Italy: What I'll Miss...and Won't

As our departure draws near I’ve been imagining what I might miss about Italy once we’re back in New Hampshire. I want to be realistic, though, and also include what I probably won’t miss so much. Maybe I’ll think of very important other parts to add later, but it’s a start and it helps me as we prepare for our voyage back to our permanent home. What would you miss about the place you live now if you moved away? What wouldn’t you miss?

         I’ll miss waiting outside of Ingrid’s school at dismissal with other parents and grandparents while each class comes out and the teacher bends down to peer out into the crowd with each student until the parent is pointed out and eye contact is made, the child bounds down the steps for an embrace before handing off the backpack and asking if she can run a lap around the school with her friends before heading home. I won’t miss a school day that ends at 12:45. I’ll miss the strident church bells that ring for fifteen minutes a few times on Sunday mornings (I don’t sleep late enough for them to wake me otherwise this one might’ve gone to the other side). I won’t miss construction vehicles backing up (beep, beep, beep), the crane lifting loads, workers yelling at the site on the other side of our neighbor’s yard for the past five months. I’ll miss the warm aroma of fresh bread and pastries emanating from bakeries. I won’t miss the stench emitted by Vespas and various diesel vehicles that are everywhere. I’ll miss being able to walk five minutes to pick up some bread. I won’t miss the traffic and pollution. I’ll miss gelato, tasting it, of course, but also seeing it heaped up so beautifully at the gelatería. I won’t miss the milk from the grocery store that you can keep on a shelf for months before drinking. I’ll miss the pizza, thin, delicious, satisfying; I’ll miss the carrots and many other vegetables from the supermarket that are never waxed and almost always taste fresh; I’ll miss the pasta, the fresh home-made pasta but also the dry pasta bought in stores which is somehow better than what we buy back home and I’ll miss the locally grown and pressed fresh olive oil, of which we have consumed gallons. I’ll miss the barley and bean soup Eva helped us make. I won’t miss the relative uniformity of cuisine here (okay, I admit we’re pretty spoiled in the US with such a great variety). I’ll miss the fruit and vegetable markets. I’ll miss the walls which encircle the town center and are topped with a pedestrian road and lined by trees, sitting up there and watching everyone go by, jogging a loop around it, traveling by bike on it, walking up there on a Sunday afternoon with all of the families doing a post lunch passegiata. I won’t miss the enormous tour groups who walk in a large pack of forty or fifty up there or in town. I’ll miss the pleasantly warm and sunny weather of September and June. I won’t miss the long, gray winter with no snow, high humidity, temperatures in the 30s and 40s, and a cold house. I’ll miss using a bike as primary means of transportation, and being able to easily do so (flat terrain, everything located within two or three kilometers); I’ll miss seeing so many other people from all walks of life doing the same. I’ll miss being able to see world-class bike racing in person and to see live coverage of entire races on television. I won’t miss mismatched sound and lips on Italian TV, whether dubbed from another language or in Italian in the first place. I’ll miss the rattling of my bike as I ride over cobblestones in town and the occasional ding of bicycle bells from those hoping to prevent a collision. I’ll miss the 80 mph speed limits on the highway and the aggressive confidence I’ve learned to drive with to avoid getting plowed into. I won’t miss seeing ninety percent of the car colors only in black, gray, or white. I’ll miss riding back from photography class close to midnight in February or March, very cold but with no cars out, hardly any people, and lots of quiet. I won’t miss all of the lice problems in the schools this year and having the little buggers brought