Italy Cycle Journal

Day 7 - Montecatini Terme and Quick Run to Florence

Day 7 – May 19, 2005 – Montecatini Terme (and a “quick” run to Florence)

Got up pretty early this morning – around 6am, so I just goofed around in the hotel room for a bit. Checked to see if my clothes were dry yet, repacked things a little bit. The biggest pain in the ass is moving from hotel to hotel every couple days. I essentially have to repack every other day. And tomorrow I head to Vinci for one day – that’s almost better because I don’t actually have to unpack in the first place. I just pull out that day’s clothes and leave everything else where it is.

As I had planned, I hopped a train down to Florence to see if I could find a replacement screw for my shoe. I was a bit concerned that I wouldn’t find one, since it’s a pretty specialized screw and probably only found at cycling shops. Considering how popular cycling is in Italy, you’d think there would be more shops that carry this stuff but I haven’t seen any except for one place in Lucca.

The train was pretty horrendous. It was a double decker train, so that was cool since I was upstairs. But at every stop, the train emptied and then re-filled with school kids who were loud and obnoxious. I take it these are the trains kids take to school?

When I got to Florence, it was about 9:45am. It was absolutely gorgeous out. Really regretted not being able to take that ride today – but I need to get my shoe fixed one way or another. I actually considered buying new shoes and new pedals for the bike – that would’ve set me back about $120 or so. I like my pedals, but the type isn’t very common in Italy, it seems. The cost would be worth it, so I could enjoy the rest of the trip. Only downside is I’d be breaking in new shoes on 40 mile mountain rides. Not a good idea – I’d be a mass of blisters.

Figured I’d have to search for a while to find a cycling shop, and if I didn’t find one before noon I’d be stuck waiting for the stores to re-open at 3 or 4pm (which would have made me miss my spa appointment at 4:30). After walking around for about 10 minutes, I noticed a hardware store (also something I couldn’t find in Montecatini Terme).

Nice bit of luck – they didn’t have the screw I needed exactly, but they had a flat headed machine screw that was almost the same height and had the same threading as the one I needed (I took my shoe and cleat with me to be sure). It was a little short, but seems to work as long as I keep it tight. I got a couple spares just in case. Also picked up some tools to tighten the screws on my other shoe.

So, for those of you keeping track:
Time to find a screw: 15 minutes
Time spent at the train stations and traveling back and forth to get the screw: 4 hours
Time the bike ride would have taken today: 2 hours

No sense looking a gift horse in the mouth, so back to the train station I go. Just missed a return train so I have an hour to kill. Spent it just watching people at the station.

Saw one woman who had the lowest ‘low-rise’ pants I’ve ever seen. They were so low, you should have been able to see the crack of her ass. But for some inexplicable reason, you couldn’t. Forget wondering how those pants stay up, I’m wondering where she got the new ‘crack-less’ ass?

Conversely, I saw another very attractive woman wearing a skirt so SHORT that you also should have been able to see crack. And I don’t mean her ass. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to sit on a public train seat with a skirt that short. Not without an ‘ass gasket.’

For those of you who don’t know what an ‘ass gasket’ is, it’s the ring of paper they provide in public restrooms so you can sit on it, instead of the toilet seat. Labeled ‘For Your Protection.”

So, if you put Woman A and Woman B together, you’d have an “Ultra-low-rise-ultra-mini” – aka ‘duct tape.’

I’ve had a few e-mail requests begging me for photos of Italian women. Sorry, but even though Italian men are pretty much shameless about staring, I’m thinking that snapping photos would still be considered rude.

A lot has been written and said about how beautiful Italian women are. Other people have told me that they’re over-rated. I guess there are some who are beautiful, but no more so than any other women I’ve seen. I may just be spoiled by having some beautiful friends (see, there’s a built-in ego boost for ya).

I don’t think it’s that Italian women are particularly beautiful, I think it’s that they dress really sexy and provocatively no matter what they’re doing. Fishnet stockings seem to be absolutely essential for taking the dog for a walk so he can go crap on the sidewalk.

There was also a big group of men at the train station. They may have been the first group of gay men that I’ve seen. Either that, or they were British. Who can tell?

And, if I happen to have any gay friends who are wondering if there are hot, gay Italian men here, I have to say I have NO idea. #1 – being straight, I don’t have good gaydar and #2 – when even the STRAIGHT Italian men wear neon pink, how do you tell who’s gay??

Oh, and in Florence, I was successful at last!! Someone approached me and asked me for directions in Italian and I answered him!!! Whooo hooo! Yay for me! Well, technically he just said ‘Treno stazione?’ and I pointed, but hey I’ll chalk it up as a ‘win.’

I’ve got a massage scheduled this afternoon at 4:30. Not really looking forward to it, but it came with the package, so I figure I may as well do it. Massages don’t much appeal to me (well, unless it’s from a girlfriend). For some reason, I never feel any different afterward. And if it’s a man doing the massage, I can only guess I’ll be more tense afterward than when I start.

