I am - as always in my "holidays" - at the first breakfast. Morpheus had yesterday Evening I arranged for an exception, because I can at 7 clock to the buffet, instead, as the other hotel guests. clock until 7:30.
Morpheus? Yes, of course, the Morpheus from The Matrix. And no other. The night porter has to be the master hacker, because I have absolutely no doubt. little surly staff who are still immersed in the structure of the breakfast world eyeing me and bring me reluctantly to my cappuccino. Only when Aldo - currently not even as would-Schumi people in the blinking of the airport pick up but with a silicon spray armed expresses some sausages in the edge of the pool - first as Aldo me exuberantly waving I am also welcomes accepted by the staff.
I refresh of yogurt, fresh fruit and croissants with butter and jam. Sausage, are short, hearty not today. Knowing what will happen to my body now sink, I mean taxofit magnesium capsules and another down for joints with fresh apple juice, then pay for my room and stand just 15 minutes later in full uniform ready before the hotel: First stage mioGiro it Bring it on!
familiar terrain.
First there is the me of yesterday's training exit still well along in memory remaining 15 km to the west end of the island Cavallino Treporti.
Although the road is next to me as completely empty - 7:40 clock is still no drivers on my feet - I choose the bike path. The slick surface is then but a lot more attractive. I let it go it's quiet, but I know that today I though only an estimated 10 meters over the entire stage, but to complete but was 120 km. Previously, on my recumbent was not a distance, I remember only too well to the half Olang race I've driven two weeks ago in Hamburg. And the back wrist Posch Merz was at its best!
In the magnificent colors of the rising sun light shining into it I blink, I must smile, open the Zipper of my jerseys and breathe deeply - I drive 32 km / h into my vacation!
little later, I am frightened almost, I reach the small ferry to Punta Sabbioni, detach a bicycle card (1 €) to climb and with the non-canceled yesterday's card, the person water taxi. It is the same route as yesterday, only that I have a station before Venice has to go. arrived over there - the narrow, 15 kilometer long island called Lido di Venezia - I find myself on a still empty, beautifully curved road along the tranquil lagoon shore. Herrlich - Italy will present itself to me so beautiful?
Goethe was also here, as I read in the "Italian Journey". "We got out and walked across the tongue I heard a loud noise, it was the sea, and I saw it soon, it went up against the shore by retired, it was about noon, a time of low tide. So I have since seen even the sea with eyes and am in the barn, the leaves are retreating, pursued him. "
Well, from the sea on the south side I did not come, but the sea will I see enough. So my legs swinging in rhythmic step, the Dura Ace sings the silent song of jacking off and I enjoy the shade and the spicy shore trees, soft now and then one or another pothole, and am happy that I am the sole master of the streets of the Lido.
An idyll.
So it goes several kilometers. Then, the road is expanded here as a broad thoroughfare with two lanes in each direction, to reach Alberoni, the "capital" of this island, or dune, as Goethe called the Lido. The streets are empty Alberoni. It still all sleep well, or sit in a dressing gown, drinking cappuccino in front of the latest edition of the Gazetto dello Sport ...
I am suddenly out of nowhere overtaken by a bus. I am terrified - Cough and later, for his unfiltered diesel cloud me glued smoky smelly oily aftertaste with the lungs. holds the bus, I overtake him.
later did he tell me.
Then he holds back.
I pass by.
is how it is, until we left Alberoni.
race with a bus ... in a race.
After 15 kilometers I am at the ferry port of the second ferry. From here it goes from the Lido over the third and last morning of my island hopping - over to an island that does not even seem to have a name. I call them after the settlement, I will come by: Pellestrina.
Just before the ferry arrives, joins and sooty puffing on the bus waiting. He will roll with me together on the rickety boat. Just five minutes later, I am but that still leaves over all other the floating taxi, shifts up the gears and gas there. 
There is wind on the side about 10 kilometers long and only a few hundred meters wide island. but proof of home-tall reeds can I find a round kick me perspire to death but I say 35 km / h Very good. Then buzzing the bus passed me.
I got him back in the next place. Then he
overtaken me again, scarce, at just under knappi most, as we like the Italians.
But the bus must drive slowly, because two of us - busy with our own race - fall into a different race.
students, housewives and police officers standing at the roadside and wave to come towards me on the left side jogger on the right side of hole I selbige on its second half. And always in sight in front of me my opponent, who Stinkebus. Thanks to the sporting people of the unnamed island I have another chance against him.