home to us and set up camp for three weeks. I’ll miss seeing the packs of cyclists out training, and the packs of cyclists out just as much to exercise their mouths as their legs. I’ll miss the narrow roads, the incredible climbs and switchbacks through olive groves and woods, the routes with fast down hills where the curves are plentiful but not always so acute that you need to slow down much for them, the anticipation of what will be around the next corner. I won’t miss all of the cigarette smoke or seeing middle school kids waiting for a train on a field trip smoking while their teachers stand right there with them. I won’t miss the bad dollar to euro exchange rate, $7.50/gallon gasoline and the high price of almost everything else. I’ll miss the Parole d’Oro a few kilometers to the south where we’ve gone for picnics where the kids have played hide and seek in the empty canals that lead down to the aqueduct. I won’t miss the much smaller body space bubble here, all of the crowding, cramped spaces and jostling in groups and frequent absence of lines. I will miss the trains and the train system. I won’t miss the strikes and the often seemingly endless waits at the train crossings. I’ll miss discovering, time after time, almost wherever we travel, towers poking out of a forest, a many centuries old church down a non-descript road, walled towns atop hills, cobblestones, laundry hanging out windows, forts and cathedrals. I’ll miss specialty food shops of all kinds and personal service, asking the local butcher if he can get a full turkey for us by Thanksgiving and waiting for two minutes while he calls someone and tells me he should be able to do it and to stop back in a few days. I won’t miss shopping at Esselunga, our primary grocery store (well, okay, maybe a bit). I’ll miss all of the events that take place in and near Lucca and how easy it is to get to them—Lucca Comics&Games, Settembre Lucchese, Desco at the Real Collegio, Italian 10k Road Race Championships, European U23 Cyclocross Championships, Procession of Santa Croce, Free Concerts, Lucca Summer Festival (music), and on and on. I will miss Italian. I’ll miss hearing preschool children speaking it, complaining about not wanting to go home from the playground or describing the best way to roll a toy car down the slide; I’ll miss hearing grade-school kids speaking it, asking their friends if they want to sleep over, describing how a game they’ve made up works; I’ll miss hearing teens speaking it, flirting in Piazza Grande, joking; I’ll miss hearing adults speaking it, arguing about politics, giving their opinion about how someone was dressed, describing which are their best vegetables that day, calling their dog over, giving directions, conversing with friends; I’ll miss older folks speaking it, chiding one another for a naïve move while playing dominoes at a bench table on the walls, complimenting a passing younger woman on her appearance, encouraging a grandchild learning to ride a bike. I’ll miss the challenge of speaking Italian. I’ll miss the sense of satisfaction when I can express myself a little more clearly than a couple of months earlier, when a store owner doesn’t screw up his face or try using rudimentary English in response to me. I won’t miss not being able to instantly and effortlessly communicate any idea. I won’t miss the lag time where I am understanding what a group I’m with is saying and then, in the time I prepare to say something, have the group’s conversation already moved on to something else (hey, to be honest it happens to me in English, too!). I won’t miss having a person I haven’t met before smile, amused, after I open my mouth and say a few words, realizing I’m not Italian (okay at first but after a year it gets kind of old). I will miss the more fluid sense of time, of meeting times and of saying goodbyes that go on and on. I will also not miss that. I will miss all of the people I’ve met, especially those from Lucca Italian School, my photography class, and the Shambala group I practiced with. I will miss writing a blog about a New Hampshire family’s year in Italy. 

