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Heeeere comes the Saint ... St Ubaldo always wins, despite nearly toppling sideways atop his 600 kg 'candle May 16, 2007: Day 5 PHOTO GALLERY NO ONE with a personality ever rubbished a rest day on a challenging bike trip. After much grinding uphill in the unexpectedly toasty May heat, the group rejoiced the opportunity to languish in mystical, medieval Gubbio for two nights. I had every intention of sleeping in and trying to shake the stomach bug that had been dogging me since getting off the plane, but this was not to be. Starting at 5am, what sounded like a 44 gallon drum being refashioned with a frozen leg of ham reverberated in the street below, reminding me of the STOMP performance I saw recently in NYC. A cacophony of cheering, bell clanging and cornet bleating followed, repeated every fifteen minutes until my alarm sounded. The centuries-old Festa dei Ceri, or Festival of the Candles, is celebrated every May 15 in many parts of Italy and also in Italian

David of 'Team Colorado' tackled the pavement with gusto despite being dressed for some serious dirt May 17, 2007:  Saints and a heavenly wine tasting Day 6 PHOTO GALLERY A QUIRKY delight we've become accustomed to is climbing out of a medieval town on cobbled 1-way streets. We have to share it with walkers and cars in both directions, but somehow, everyone squeezes past everyone and all is well. Today's lunch was a Ciclismo Classico style picnic at a local bar. When I say 'bar' I don't mean some awful sports dive with neon beer signs, odious carpet, a cacophonous TV and a generic rock'n'roll dirges blasting over tinny speakers. A bar in Italia is often a little quaint hole in the wall that might resemble a tiny cafe, serving tiny cups of coffee or beer. The lunch was provided by a local family, and the simple menu consisted of melon, proscuitto, salad, tomatoes with fresh mozzarella, fresh fruit, bread, grilled eggplant, all doused in

Traditional paper making in the town of Bevagna - a labor of love, like home made pasta! May 18, 2007:  Sunflowers, Olive Groves, Vineyards, and the Todi Challenge Day 7 PHOTO GALLERY FOR two days Andreas talked about the Todi Challenge and how difficult it was. "Who's going to do the 17-22% hill?" he crowed. This had the effect of psyching out all but two contenders - Dave with the carbon fiber Scott, who'd been spending most of his time chasing down lithe Italian stallions whipping past us on their Colnagos, with occasional sidelong glances at the bucolic scenery, and Bob, who, at 60 going on 40, clearly had a secret we all wanted to share. We had all day to decide ... The first stop was at a wonderful little town called Bevagna, and a tour of a one-man traditional paper making workshop. We watched as the artisan explained in Italian how he collected old rags, chopped them up, soaked them in lime, used a foot cranked turbine to crush them to a pul

The spectacular Duomo in Orvieto - so massive, no ordinary point and shoot camera captures it all ... May 19, 2007:  20,000 caves under the ground and a Duomo to die for Day 8 PHOTO GALLERY Today felt like riding on the turrets of a medieval castle. We climbed for a many kilometers and not so many miles, staying high on a ridge with great views of Todi, the hill town gradually receding behind us, and looked forward to glimpses of Orvieto, our next hill town. I could almost fantasize my bike was one of those a bleached blonde horses carrying me and a billowing pointy flag from one medieval town to the other. I spent a lot of the day trying to get good shots of the riders in action. This is not an easy thing to do when you yourself are riding. If you shoot from your moving bicycle, you tend to get people only from behind, which gets old after a while. When passing them and attempting to shoot, the road is never quite wide enough, and you end up cutting off their head or wh

The 'dead city' of Civita - you're looking for a room with a view May 20, 2007: Hospitality, Fortress-style + The Dead City of Civita Day 9 PHOTO GALLERY "If this doesn't capture the imagination, nothing will." That's the first thing that escaped from my lips as the 'dead city' of Civita appeared before me like some kind of surreal Magritte daubing. It is called 'dead' because of the dwindling number of inhabitants now eking out a living in this medieval village perched on a rock in a giant volcanic basin. Erosion of a massive scale separated the city from the nearby town of Bagnoregio. It reminded me of a little Disney World fortress, floating on a giant moat of thin air. We locked up the bikes and began the hike on the long suspended footbridge spanning the chasm to get to the village. There wasn't a lot over there, a few cafes, souvenir shops, a church and so forth, but a wonderful cobbled ambiance and I could

Breakfast in a fort on the penultimate day. Ciao Italia, buon giorno to new found friends in cycling. May 21, 2007: A descent through the Tuscan Maremma to the magical Meditarranean Day 10 PHOTO GALLERY The final day. The final hill. The final 7 course wine dinner blowout. And a 56 mile slight downhill all the way to the Mediterranean. What more could you want? Maybe a gold leather bag. "See you in the Prada shop," said Andreas back in Orvieto. I didn't see any Prada shop, but Sandra somehow managed to located all the cool shoe places. The first half of the day covered what Dana called the Tuscan Maremma. Here's what the Wiki says about it:  ... an area in Italy, consisting of part of southern Tuscany (and partly coincident with province of Grosseto area) and some part of northern Lazio (a bordering region of the province of Viterbo). It was traditionally populated by the Butteri, cattle-breeders who used horses until recently, with a dist

THE GROUND STAFF  at all airports in Italy went on strike today, just as I was returning after reviewing a Ciclismo Classico's 10-day Bike Across Italy trip (the full montymedia on that coming soon). Apparently, as I found out by eavesdropping a convo between a couple of flight attendants, they do this quite often. Alitalia is a government run agency, and now and then they decide to strike for 8 hours. "It could be the ground crew, the hotel crew, or some other crew," she said. Nothing is ever agreed or resolved - sounds a bit like the industry suddenly deciding they deserve a day off en masse. The only problem? It leaves thousands of passengers stranded. How do they get away with it? "They're a government organization. $40,000 toilet seats and all that, think about it," said the flight attendant, somewhat cryptically. All flights between 8am and 6pm were cancelled, including my British Airways Rome-London-JFK flight. A line formed as long as