One American Woman Fifty Italian Men: A Journey of Cycling, Love, and Will, Lynne Ashdown [ebook reader macos txt] 📗

One American Woman

Fifty Italian Men

A Journey of Cycling, Love, and Will

Lynne Ashdown

Book Excerpt Chap. 11 (1850 words)

Life on the Road

            Getting out of Linz seemed a simple enough chore. We got an early start, to much joking around, recalling our grand escorted entrance into town by the police, sirens blaring, lights whirling, brakes screeching, heads turning; nothing could have pleased the Italians more. Soon we were off through downtown Linz, following our police escort. They left us only too gladly on the outskirts of the city, admonishing Dottore please not to return with his reckless and irresponsible gang of Italians. There was even more joking around about how we could possibly find our way from here without a police escort.

            How, indeed?

            No sooner had the police left us and we'd traversed the last outskirts of the city, than Dottore made a right turn at a sign pointing toward the Czechoslovakian border.

            Suddenly we found ourselves on the autobahn. Again. I caught a sideways glimpse of Dottore sucking in his breath between clenched teeth, but with characteristic aplomb and avoiding eye contact with any of us, he simply stopped, turned around and cycled back down the freeway ramp, going the wrong way, as if that's what he'd intended to do all along. We all looked at each other helplessly and followed suit, facing bug-eyed fright on drivers' faces as they accelerated up the freeway ramp only to meet fifty-four Italian cyclists coming the other way. Cyclists don't have enough sense ever to be terrified, so everybody took it in their stride as just another joke of the morning.

            Finally headed in the right direction, we stretched out on the road. The terrain evened out, with green, rolling countryside stretching ahead of us a far as the eye could see. When you're on a bicycle, there is no such thing as flat. There is gently rolling and severely rolling, but never flat. The farmlands rolled by as the city melted into the countryside. The skies were gray and quiet, and we had a little rain. The world seems endless in such a place, with no beginning and no end.

            Finding my pace and rhythm, I used momentum as much as I could to get up the rollers. By now I had favorites  I liked to draft: those who were smooth riders and whom I felt were my friends. I'd learned the names of those I'd ridden with, and now I could recognize most of them by their legs. For a woman who enjoys watching a good pair of male legs, which I unabashedly did, this was indeed paradise.

            Here comes Bruno. He was easy to spot because he always wore yellow or orange flourescent socks, and I'd come to recognize his spin. We chatted a little and he asked, "Va bene?"

            "Molto bene," (very well), I answered. "Avanti" (Go ahead"), I told him.

            Then Domenico pulled up beside me. He wore serious glasses and looked like the bookkeeper he was, but out here on the road there was something different about him: a fierce love in his eyes of the freedom we were experiencing, the strength and grace of his body as he rode, in harmony with his endeavor and the earth. A flick of his head invited me to get on his wheel. Matching his cadence, I hung on for as long as I could. As we flew down the road, I imagined he was Peter Pan and we were flying through the sky. Finally he was just a little too fast, and I let him go.

            Here comes Dino. No words were spoken. Pedaling up alongside, he carefully checked me over to see that everything was okay. Dino sat with us at dinner almost every night. Unlike some of the others who had multifaceted lives, Dino's whole life was cycling. Now retired, he built all of his own bicycles. He'd been racing since he was thirteen, and lived for little else. Last night at dinner he told us a story of how Italian bicycle racing was in the old days.

            Nino translated. "We'd race all morning until we got hungry," Dino told us. "Then we'd stop at an inn for lunch. Everyone would mark their place, where they were in the peloton (pack). After a couple of hours for a good lunch, maybe with a little wine, everyone would return to his marked place, and the race would continue for the rest of the day." We laughed, talking about the frenzied way racers had to eat in the big races today; barely slowing down, they grab a "feed bag" from a designated person at a "feeding station," and eat as they cruise in the pack–a metaphor, I thought, for a world becoming a more hurried and less civilized place.

            The sky was gray, quiet, and dull. Nino checked in every now and then as the green farmlands glided past. We spread out on the almost empty road. Someone always rode herd on me. We were a moving, organic little piece of Italy. There was only the road, the motion, and us. The hours slipped by. It rained, and it stopped. We talked very little.

Border Between Worlds

            When we arrived at the Czechoslovakian border, we stopped for a snack. Luciana took our passports to the Czech soldiers who served as guards at the border-crossing booths. They were overcome with curiousity about our bicycles and came over, a few at a time, to inspect–oogle would be a better word–our bikes. Oreste offered them wine. They refused, looking at it longingly, remembering they were on duty. They retreated to continue their inspection of us through the dingy windows of the border station.