I accelerate, the red monster in the rigid view, hard kick in the wind, my lungs burn and I brace myself, fight against inevitable that, it explains the aerodynamics of the war: the Stinkebus I get even! I get even! War ... ... and I get it. He might Pellestrina parked on the little market place, people get in and out, the bus driver leans back - I pass by.
Made it won.
Done.
burn my legs, the sweat runs me under the helmet. In streams. My back is water-soaked, soaked through already in my backpack?
I'm Done, done, then comes the ferry, the ferry takes about an hour. Aha, I think, therefore, the bus parked on the square.
I my burning lungs parks at the pier, put on my Cervélo and crouch towards me. wait one hour. Pointless, time passes. But
enough to extinguish the burning in my alveoli.
Schlappend branded brackish water to the pier. Geckos strikes across hot pavement, the air is only now and then comes a breath of fresh air full of salt lagoon over to me, I prefer the full juice from the hot soft plastic bottles and insulate against the ferry.
The Aldo of the seas.
It should go to Chioggia - the first town on the Italian mainland. Goethe, too, my horse-driven pioneers arrived, that Wegg, about Choggia knows his diary the following report.
"I drove from Pellestrina against Chioggia about where are the big mines, Murazzi called, which makes the Republic perform against the sea, are of hewn stone and are actually the long tongue of land, Lido called, which separates the lagoon from the sea, protect against these wild elements. "
I also see the Murazzi. Huge stone walls, a wall, now that is high tide, it seems to me to be 6 feet tall, but more accurate as I can see only when I board the ferry.
It looks even smaller type, almost delicate, fragile as it invests, and all of them, the rusty Cinque Centos, the brand-new BMWs and - lo and behold - the Stinkebus - the storm, so that they mitnähme. When I come on board in fantasy role-a man full uniform and look up to me asking for my Biglietto. Oha, I think - that were only valid for one journey and this is the third! I shrug my cleverly complicated, chattering in English, out of my backpack. He wants to save the trouble, see my ticket validated and can give me.
put little later on we. And immediately I am reminded of my taxi ride with Aldo remembers.
A huge tanker - unable to close waters to maneuver, let alone slow down - moves exactly in our course. Or rather, our captain, I call him ... Aldo ... maneuvering and come to the right on a collision course. Banned I am in deep cover, flabby comes to salt water, cool fresh breeze, but you know, sweat is cold anyway.
I do not know how he did it, but we miss the rear with the angry by a huge propeller churned water only a few feet, the other guests seem to be accustomed to the drama. I for one can breathe, as we arrive at the port of Chioggia, and think back on it only briefly, that right next to the ferry port of Pellestrino the island cemetery was - at least it was not a bad omen.
finally Italy, I think, finally mainland. After the island hopping, it is now going to say a whole. Thus far, down less than 60 kilometers, but needed almost 4 hours. Nice it was that Hoppen. But now, now the Racer awakened in me wants to enter inside, wants a nice, straight, smooth road and give a few hours of gas. ! Andiamo ", I think - and get stuck on a bumpy patch pituresken pedestrian zone in the port district of this beautiful city. Stop and go is called for.
land and a flowing bottom.
When I finally made the pedestrian zone worked out, seek and I find the sign that brings me to the highway to Ravenna - always to the south, straight ahead.
It's a nice wind from her side of the lake, which I still obliquely from behind whistles in the calves, so I'm optimistic step forward, pure, and may soon see a cut from my Garmin Forerunner 30.
The road goes well, the surface is flat and smooth, only occasionally, usually when it goes through the small towns, it is rough. Then reduces the otherwise comfortably wide shoulder somewhat, but the moment I'm out of the villages, I have almost a meter finest asphalt for me - the me masse overtaking cars so little annoying. 
hot it is. And where I otherwise of a tail wind is welcome, the wind makes in front of my chest heat to build unparalleled. Fortunately, makes the jersey by Castelli Cervélo-open as a jacket and soon I'm going topless. What only looks sexier - more cooling brings the barely.
Soon the highway will be wider, two lanes each way, at some point might add a median strip. Then I will no longer 120 km / h Fiat's outdated, but quick of 180 mph.
This looks not only to highway - it all behave as if it has a.
hurts me the butt, I think, when I'm on a long bridge.
At the end of a sign: "Fiume Po. Aha, this is so the bottom. The river, from its level, I've heard so much. Now I'm going about it. Below me, when I look, but I see no water. The bridge is 1,500 meters long. Probably, like so many great rivers swell, and the Po at only one time in right. Namely, when in the mountains to spring towards the water melts.