From Bianchi to Giro d’Italia: My Love for the Bicycle

 I finally learned to pedal without constantly stopping or crashing, round and round the garage and then on jaunts of a hundred yards down the street—maiden voyages that seemed like I had crossed the country—on a small red Schwinn. A Huffy dirt bike followed with the requisite wheelies and occasional jump down a hill in the yard, then the department store ten speed, facilitating travel to friends’ houses. When I was fourteen, though, and finding limits with my current steed and having discovered a touring event called the Minnesota Ironman when hundreds of cyclists rode past our house on a route of either 62 or 100 miles, I knew I had to do it, too, stated the case for something more substantial and my parents helped me buy my first racing bike.

         It was a Bianchi, that color Bianchi, the dreamy, other-worldly celeste green that was then in fashion and has come back into style of late. It was clean, it smelled of fresh grease, never-ridden rubber tires and a leather saddle, the frame smooth to the touch and bearing the blue stickers which spelled out its brand, so full of vowels, enticingly foreign and suggestive of another land that for decades had worshipped the sport I’d just discovered. I kept it in my room, marveled at it, washed it, adjusted brakes and wondered where it would take me. Sometimes I rode it, too.

         One of the first cycling maxims I learned was that crashing was not so much about the ‘if’ but the ‘when’. It was only a matter of time, I was told. For me it didn’t take long. First came a head on crash with the front grille of some monster of a car driven by a seventeen year old on a rainy day ten miles from home as I was making a left-hand turn. I came to with a ring of people standing around me, couldn’t feel my legs for a few seconds and was taken away to the hospital by ambulance. There was the broken right hand in a crash a couple hundred meters from the end of a road race two years later and a summer of washing dishes and gaining dexterity with my left, some road rash acquired on group rides, one tumble involving a horse who jumped his fence before running alongside the pack and then cut bravely in front of us. He escaped unscathed.

         There was never any question of stopping, of course, of giving up the sport just because maybe, possibly, the next crash would be much worse. We’d even started wearing helmets and I lived in Minnesota, not in the French Alps. The draw of cycling had not too much to do with its apparent danger. Even before the racing aspect began to appeal to me it was the freedom of the bicycle, the travel under my own power, the ability to explore new roads on my own and without a map, the sounds of wind, cranks and gears and the regularity of the pedaling cycle coupled with my breath, the smell of asphalt or rain or freshly cut grass or even, on chilly days, the warmth from underneath vehicles while waiting at stop lights; it was feeling satisfaction of effort and fatigue and it was the discovery of the sport. It was all of this that kept me coming back to my two-wheeled friend.

         I learned that cyclists didn’t stop due to misfortune, however serious. In 1996 there was Lance Armstrong and his testicular cancer (which spread to lungs, abdomen and brain), his surgery and chemo and rehabilitation. Oh yeah, and his subsequent seven Tour de France victories in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. But even before him came the first great American cyclist comeback story, one who wore the maillot jaune in the Tour even before Lance. It was Greg Lemond, he who was shot by his brother-in-law in 1987 (after his 1986 win of the Tour de France) while out turkey hunting, suffered from lead poisoning and carried 37 shotgun pellets embedded in his skin for the rest of his racing career. After struggling with appendicitis and with tendonitis in the knee he made an awesome comeback in 1989 to win the Tour in its final stage, a 25 kilometer time trial in which he had to make up 50 seconds on Laurent Fignon who led him in the overall standings. Leading the equipment revolution in time trialing by using aero helmet and aero bars, Lemond blasted through the course in an average speed of 54.545 km/hr or about 34 miles per hour (a speed difficult for most to achieve even for a few seconds on a downhill—give it a try!) and bested his rival, winning the Tour de France by 8 seconds. A come back within a comeback. Inspiring? And how.       

 

         The man against himself aspect of the time trial and that day Lemond took the Tour with his unfathomable performance probably played a part in my subsequent competitive leanings. I drifted more towards triathlon where decent biking and running (and very average swimming) added up to more competitiveness than in cycling or running alone. It couldn’t be beat for variety, either, and there was always some aspect to get better at. After some years away from the sport I came back to enjoy it in 2003 and raced for four seasons, including a few cycling specific events on a race car track. I even bought a new bike. In 2006 I dug into my savings and purchased special race wheels. I tweaked my training schedule and thought I was finding smart ways to train better and get faster and I did, for awhile. Then, training for the 2007 season, I did too much (a quantity so difficult to determine until after the fact) too soon, didn’t listen to warning signs from my knee, didn’t rest enough, didn’t want to give up, didn’t want to quit, kept hoping the next round of physical therapy and exercises would be the one that would finally cure me, but every time had those hopes dashed with recurring problems from the knee. I haven’t been able to race since.

         When I knew I’d be coming up for sabbatical all sorts of possible destinations came to mind. We finally decided on Italy. Lucca, a city of about 85,000 in Tuscany, would be our new home town for the year. “Why Lucca?” many people here have asked us. Besides many other factors (not too big, not too small, centrally located with good train system, etc.) it seemed to come down to the fact that Lucca itself was flat, the area inside the walls had many reduced traffic zones facilitating walking and cycling, and the town was encircled by a car-free twenty-foot wide four kilometer path. I guess I kind of also had in the back of my mind impossible dreams of riding with Italian cycling squads through the mountains, having coffee at a bar Sunday mornings with the local club before heading out on a three hour ride, but had consciously seemed to have settled on my new world of great-grandfather-like two-wheeled locomotion. Flat terrain, pedestrian speed, close range. Lucca would fit the bill.

