Marina di Massa – day 3

OK, so you might be wondering about why the blog withered after only 2 days of entertainment. To be honest I had a sudden loss of enthusiasm after the events of day 3, the first day’s ride from Pisa to Marina di Massa, and I am now just getting back my Mojo. Here’s the story.
It started well with a clear sky, and moderate temperature and the team getting the feeling back as we hit the road and remembered what to do. The ride out of Pisa heading north and west was flat and easy. We got down to the beach road as planned and expected an easy first day. We stopped at a park to eat our lunch which we would normally do. The trouble began when we finished and left without the small fanny pack I almost never remove from my body because it contains everything valuable I own on the trip. Yes, that one, the one with my passport, wallet with 3 credit/debit cards and 30 euros, regular glasses. phone, and swiss army knife. 5km later when we arrived at our destination, a campsite with bungalows, I realized what had happened. We quickly got back on the bike and pedalled hard back the way we came. Then, unbelievably, a km back down the road my bike seat exploded out from under me and the pieces littered the road. In fact the seat post to seat bolt had broken so the seat and its mount just fell on the road. I still needed to get back quickly to the park so we unloaded the bike and put Tara’s seat in the front spot so I could ride solo. In the process of doing that the screw to tighten the seat post stripped its mount so we were down to only 1 of those too. Aarrghh! Leaving Tara on the sidewalk with the panniers I returned to the park and an empty bench where my pack should have been. This was one of those moments when you find it hard to believe what is real because the consequences are too ugly to think about. I looked all over of course and went to speak with a couple who were picnicking on the grass, and had been earlier, to see if they had seen anything, I managed to communicate what my problem was and they called the police for me. I spent more time looking around, perhaps for the empty pack or something left behind but I found nothing and the police were taking forever to show up. Finally they did but could do nothing but take my name and a description of what was lost and then stolen with some forwarding information. I rode back to Tara who knew by now nothing good had transpired but was worried about what else could have happened to me in the hour and a half I had been gone. We loaded up and got to the campsite with me riding the seat post. We checked in for 2 nights instead of one thinking we could still get to the Cinque Terre if we had a day to call the banks to cancel and block everything, and the Canadian embassy about the passport. We owe a great deal to Stephania at the campsite for letting us have free reign of her phone and helping with the language calls, at no expense to us. Again thanks to Stephania she confirmed there was a bike shop only 400m down the road so we walked there and retrieved the bits we needed to make the bike functional for both of us again. I still had to get to the Carabinieri (federal police) office to get an official record of the loss in order to ease getting a new passport. After that the embassy, but we went to bed thinking about that as tomorrow’s plan.

Il mare, la mer, the sea