Castiglione

beautiful start in the day, I knew it was a day to enjoy.

Costiera Amalfitana is just amazing. Views were stunning, cars weren’t that fast, everything was just nice and I captured the moment so I had no interest in rushing. I couldn’t even take enough photos of the coast.. too beautiful

after a quick stop to adjust my breakpads for even wear, I went into a lovely descent. Soon I realized there‘s changed something. So I stopped and evaluated the problem. I was losing air at front and my already broken lower headset bearing (yes I mean broken; outer ring) somehow got worse. I recompressed it and went on. after a tunnel the following cities were just awfully ugly and dirty and I wasn’t so happy anymore. In Torre del Greco, just some 10k from my destination Naples away, I punctured. Some piece of wire managed to punch through. I was angry but focused like before. Deep down I felt some miscomfort and was really lacking confidence. After hours of trying to fix it with the help of lots of other people there was no solution. An old man, knowing no thing about bikes, even brought me a bowl and some water to distinguish the holes; not even that was successful. He then brought me to the nearest stazione and gave me a ticket. I was happy and thanked him multiple times before the train took off to Napoli.
Being sure now I would make it to my upfollowing reservation I wasn’t feeling great at all. Those multiple times of severe bad luck were held up in my stomach and let me think a loong time. I wasn’t really sure if I’m gonna make it to Rome where I already booked sth for the upcoming day. Keeping in mind that It‘ld be the longest transfer in italy for me (230k) I was very unsure of everything. There is no thing like „Stadler“ in italy and somehow they don’t care about bikes in bigger cities which is ironic because I actually had a feeling of safety about it because it’s a big city and they have to have everything right? This feeling of safety decreased after trying to look for help. Strava, Facebook, Instagram, Google maps.. hours of searching but in the end I asked a fellow bike rider in the night while I was trying to visit the city and not thinking about the problems for too long. He suggested a place which should have everything I need! I was thankful, patched my remaining tires and was gonna look for a pump (mine doesn’t work for that valve length and my adapter doesn’t work anymore)
But I also had an adapter to car valves which came in more than handy for the second time in two days(!)

good night and wish me luck..Read more