         I could still watch cycling, and I was in Europe, and not far from France, so within a couple weeks of our arrival I arranged a brief foray to see the stage of the Tour de France that went through Briançon. This experience in itself deserves a whole blog post, but I’ll just summarize it by saying it was the highlight of the summer even though we only saw the riders in person for a few minutes as they rode through town and up a steep hill.

Then there was the under 23 European Cyclocross Championships right here on and at the base of the walls in Lucca! Mud, running up hills, powerful cycling, flashing colors, broken bikes, determination, courage—all this and more were on display throughout the day's races. 

And finally last week the Giro d’Italia itself. How amazing to be able to walk to the train station, take a thirty minute ride to Montecatini Terme and see the riders arrive after nearly seven hours of racing! 

I even got to stand with hundreds of others post-race, squashed together as Italians do so well, and watch the live taping of an interview about the day’s stage with some of the top riders, including today’s world best sprinter, Mark Cavendish, and one of the world’s best sprinters in the 90s and early 00s,

Cavendish and baby daughter soon after stage 11

Mario ‘The Lion King’ Cipollini (who, it turns out, was born in and still lives in Lucca!) or, ‘Super Mario’ as he was often called—or simply, loudly, followed with a blast of an airhorn, “MARIO!!!” which the crowd called out several times. The next morning I drove, bike in tow, close to the Tyrrenian Coast, parked, and rode a kilometer or two to the town where that day’s stage would start. After admiring the teams’ large and colorful coach busses and their squads’ scores of top of the line bicycles on display and watching kids get autographs from any pro rider who appeared, I started towards the start line, as did the Giro riders themselves. It didn’t feel too bad to get passed by the likes of Ivan Basso or his teammates.

         The morning after our arrival in Italy I had poked around in the basement and, in a dark corner, found two adult bicycles that, given the encrusted dust, cobwebs and animal hair, looked as if they hadn’t been ridden in a few years. After some serious scrubbing they looked like they’d be usable and indeed, after the addition of a kid seat to each, we’ve ridden them every day, whether to bring Niko to and from school (we bought Ingrid her own bike), pick up groceries, ride into town for special events,

or basically for any type of commuting or transportation within a two or three kilometer radius. It’s also true that we were trying to go without a car, and did so for five months, but finally yielded to the pressure of cold and wet weather, difficulty keeping up with the groceries and a desire to explore more than trains or combinations of trains and busses would allow and rented a car for the rest of our stay. I became quietly fascinated by the spectacle of the daily riding world here. How could these Lucchese people manage to talk on a cell phone while weaving in between thick pedestrian traffic and avoid crashing much less putting their foot down? It was a sixth sense, I was sure, so unnatural was it for me to see folks in their seventies and eighties agilely guiding a bicycle through town along with two sacks of groceries and only occasionally ringing their bell to ward off would be blockers of their path, 

a mother in heels headed to daycare then work, so stylish and so smooth in her riding despite a fifteen month old on the tiny seat in front of her and a three year old on the seat behind her, the nonchalance with which scores of riders soldiered on in the rain holding umbrellas overhead. So this bike riding and bike culture was a bit different than what I’d experienced back home but I was getting used to it and at least I was rolling myself—albeit with a bike I could hardly lift with one hand.

         Have you ever had to work hard to convince yourself some less than desirable condition was okay, or even good? As in “yes, whatever it is is not great but quit complaining already?” Like you know you want more somehow, you want it to change but don’t want to admit it because you know you should be happy with how things are and try hard to appreciate what you have, keep hoping that this bad situation will resolve and work actively at trying to change it but it never does, you keep trying to think this way, to convince yourself, but have trouble succeeding? Yes? Let’s have a beer together sometime. I can relate. While my knee permitted me to commute around short distances on the flats, I couldn’t help feeling the excitement and joy of the sport of cycling all around me, noticing cyclists in 

groups meeting for a lunch hour ride, weekend training session, individuals out for a morning spin, every one dressed up in what looked to be professional kits. Back in the States this would make you the fodder of skilled racing cyclists’ jokes, the over the hill weekend rider shaving legs and dressed in the latest and most colorful pro team’s jersey and shorts, complete with matching shoe covers and helmet, but it is a given in Lucca. Here it is all about la bella figura. There actually are quite a few pro teams that train in the area, too, especially from the Netherlands, from what I’ve been told. But mostly those I see are everyday cyclists and they don’t even necessarily race but do dress to the hilt and draw nary a glance in town or in country, so common a sight they are. I am one of those husbands and dads who will almost always remark to his wife and kids, “hey, look at that cyclist/group of cyclists!” the instant they’re visible, so exciting it is for me to see them. Lauren and the children are used to it and gamely put up with me but since the injury I’ve had that surge of excitement pointing them out but it’s been followed by a bit of emptiness and a tinge of resentment and the effort of trying to be happy with what I have (at least I can walk!).