When I got to the spa, they had my reservation but not payment. They kept saying I was supposed to have a voucher, but I never got one. Eventually they said, go back and check at your hotel and if it’s not there, you can just pay then. But they let me get the massage – very trusting folks, evidently. Suuuure, I’ll come back and pay later!! I’m kidding, of course I would – I’m too anal about following rules.

So, I’m sitting there and starting to get a bit upset. Why am I waiting around for a massage that I don’t want that might end up costing me $40?

But I went through with it. Interesting musical choice in the massage room – George Michael. Not sure what album, but it was all mellow music – thank god for THAT anyway, the last thing I needed was “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” playing while I was lying pretty much buck naked on a table. The massage was good, but I really don’t get tense muscles. Don’t know why.

She kept on asking me if this part was sore or that part was sore. Nope, nope, nope. I get a little tense in the shoulders, but that’s about it.

Then she worked on my arms and tried to loosen them up. Kept saying in her Italian accent “Relahx. Relahx” as she moved my arms around. She really doesn’t know me very well, does she. The surest way to get me to tense up is to tell me to ‘relax’ because then I start to panic that I’m not relaxing well enough. Oh shit – got to focus more on relaxing! Not relaxed enough!! Ahhh!!!

Walking through Montecatini Terme, I was listening to my mp3 player. The song “Little Red Corvette” came on and memories flooded back from my first trip to Paris. When my high school French class went, that song was extremely popular and was one of the few English songs we heard there, so it holds a special place in my memory.

M. Terme is much livelier than I gave it credit for. I guess when it’s not pouring rain, people come out of their homes a bit. I realized that half the shops were closed yesterday due to the rain.

I had dinner at an Italian café. They were playing a variety of music – at one point, they played a mix of rap songs. I loved the incongruity of the quaint Italian caffe and Ludacris singing about punching that “bitch’s lights out.” The Usher and Snoop weren’t going over so well with the over 50 crowd at the table next to me.



Random thoughts:

I’ve heard that Italians don’t really wear jeans much. Not true. Italians over 30 don’t wear jeans. The younger ones do.

At the Internet Center, for some reason there were 8 or 9 black transsexuals hanging out. No idea why, but they were all sitting in there, chatting away and feeling each other’s boobs to compare how they felt. That’s a mental image I’d like to cleanse from my brain.

Had a waitress today who didn’t speak a word of English. There’s a seemingly unique Italian phenomenon I’ve noticed. Most of the time, when you’re in a foreign country and you don’t understand the language, people will do two things: 1) Talk louder and 2) Talk more slowly. Not in Italy. It seems that Italians figure that if you don’t understand them, then they’ll just talk a LOT and very quickly. I guess they are trying to teach you the language through the ‘total immersion method’ – all at once.

All of the houses and castles built up in the mountains are amazing. Can you imagine 200 years ago when there were no cars and not even bicycles? You either had to walk into town or if you were lucky, take the horse I guess. I’m guessing kids back then didn’t “take off to hang at the mall” after school every day.


Some responses to comments on my blog (thanks guys!)

Sorry, I don’t have a lot of photos of myself. That’s one of the downsides of traveling alone. Should have brought my tripod with me, but even then it’s tough because you don’t have another person to use as a reference for how to frame the camera. I promise to try to find people to take more pictures of me.

I’ve had a few comments from folks asking about the food. I haven’t mentioned it much because food isn’t a big deal for me. I know two things: Food that sucks and food that is good. When I’ve eaten ‘great food’ it doesn’t mean much to me. Just the way I am – I’ve always been that way.

Things like spas and fine food aren’t why I came to Italy, to be honest. I wanted to come for a few things. The adventure, the experience of something most people don’t get to do, exposure to things and ideas and people and culture that have been around for longer than our country has even existed. Kind of gives me a feeling of being connected to something more than the ‘day-in, day-out’ routine that takes up most of our lives. I know that eating the food is part of indulging in the culture and I’ve been doing that, but it just doesn’t fill me with inspiration to write about it.

I got two comments on my ‘voice’ in the way I’m writing. One comment was that I sounded like ‘such an American’ in the way that I wrote, the other (nicer) comment was that the person was able to “live Italy through” my words.

My intent with this blog is to show how I see Italy, in a real, non-pretentious way. I’ve certainly traveled enough and read enough that I could go on and on about the historical significance of things and pontificate for pages and pages. But that’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted this to record my personal memories and my personal thoughts – even the offbeat, goofy ones.

This blog is really about ME as much as it is about Italy. I’ve done what I can to keep my offbeat view and childlike sense of wonder throughout the journey (I still have 8 days left!!!) So, I’m trying to just be myself.

All that being said, I’m finding that I AM editing myself throughout – don’t want to show myself for the true, warped perv I can be. My family may be reading, for cripes sake.

posted by Joel @ 7:31 AM