Greece - Tuscany

Few but good people who know me are not surprised when I set off to travel. Actually they rather believe I do it no matter what. "Officially" though, the reason for this trip was the chance to stay for a week at Nice France which would then give me the opportunity to explore this area I sadly missed during my previous motorcycle trips around. I got close to Nice on 2010 when I did Gorge du Verdon on my bike coming from Torino heading to Aix en Provance via Col de la Bonnette (see how amazing this part of Europe is: so many top places in just one sentence!). So...time to see what Nice has to show.

As I am eating up the miles on my loaded bike in the heart of a Greek hot summer from Athens to Parta's port, I often recall Harica, that beautiful girl from Turkey. Years ago, a few days after leaving my bedroom she was texting me from France excited about how "nice is Nice!". Though I was reading her words on a soulless display I could see her wide smile and her long legs growing taller from extra happiness. She was so eager to explore something more progressive than her birthplace that even a medium suburb of Athens looked like Paris to her. Back in the day when I drove her to the train station, right after my bike missed her legs she looked at me and asked me "Will you miss me?". Girls and their questions...

I arrive at the port of Patra and the guy at the check in tells me the last thing I wanted to hear:
"Ferry will depart @ 19:30 instead of 18:00".
Wonderful...Consider now that I had to do more than 200km next day from Ancona, therefore most of them at night and see the forecast to get a taste of how wet these would be:

All these made me sit and wait for the delayed ferry in one of the rare shady places at the port looking like this:

Things get even worse as the ferry finally departs at 20:00. I watch the beautiful sunset from the deck to forget the fact that I'm pissed off about the delay:

Next day's sunset view from the deck serves a similar purpose:

When we finally arrive at Ancona they delay us an extra hour to open the gate of the garage where bikes are parked. Here I am at dusk, driving in full traffic with the whole convoy of trucks ahead and the weather waiting impatiently to rain dogs and cats. Few minutes later wasn't even waiting. My cell provider thought at the same time that it was a good idea to make things more adventurous as I couldn't connect to any network (for most of my time only in Italy as proved later) even though I try manually the networks recommended by their site, making communication with my Airbnb host mission (almost) impossible.

One thing that really works well is my pair of bridgestones A41 offering me enough confidence to do even 150km/h on fully wet tarmac while I was trying to save time on straights in an effort to not arrive around midnight at my out of reach host. I manage to text the latter only once from a wifi spot of a gas station.Nice feature to have a waterproof phone in such conditions since I travel gadget free and that's my gps as well. How much we depend on these things nowadays... well, this thought was about to be totally confirmed:

Dark and wet, somewhere halfway to my AirBnb South of Florence, after a fast left downhill corner, I am doing past 120km/h on the straight when I hit a pothole, a bump, you name it - it's too dark to identify but feels like a punch in the stomach and boom...my phone flies off my X-Grip mount and disappears in total darkness. Now get the picture: it's late, dark, wet, on an unlit highway, desperate to find my way to that village of my hosts and I have no phone. I'm almost sure it fell on the tarmac but took a quick look on the bike just in case I was lucky enough to find it. Nope. And how can you find a phone in such conditions? After I slammed on the brakes I puul over to the right with the bike's engine on and all blinkers on. I walk back hoping to find it in total darkness but no luck. Easier to find a needle in the ocean. At some point I see a broken piece of plastic with the same colour as my phone. Pick it up but unfortunately it was a piece of a car's taillight. Hopeless in the dark, the only option of decent light is to use the headlights of the bike which means...U turn it on the highway - no other way on a loaded bike like this on uphill. At some point that the traffic allowed this I have the nerve to do that, not the most politically correct thing in the world obviously but unfortunately there's a first time for all things. No results though no matter how intense I scanned. I can spot a needle in the emergency state I am but no phone anywhere. I don't even want to think it's gone for good. I turn the bike back on the right way again, double scan, nothing. I stop again with a "it's gotta be somewhere and I gotta find it" attitude. In my last hope as there is nowhere else I can search further in such conditions I have a closer look on my bike just because the first one I took after the incident was a bit quick - I was rushing to save it from being run over by the traffic. As I look under the handle bars I see a bit of light on the left. I look closer and...guess what...I see the bloody thing facing down stuck in the left plastic panel of the bike, next to the radiator! Fun fact, both plastics, left and right, have a V shaped bottom (to hold the cable trays I guess) and this acted as a pocket for my phone and saved it. Want more fun fact? I thought a couple of times about storing some stuff in that space and if I had done so my phone wouldn't have taken a nap there. The fact that it was facing down and (more importantly) the night mode of the gps app which reduces the light drastically made me miss it on first glance. If it was on normal mode I would have seen its light in the dark easily and that would have saved me time and heartbeats. I don't have to explain you how it felt right? Why it flew from such a sturdy mount? I think it was a combination of "slippery when wet" in the least sexy way possible, high speed over high bump and probably the last time I put it on after I took it off to contact my hosts I wasn't so careful so I misplaced it in the dark. Well, since I saved my ass like this let's think of a funny alternative: Let's say I drive rock bottom "without my phone" trying to find the first town to seek help when suddenly I hear my helmet's intercom still connected to it "in 1 km take the exit on the right"...and then my eyes would go wide open like headlights :)

After all this madness I manage to arrive at my destination at 11:00pm at that village South of Florence. I feel so lucky in my unluckiness which could ruin my trip from the very start that I don't bother much about the awful mattress of my big bed at the beautiful studio I had rented which also has one more funny touch:

I go to sleep trying to focus on the positive side of things and one of them was that the heavy rain for large parts of the route was a good test for the connections I made myself on my front blinkers recently (I installed 4 of them) and yes they passed it with flying colours. Can't wait for the next day hopefully much better to allow me they joy of riding in Tuscany.

See you on part 2.