         A guy can only exert self-control for so long, though. I finally threw caution to the wind and talked with Cristiano at the local bike shop. He took my measurements and pieced together a decent used road bike with a compact gear system which would allow me, in theory, to go up hills, however slowly. 

I knew the risks at stake and that my knee hadn’t been doing great, but just couldn’t help it. The depth of the bike culture here and the enticing hills encircling the city were too much for me. So there I was, he of the Bianchi racing bike bought in the States twenty-five years earlier now the proud owner of a Trek bought in Italy (and guess what? the bike shop even bears an English name ‘Fast & Furious’ !)! I still like to think I have some rationality and hopefully bring a bit more wisdom to bear than before, however, so I didn’t immediately (or later, either, in fact) head out on a mountainous multiple hour adventure. Over several months I’ve probably gone out only fifteen to twenty times on rides usually around an hour long. My speed? Well, the readout is in kilometers per hour, so without doing the conversion to mph it looks pretty good! My actual, slower speed really doesn’t bother me much. Although that and getting into the danger zone with longer distances preclude me from group rides the small adventures I’ve had on this bike so far have already made the purchase worth it. I’ve ridden up through olive groves during harvest on switchbacks, explored back country roads barely wide enough for one car, come across small churches several centuries old, descended through small towns at a pace making me thankful for a bike with quality brakes, gotten away from the pollution of the plains and smelled fresh grass, flowers, mud, found the clean air with my eyes, too, making the views of the nearby Alpi Apuane mountains and Alpennine mountains even more stunning.

         If one has never found the deliciousness of the sweet and bitter in competition, if one has never been drawn to it repeatedly and felt extremely alive and challenged at the same time it might be hard to understand why a person would put his body through such struggles as are necessary to find his potential, to find his limits. One of the beauties I found in endurance sports was the opportunity to compete against myself, to overcome perceived obstacles and find ways to improve that didn’t depend so much on how well others performed. But there was the flip side of that where limits were not accepted and improvement gradually became more important than enjoyment and satisfaction with what I had. Watching the Giro riders, all younger than me now, as they prepare for a day’s stage, I realize they no longer appear so much as immortals and superstars as Greg Lemond did to me when I was a teen. I appreciate what they can do, and am still amazed by it, and inspired, but it is somehow different. And yet, watching them race I vicariously feel the thrill of competition. Even as they start a stage, I can read the anticipation on their faces, the determination or joy or nervousness. That day is another opportunity to challenge themselves and push themselves to their limits. Many make the sign of the cross as they head off past the official start line, knowing that they can do their part but that there is always chance out there, too, that there is the unknown, a new day’s adventure to come. They have not yet met their limit, have not yet realized their potential, and the possibility and hope present in them is palpable.

         Inching up Tuscan inclines or cruising down them, rolling steadily across the plains, the dreams of athletic improvement I had most of the first part of my life have been replaced by another vision of transformation that will be equally, if not more challenging. So simple in theory but difficult in practice, it is to get back to what spoke to me initially in the early days of the Bianchi, to in every moment appreciate whatever situation presents itself, to notice more often and savor the strain of muscles as they move, the taste of a drink of cold water, the rich odor of a freshly plowed field, a smoothly spinning chain and cogs, the sight of a little boy pedaling, slightly unbalanced and jerky, away from his Dad who’s let go of the boy’s seat, has stopped jogging after him and let his son ask a few times, “Do you still have me?” letting the question go unanswered, letting him pedal away and set off on the rest of his life, making his own adventure, a whole world to discover.

