Sunday, December 20, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 103 km
Total trip distance: 3063 km
Max speed: 52.17 km/ hour
Average speed: 20.53 km / hour
Total time biking: 5:01
Total days biking: 54
Spending: 114 euros

Now this Greek alphabet is something else. And we thought the Albanian language was tough! But at least we could read the letters for God’s sake. Imagine riding past a street sign with just a few seconds to check if you’re heading in the right direction, and having to try to decipher alpha, betas, and pis. Letters that mean one thing in our language (for example, P makes a ‘p’ sound) mean something totally different in the Greek alphabet (where P makes an ‘r’ sound). I have put Richard in charge of figuring it all out.

We woke up in Pension Nicos to warmer weather than we’ve been used to. We thought we might finally get a rain-free day, which of course, turned out to be wrong. But when the rain did come, we didn’t mind it so much because it came without the wind and the cold. We were, however, slightly worried about our lack of brake pads. We had looked for a bike store Saturday night when we got to Patra, but found everything closed. So we’d have to make it through Sunday with very little braking power until we could find a shop to buy new ones.

For breakfast, we had the famous spanakopita, a spinach pie, and tyropita, its cheese equivalent, in American-style coffee shop that served us styrofoam cups, along with workers coming in for a quick bite on the go.

Back on the road, we passed a dozen old men seeking shelter under an awning. We waved, and they all began speaking Greek excitedly in a chaotic chorus of voices.

The coastal road from Patra is great – mostly flat, little traffic (there’s a parallel highway most of the way), nice views. It made the rain a lot more bearable. But around mid-morning, it started pouring so hard, garbage started floating down the street. Cars driving through puddles made waves the height of trees. At one point the car in front of me splashed water so high it hit the oncoming car’s windshield and bounced off, like a waterworks show. When we drove through that street-wide puddle ourselves, our wheels shot dirty water at our feet like hoses.

Miraculously, we found an open bike shop on our way where we bought 4 of the 8 brake pads we needed. But after stopping to put the new pads on the bikes, we got cold and the next hour was less than pleasant.  We stopped for soggy, dilapidated sandwiches under a tiny cubicle-like bus stop shelter and kept going.

Then, we finally got some good luck. A strong tail wind pushed us through small villages on a villa-lined road along the water that might as well have been a large promenade. It was a beautiful ride on a beautiful road and helped us forget that we were wet, yet again.

Saganaki (fried cheese) at dinner at the small restaurant next door to the hotel (and look at that long hair!):