Monday, December 21, 2009 - First day of winter

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today:  60.06 km
Total trip distance:  3123 km
Max speed:  57.97 km/ hour
Average speed: 19.42 km / hour
Total time biking: 3:05.31
Total days biking: 55
Spending: 25 euros

I decided over the last few weeks that Athens would be my final destination, so I could make it home in time for the holidays. Richard is thinking of continuing on to Turkey.

We figured this morning that we were about a day and a half’s ride out of Athens. Fitting then, that only now do things begin to go our way. Today was the first time we saw the sun in I don’t know how long. After a week of straight rain, the sun decides to show its face two days before we call it quits. 

“Where are you going?” they asked.

“Athens,” we answered.

“Us too!”

Marcella and Bernardo are two 30-year-old Italians doing their third tour together, from Modena, Italy to Tibet, through Iran and the Stans. They’ve done 2,000km so far and plan to get to their final destination next October. Marcella was small with short, spikey hair and a few rat tails in the bag à la Espanola. Bernardo was thin and had an unwieldy beard, like Richard. Both were extremely friendly and seemed as thrilled as we were to have found other cyclists in mid-December. We chatted excitedly for a long time on the side of the road about our routes, the weather, our gear. Marcella bore a big cut on her right knee. Turns out she and I had fallen the day before in the exact same spot, on a set of train tracks, though she seemed to have sustained more damage.

Cycling in a group of four is a different experience altogether. You feel stronger, more invincible. As Richard says, you become a more formidable opponent to the cars when you’re in a big group. I felt like part of a team – “an excellent and crazy team”, as March and Berna put it – riding in a straight line, one behind the other, taking turns leading. I even began using the signals for glass, bumps or parked cars on the road, and we passed them on from one to the other until they got to the end of the line.

Our new cycling partners, combined with good weather and the extra hour of daylight (we pushed our watches forward an hour when we got to Greece) made for a great day that seemed to go on forever. We stopped for snacks by the Corinthe canal and for lunch on a pebble beach:

While we had just started our day, Marcella and Bernardo had already cycled 30km when we met, so we had an easy day before stopping at a public park right on the water where we pitched our tents for free and made dinner together. We shared stories of cycling in Albania (“Why do the drivers honk just as they’re passing you?”… “Did you have problems with the dogs?”) under the stars before retiring into our tents.