Monday

My dream faded as I became aware of the morning. Had I been punched in the face? Had too much to drink the night before? I risked a quick glance from under my eyelids and saw that the crack of light that usually escaped from our otherwise room-darkening internal wooden shutters wasn’t yet present. A yawn and slight body stretch. No, nothing broken. I turned onto my back. A heavy head, but I then remembered that no, no alcohol was consumed the night before. I reached over to push the button that backlit my watch. Five o’clock. For the next couple of hours I lay there, awake, and aware of the slow start to my Monday.

            If you’ve ever lived in a foreign country, chances are good that at a few points along the way you experienced some resistance to your new culture, some sense of, say. . . exasperation. But even if you haven’t, I would venture a guess that all of us have had those days where, although there are no catastrophes or seriously life-changing events, everything seems to go wrong. Like Monday.

            Nikolai had been home sick for three days with a high fever and we were starting to feel the effects of worrying about our little guy and caring for him. Once more Monday morning the thermometer read 40.2 C, and again he was listless and clingy and didn’t have an appetite. We kept trying to call the doctor but apparently she was going to be on the evening shift. She was our third pediatrician since October and this was something like Nikolai’s eleventh health issue that had kept him home from school. All told he’s missed half of school since mid-September and on Monday it was immediately apparent that another home day it would be.

            At various other times this year I’ve had my moments of perversely enjoying the necessity of waiting in endless lines only to then have to wait in another endless line, realizing in that and other situations such as getting jostled repeatedly in a crowd or getting cut time after time in less formal lines (and what was a line, anyway?) that that’s just how things happen here, that I was experiencing but a couple of the so-called cultural differences and somehow getting a first-hand view into a different way of perceiving and acting in situations which I, as an American, had a different way of perceiving and acting in. It was all quite fascinating.

            On Monday, however, I had no such perspective, and it’s probably a good thing I waited to write this until Tuesday.

            Italy is expensive. Lucca, at least, is no cheap place to live, as we were finding out more and more. I’d learned to avoid translating euros to dollars after a couple months of incredulity, but even in euros our costs looked sky high. Monday morning, after we got back from a trip to the post office to pick up a package and were charged sixty-five euros just to take the package (which bore its own hefty postage from the US), I happened to notice a slip of paper in the entry way with the letterhead of Niko’s school. Another notice of payment due for his lunch, and of course it was in euros but for some reason I quickly reverted to my currency translation ways and calculated that his barely eaten meals had amounted to one-hundred twenty five dollars this month besides the enormous sum we’d already paid for his year at this institution when all of the public schools said they were full back in August. Oh, and we were late to pay again. I found a line in the letter that seemed to refer to us, in bold and underlined, saying that parents need to get in the fee on time.

            That Monday wasn’t just about Niko being sick, either. I was feeling draggy and hyper at the same time, and directionless, so many plans and projects to work on but unable to start any, my various knee and hip problems bothering me more than usual, the incessant pounding and rumbling of motors from the construction site next door driving me insane. Finally, in mid-afternoon, I decided I needed a break and told Lauren I was going to head for a jaunt on my bike down by the river.

            Before leaving I decided to check my e-mail. I should’ve known better. Another notice from Niko’s school! This time they were also requiring payment, but now above and beyond what I had dreamed of. This time it would be one-hundred fifty dollars because the heating company determined that they went above their allotted amount for the winter and per Article X Number 123 they were passing on the cost to the parents. Another bill I hadn’t looked at peaked out from under the computer. It was our very own energy bill for just over two months. After looking at the figure, I knew that at all costs I had to get out of the house for some exercise. While we don’t keep the house baking hot we admittedly haven’t gone the Italian way of suffering as long as possible before starting to heat the house, of using hot water bottles at night to allow house temperatures in the low 50s F, of wearing three sweaters during the day. So now we would pay for keeping this high-ceilinged house warm enough so we didn’t shiver to the tune of twenty-five hundred dollars. Yes, you read that correctly.

