at those rare times when, to our surprise, a motor vehicle did appear from behind, the driver didn't blast his horn as you would expect but gave a quick toot to indicate his presence, or just waited patiently for an opportunity to pass. Bicycles are so common in Italy that it seems they are accorded as much right to the road as a motor vehicle. Within the towns as many people run errands by bicycle as on foot, and perhaps more women than men ride bikes. On almost any block in the heart of a town you see “old-fashioned” single-speed bicycles leaning against a wall or pole, often without any sort of lock. On the open highway nearly every day throughout the tour we encountered groups of Italian cyclists with sporty racing bikes and bright cycling clothes. When drivers encounter one or more bicycles on the open highway they always follow a safe distance behind waiting quietly for a straight stretch long enough to pass safely.

In addition to the smooth roads and courteous drivers, one more thing helped make cycling in Italy more rewarding: the kilometer. Although it is only a psychological factor, it is my impression that using the metric system to measure distances while traveling by bicycle constantly encourages you with the rate of your progress and the distance behind you. In America it's a struggle to average a meager fifteen miles an hour, and with minor obstacles like an incline or headwind, a mere dozen miles can cost you an hour. In Italy, as in the rest of Europe (excluding that foot-dragging island nation west of France), the standard unit of distance traveled amounts to a more reasonable five-eighths of a mile. Thus, during my Italian tour, the digital metric speedometer on my handlebars gave me numbers that were quite encouraging. On level ground in still air my legs naturally carried me along at 32 kilometers per hour; pushing it a little bit, I could make 35 or 36. After cresting a hill and gliding downward, my speed went into the high 40s, and when a downhill straightaway allowed it, pedaling in top gear took me above 55. That sounds like freeway speed to an American! For most of the last four days of riding — after we reached the plains of Emilia-Romagna — we faced a moderate headwind, but that only required dropping down a gear or two, and still left me in the range of 26 to 28 kph. Each day a total distance of 40 to 65 kilometers seemed much more of an accomplishment than 25 or 40 miles. And truly impressive was the fact that on my arrival at the Lido in Venice my trip total read 589 kilome­ters.

The July heat turned out not to be as much of a concern as I expected. In part this was due to the good fortune of overcast skies on three mornings, including the two when we climbed a significant amount. But even on the warmest day the air did not feel hot while I was riding. although the sun did feel hot while standing still. Staying cool while riding owes a lot to the cool fabrics used to make bicycle clothes and to the effectiveness of the body's cooling system. When I stopped after a period of riding I noticed that my arms and legs (and presumably my face) glistened with sweat. (I looked ready, I thought, to be photographed for some outdoor sporting magazine.) As long as I continue to ride, wind-driven evaporation kept me cool. To keep this system working, of course, I had to drink large quantities of water. On the advice of the tour leaders, I drank so much water in the morning before departure that a minor delay in the onset of strenuous riding might mean that I had to pull over to relieve myself after the first 15 minutes. I carried water while riding, of course (one bottle cradled on the bike frame and an extra half bottle in a sort of holster on my fanny pack), but I didn't know how fast to drink it, because I had no prior experience with long rides in hot weather. I quickly set two rules: (1) if I felt thirsty, stop and drink a large quantity of water, slightly more than I could stand; (2) if I did not feel thirsty, drink three hefty squirts from the bottle every ten or fifteen minutes. This seemed to keep my hydrated and meant that the amount of water I carried (about one and a quarter liters) always lasted until the next meal or snack stop gave me an opportunity to refill the bottles.