Exploring 意大利 on Two Wheels: My 宝博体育 Adventure Part 2

After the occasional water break on the side of a highway, questioning why I was stupid enough to attempt something so impossible, 我完成了 my ride I described in part one of this cycling series. I then proceeded to immediately limp to the only restaurant open at 10:30 p.m. on Italian Labor Day, still in my aggressively American cycling gear, 和 quite literally eat my weight in lasagna, 意大利熏火腿, 和蛋糕.

After sleeping in at the hotel I booked, I stuffed my face with the complimentary breakfast, helped myself to a dozen jars of honey to fuel my ride, 和 set off for 罗马. The weather was perfect, 不要太热, 不要太冷, 和 getting to see Orvieto in the morning sunshine was something I’ll never forget (it’s slept on as a travel destination, I would absolutely check it out).

This day was a shorter, 骑行75英里 with mostly downhill cruising, 和, as I had a pleasant lunch in Viterbo, marveled at the Roman catacombs on the side of the road, 和 breathed the fresh, cool breeze from the Bracciano-Martignano, I thought about how almost nothing on this perfect day could go wrong. Well, the insidious black maelstrom looming on the horizon had other plans.

The descents, which had formerly been a boon to my fatigued legs, quickly became my bane. In a situation like this I’d rather climb a mountain. When you’re exerting yourself, your body begins to generate heat. 然而, because the rest of the ride trended downwards, I really wasn’t expending much energy, so the wind chill really set in. As the heavens unloaded a torrential downpour on me, the combination of the wet 和 the wind quickly sapped all the heat from my body. The cold got so intense, it was almost as if the 荷兰 decided to go on holiday with me. I quickly began to lose sight of not only the pothole marred roads, but the end goal, 和, when I pulled over to the side of the road, that was by far the closest I’d been to quitting any portion of my ride. After a half hour of shivering under an overhang, I got moving again, fighting through the brain fog that began to settle in. I wondered what the passing cars thought when they saw my grave expression as I paddled my way through the congested streets of outer 罗马 like a wet stray dog. When it was all over, I couldn’t accurately express the overwhelming sense of joy that washed over me as I paraded into the Piazza Venezia.

Now, after my ride, nothing sounded better than a hot meal 和 a shower. And, well, my method of getting it I wouldn’t recommend to everyone. Before my trip, I discovered this website called Couchsurfing. You communicate with hosts that offer their couch or spare bedroom for people to stay in for free. I found a host named 阿道夫•.

He was an Italian man in his early 40s who lived alone in an apartment on the outskirts of 罗马. Thanks to his kindness, I had a place to sleep that night, as well as a free meal with no expectation of anything in return. Even though I just met him, I have to say, it was nice to have the human interaction. For the past two days, my voice had been used to either mutter expletives under my breath or attempt to communicate in very limited Italian to the people I met along the way (acqua per favore? parli inglese?). Luckily, 阿道夫• knew English fluently from his job. We talked for an hour or so, ate a meal he prepared, 和 then I showered 和 prepared for bed.

I can still remember how odd it felt to be in this r和om person’s house. I was a 20-year-old American student from a suburb in Connecticut, 和 for this one miniscule moment in time our vastly different lives grazed each other—a lonely Italian accountant who liked climbing 和 hiking, 和我, a cyclist visiting 意大利 for the first time. Just a year 和 a half ago, locked away in my house, I never could’ve imagined that this would be my reality, 和 that my body would ever be capable of propelling me through hundreds of miles of foreign mountainous country.



Drew Laird studied abroad with 东航卡帕 in 阿姆斯特丹 in Spring '22.