            Nino and I went inside to get our visa. I was dismayed to find that the Czech border guards addressed me when I was with Nino the same way the Italians did. That is to say, not at all. I'd come to think of this as "Italian couple-think." When I wasn't with Nino, they'd address me normally as an individual, one on one. When I was with Nino, they'd address him only. Even when I'd ask a question, they'd answer it to Nino.  

            One of the guards said in English to Nino, "Do you have her photos for the visa?" Where is her passport?" I wanted to take his face in my hand, turn it toward mine and say, "Hey, talk to me, I am here." Instead I said, "I have my photos, my passport is in the pile with the others, and I, too, speak English." Nino gave me a look. Go soak your head, I thought.

            We emerged with our visas to the usual commotion that followed us wherever we went, as the men horsed around and the border guards tried to count us and our passports, which was impossible because we never stood still.

            I pretended not to notice Luigi circling around me, like an animal stalking his prey. He made me so damn nervous I tripped over my own feet and dropped my apple. Whenever I got within ten feet of him I tended to drop things, and I wouldn't let myself look directly at him for fear my interest would show. He had no fear of looking at me; I could feel his eyes burning into me, probing. I never knew a man who made me so nervous.

            Just then Ciccio sneaked up behind me and gave me a big hug and a kiss. The men thought this was a great joke, since Nino was right in front of me with his back turned and didn't see the episode. Laughing helplessly, I enjoyed the joke as much as they did.

            Dottore was holding forth, and Nino translated. "This is a great moment in history to be crossing this border, because it's the end of communism in Europe. Our dream of a united Europe may extend this far, someday." Only this year had the border opened, freeing travel into Czechoslovakia.

            The border guards finally gave up trying to match us to our passports, threw up their hands in defeat, and gave Luciana permission for us to cross.

            As we pedaled into Eastern Europe, signs of Czechoslovakia's long isolation from the West were everywhere. A dreariness seemed to come over the landscape, more than the intermittent rain. Not fifty meters from the border was a farm, its house unpainted, the barn door hanging from one rusty hinge. The fence had been repaired haphazardly with whatever was at hand: scraps of wood, discarded parts of machinery, old wire. A couple of fields lay fallow. Even the crops drooped. Discouragement was written across the land. The contrast with orderly, prosperous, freshly-painted Austria was like a bucket of cold water in the face.

            We pedaled across the plains for a long time; it probably seemed longer than it was because the country didn't change much. As we pedaled through a small village, the cobblestone streets slowed us down. The main street was all but deserted. We fell quiet as our wheels bounced over the wet cobblestones. Cold road water thrown up in our faces by our wheels punctuated the impression of cycling into a time-warp where nothing had been fixed, painted, or updated in half a century.

            Shop windows on the main street were almost empty, containing only a few items: a couple of plain dresses, a coat, a chair, a few foodstuffs. Young people hung out aimlessly in the small central square by a fountain with no water in it. Tall and lanky, they were mostly blond and unsmiling. They looked undernourished, and they had a furtive air about them. But when they saw us their demeanor changed completely: they waved, they stomped, they screamed, they laughed. You'd think they'd never seen a pack of cyclists before. Well, maybe they hadn't. After all, the border had opened only this year. We waved back, shouting greetings, our own enthusiasm renewed.

            Once again out in the country, Aurelio said, "Pochi paese." ("Little of everything country.") There was very little traffic–an occasional Skoda, a few trucks belching black smoke. I tried to hold my breath as I pedaled through the fumes. It rained intermittently.

            Being so close to life on the ground on my bicycle, looking in kitchen and parlor windows as I passed, I saw and felt the fabric of people's lives. I rejoiced in the smell of the fresh bread they'd soon eat, and I shivered in the tattered long underwear on clotheslines they'd wear in the winter.

            As I peered over fences into people's gardens, I decided that the flower was one of God's greatest gifts to the world. No matter how poor people were or how miserable their lives, they made flowers grow. Gorgeous flowers. You couldn't socialize a flower. You couldn't saturate it with propaganda. You couldn't conquer it with a tank. Squash it and it would grow again. There was nothing you could do to ruin a flower, silent testimony to the triumph of the human spirit. On the road, their beauty fed my soul.

Besides cycling across Eastern Europe, Lynne has cycled alone through Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Greece. Recently she walked 400 miles alone across northern Spain on the Santiago de Compostela Pilgrimage Trail.  She is a writer, a searcher, and an incurable adventurer, specializing in over-reaching. At 42 she earned her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley in (Third World) Development Studies, where she also studied journalism. She wrote always in the context of her work, taking inspiration from great writers, from years of seminars and writers' groups, and from her travels, writing her adventures for magazines and newspapers.  She worked as a singer-guitarist while raising her children, and is a highly certified feng shui practitioner for over twenty years. One