Riding Day 5- Another mostly successful day

Hello all! Day 5 is now done and we are in Pontremoli.  The wifi here is spotty so I am not certain if or when this post will upload and be available.  Today was a largely successful day.  We got 60 miles of riding in today, before we decided to call it and take the train to our overnight spot (another 30 miles or so).  Our riding today went really well and we were making excellent time, and we believe we could have made the whole 90 miles but we had a couple stops for a couple issues with the bikes that amount to about a two hour delay overall, ad we did not feel very good about trying to bike up a mountain pass road in the twilight/evening hours.  

 

The two stops we had should not have taken as long as they did, but for the first one we stopped at a small bike shop, because yet again one of our rack screws had fallen out.  So this time we had the bike mechanic change all the mounting hardware on the racks and put Locktite on it so hopefully, this will no longer be an issue.  The second stop, was because I got a flat on my front tire and one of the tubes we bought (and the one we tried to use to fix it) did not have a long enough valve to attach the pump to, once on the tire.  This ment we essentially had to change the tube twice, so it took a while.  But other than those two stop we were going along swimmingly, so we decided that it was a mostly successful day.

The First Tube Change

We are also finally starting to feel more conditioned to the biking.  That is not to say we are not tired or sore, but our legs just seem to not care as much once we actually start biking.

The route we took today was gorgeous, we made our way North for a while and then turned and headed West through Lucca.  Lucca was a really cool medieval fortress town nestled in a wide open valley.  We stopped in Lucca for lunch and got a picture in front of  the cathedral (see below).  After Lucca, we pushed on ahead up over a small mountain pass and then dropped into the Italian Riveria.  The views from the top of the pass were gorgeous, but it was a little busy so we did not want to stop and take pictures, hopefully the GoPro got some good ones.  We biked along the coast for about 10-12 miles, whcih was nice, but we were both surprised that it was not prettier.  Much of the coast just felt very touristy, dirty, and like everything and everyone was just stacked on one another.

Pontremoli, however, where we stayed the night was very cool.  It is a small medieval town nestled were two rivers converges nestled amount huge mountains.  Our host was also incredibly kind, she made us dinner talked for a while with us, made us coffee, and was just over all very helpful and kind.  She also informe us that our planed route for the next day would involve a very steep and high mountain pass, and advised that instead we just take a tain in the morning, so that is what we are doing.  We will take the train to Parma and then ride 40 miles to our overnight stop in Piacenza.

Finally, in closing some sad news.  I lost a sock.  The lady were we stayed in San Minato did our laundry for us (which was very kind) but somewhere in the process, I lost a single sock.  It will be hard but despite losing this sock we will continue to push on, not everyone makes it on a great journey like this, and sadly it was that sock that would not see London.  Anyway, that's really all I have for now, so I say best wishes and until next time.