            I had about an hour before the pediatrician would start her office hours at four, when we would bring Niko in to see if he had something more serious than a bout of the flu. Out on the bike, weaving around traffic, I eventually made my way to the Serchio. Go to the right and follow a paved path (which it turns out is actually a very narrow road with no shoulder) or go to the left on the dirt/crushed stone path. Yes, you guessed correctly, I went left. Sure, it was a bit bumpy, but there were no cars. Although my hip still hurt to turn the pedals, and my knee wasn’t much better, I think I started to feel my forehead relax, started momentarily to forget about Niko being sick, to stop wondering if this time it was something worse than the Scarlet Fever, Strep Throat, several day Diarrhea,Vomiting episodes, or Asthma complications he’s already had here. I was inching—rolling—towards relaxation. But boy, it sure was bumpy, and especially from the rear. After a few more seconds I looked back at the tire. Sure enough, I had a flat. After removing the rear wheel, unseating the tire and removing the tube, I began searching for the puncture and eventually found it, the result of a thorn from a bush that was still sticking through the tire casing. I patched the hole and attempted to inflate the tire once more but my frame pump from twenty years ago just wasn’t cooperating. A man passed on the trail with his little dog, nodding to me and smiling, saying something about getting stranded himself. A couple of kids walking with their grandparents and dog glanced in my direction and headed away. I tried this and that before remembering about Niko and seeing that I would already be late. After forty or so minutes in an operation I normally could take care of in ten I had the wheel back on and the tire pumped up and ready to go. The man with the dog walked back past me and said I should stick to the road, that this path had lots of thorns. I thanked him for the advice, readied to mount my bike, and saw that the tire had become flat again. Out of cement and patches now and without a decent pump, I was stuck.

            When I eventually made it home, it turned out that Lauren had gotten in touch with the doctor, who said to come by at 7:30pm. We got Niko in his footy-pajamas, brushed teeth, and headed out. There were several people ahead of us at the Pediatricians, but when we came in our doctor indicated for us to sit right outside her office. Maybe since we’d called we would get to go right in at 7:30pm, going in front of the others who were already waiting? We heard snatches of conversation from inside, several times increasing volume in the way that would make you think they were wrapping things up, here’s the prescription, take the drops two times a day for five days… Finally, when the door did open, the doctor ushered in another family, and so on. One hour later we were finally admitted to her office.

           

          Thankfully on off days there is always the next day to look forward to, and sometimes it’s even possible to admit to oneself that absolutely everything on that off day wasn’t so horrible after all. I couldn’t, for example, close without saying that those grandparents, out for a walk with their grandchildren and dog, had returned from their journey and saw me walking my bike down the nearest road. The grandpa was also a cyclist, he explained, though he said he didn’t do it too much anymore. I explained what had happened, that I’d already patched it once but that apparently the tube had more holes and that my pump was nearly shot. He told me to relax, that he lived just down the road. It would be okay. The eight year old boy and five year old girl were extremely interested in this man who spoke in a funny accent that their grandpa was helping, the girl stealing glances now and then, the boy asking his grandpa about the bike I was wheeling and recounting his own experiences with bikes. When we got to their house and I’d taken off the wheel and extracted the tube again the grandpa offered me one of his own, first checking it for holes in a tub of water. In the ensuing re-mounting and pumping up of the tire he literally pushed me out of the way at times so he could try his own methods. By that point in my turn of fortune, though, I’d recovered enough to recognize it just as his way of action, gestures completely normal that would probably go unnoticed by any Italian. When I profusely thanked him he brushed it off and laughed, saying that of course he would do that, that it was completely normal, that I must be joking to offer him so much thanks. I also couldn’t go without saying that this Pediatrician, this third one, is a great doctor and spends enough time with each of her patients, which does mean longer wait times but much-needed attention once you do get in her office. Niko has seen her a few times now and says, “I like that Doctor!” And, somehow, she has refused payment for her services every time we’ve gone. By the time we got in to see her Niko’s fever had gone down and he was joking around, bouncing on and off my lap. She checked lungs, ears, throat, and concluded it was just a bout of the flu and that he should be better by tomorrow and if not to bring him right back. 

       It had been one of those days and I looked forward to resting my head on the pillow and pulling the covers up, looked forward to a solid night of sleep and the dawn of a new day but by that point, I had to admit, things weren’t so bad after all here in Lucca. Bills would eventually get paid, Niko would eventually recover, and we still had three months of new days, each one holding its own set of situations—not ones we always planned or hoped for, but ones from which we would surely continue to learn.