But now I see only desert Fadland next - and a miserable long bridge before me.
some point, I had no longer believed in it, then I turn my head and finally see the waters of the watercourse. So Po. There he is. A few seconds later, the wars already. past.
Po over.
What is not over, the pain into it.
And, I think, be as soon not go over.
But all is forgotten, all is as it conjured away, as I see before me on the straight, the unmistakable silhouette of a racing bike. Still small, there, there on the horizon, but I can see the round kick, a characteristic stooped posture - yes, a Bicicletta da Corsa. And as men are just as, once awakened to the hunting instinct in me. That there were already so in the recumbent and the lightweight carbon race this is rampant. I wonder briefly: So far, 50 kilometers sängender heat down, I'm out of breath, my lungs burn, my shoulders hurt and I'm planning for at least another 70 km to me ... ah, fuck it says, my left foot and enters the Kubel, exactly! agrees my right one and I accelerate.
still motivated me when I tell the Lord with Italian racing cyclists a pink jersey. Can it be coincidence? Or does the racing God put me here, a sign in front of the wheels? The Maglia Rosa before me, on my first leg, my first Racing cyclists. Well, honor - THE HOLE ON ME!
I love my trouble, I lie down in the wind and go into the under seat steering position. This is not convenient, but it provides the wind by holding less attack surface - besides, I can actually round, connect smoothly. Really feel like my ass moves in the left and right of the narrow Trettaktes Prologo saddle.
And then, I'll have him linger, in his short Winschatten - 31 km / h. the Lord. Unshaven calves - well, this can be a pro - that's on a sheet of thick and ponderous tread.
breathe.
shift down a gear.
I look around me briefly, pull out and give substance.
little later I pass by, say "Ciao." in passing and set me off.
A bridge I fight my way up, keep the pace hot, then I take out - the pink jersey is far behind me.
shot. Connected. Sunk.
headwind and a sore butt.
But the joy of the lead does not last long. Quickly, I'm back in the round kick, fight my way through the fertile wasteland of the Po Valley and I am the attacks of an aggressive side winds.
I drink a lot. 1.4 liter can I take so I make myself out the second bottle to empty. The road winds sometimes left sometimes right. There is hardly anything to see. Because, to my left, not 2 or 3 miles, as must the cool waters of the Adriatic fire on marshy shore. But here is what comes of nothing. Only a dry wind, the hot looks as the hair dryer my sweet.
I analyze my pain: I go first road bike for 600 kilometers. The Cervélo R3 was at my request tour set to maintain myself and adjusted, the Prologo "Nago" saddle despite the rather minimal seeming suspension of the cover is one of the langstreckentauglicheren. ride on my back the Deuter Trans Alpine 26 SL - a backpack for cycling, I've been told. Lots of storage space, a lot of pockets, a clever ventilation system, and many buckles to the bag firmly and not slip to lock at the back.
And yet - the 4 kilos of luggage press on my narrow shoulders. Muscle at the back - I write down my thoughts in the post mioGiro. Not that cut the straps or something, not that, but I feel like the load slowly reduces the performance. And does my endurance to the test. But the shoulders and neck are not the only front on which I have to fight. There were the knuckles. Although the road is very good here, but everyone goes small shock, every pebble once and almost unfiltered into my knuckles. As can also generously wrapped griptape change anything. Like the "padding" my saddle this is probably for aesthetic purposes. I will miss or might not.
The knuckles are not the worst pain. It's getting really fun now that I am more of the 70 kilometer mark on bottom. Matching the level that I cross now, I feel like the seats of my sit bones ever louder cries for help sent to my brain stem, "When this ride is finally over the ???!!!"
I imagine the card - and think: "Well, Guys, far from "
Larger Map
Nee is there to continue for another round.
" Well thank you, you ass! ", It comes from below.
And then it says the road God good to me. Because I get first on a section of road that looks brand new, so new smells, so smooth is that I think I hover over the asphalt. A ring road. A long curve . Bordered by poplars to go crazy beautiful, a long, long laaaaange curve. And when I left, look towards the center of this huge semi-circle of asphalt, I see idyll. I brake. Am. Cross the motorway ring-like monsters, raise my bike over the guard rails slide through two rows Rhododendrenbüsche and stand in the middle of a monastery complex that is so beautiful that my breath.
I need the road bike than twenty feet above the akurrat-cropped lawn, run green and humid in downright wasteful contrast to the shimmering, dry heat and the blowing, throwing asphalt, is, and already I hear no sound of the road, thundering from the trucks, the searing and frantic Barchettas Piaggio. break in the bypass loop.
I'm in Pomposa, I learn. There is a monastery in which even the brothers of the Benedictine Order and their faith - were hard work is done and - above all. I read that was already in the 6th century in this place a church and that the complex reached its current form by 1000 in its heyday and greatest power on the road between Rome and Ravenna.
Only a natural disaster - as in high water in the dams broke Ferrara - initiated the decline of the monastery. Today, if I can convince people to see these beautiful buildings, climb the imposing church tower and make yourself comfortable in the Ristorante - what I do.
I order a large bottle of water and an Insalata Mista. I do not want anything heavy, rather something healthy, something that makes me fit. And what can be better than fresh, crisp salad full of vitamins, minerals and salts - all the valuable stuff that I've sweated gallons in northern Italy just sun on the asphalt? The waiter is wearing a T-shirt saying "POLICE" and the mother, who had me me zerschnibbelt just the leaves, Frisee heads, tomatoes and delicious pepper comes out, both sit down at the next table and see me how I beträufele the salad with one of the tastiest olive oil I have ever had me and acclimatize slowly.
Next door, a Chinese couple tried to read the card.
Proschiutto e Melone round off my time. It tastes delicious. It is one of those memorable moments: I'm sitting in the shade of two hundred year old trees, far away a bell rings, the 12 and I look at the bike that is not 2 feet away from me: All pain, all pain is forgotten. I'm happy.
Schnorbse my salad and enjoy the tranquility.
Truly, a holy place, I think. Here I would have founded a monastery.
And then, after an hour break, I go back over the Meadow. Look at me once more, I fight through the rhododendron, the bike lifted over the barrier, stand on boiling asphalt, breathe deeply, click on one myself and am back in sängender sun, bear the rays annoyed me crank through the headwind and, what I can. Ravenna must be achieved.
So I fly through small villages, annoyed that I forgot Depp, fill my water bottles with fresh, cold and wet with painfully dry throat now hold out for a "bar". In Italy, for that is so - I learned - there are indeed in every village, and no matter how small, a gas station, but that is not like here in Germany, where gas stations provide the fuel really just an excuse to raise the real business: namely, to be a 24-hour supermarket, where one can charge excessive prices.
in which it then but everything is what you need.
In Italy, gas stations are still gas stations. And nothing else.
If a tank has since then time to offer something to drink, then you notice the sign on the additional "bar" that sticks under the Esso, Shell and Agip logo.
But far from it, if you're thinking that was a bar then a shop, similar to the usual German shopping paradise. In most cases, the bar is nothing more than a counter where of course - and espressos Tramezzini be sold. You're lucky, there is then a fridge with soft drinks around.
And that's what I need. But it is precisely this
come none of these stations, bars.
I die of thirst. My speed goes down
. Legs are heavy. Stomach growls again (salad was good but not quite enough) and I'm considering, just somewhere to ring and ask for "agua" ... to ... Well until the racing God save me again:
Lidl.
The German supermarket chain appears to me initially in the form of a huge advertising sign. Blue-yellow-red, it glows in the boiling sun, excessive, on a 30 meter high Stahständer, turns the German logo. And I trust my eyes at first, but it's true - his own departure, they have built here on the highway, looks like the mesh cross home. me right, that I turn away, park my bike at the window rattling, on the last hole, whistling and sweating directly in the water department (funny that, worldwide, every Lidl and Aldi stores are granted on the same principle) and buy me two bottles of water and about a kilo of bananas.
The sweet service collects me from Italian.
I drink like a Viking, the first time directly bottle half empty, the remaining liter of me I cannot riekt by the helmet on my head. A young boy looks at me with wide eyes. As I stuff the third banana into me, his dad comes, picks it up, grins at me and gets into his air-conditioned car.
I can do is the hard saddle of my without air-R3.
The landscape changes little. It remains flat as in Holland, the wind is hard as in Holland and the sun is not about to lose its intensity or covered by one or the other cloud-to-be. If I go to the - probably derived from Roman or medieval times - the old road now and then by shady trees along the road at least temporarily cooling time was, I find Although I now on the super-developed, but completely shadow-free high-tech super-Strada - and can do nothing more than drive through shimmering heat more or less straight angweilig.
way it should be: to suffer, suffer suffer again.
I know that even from Canada - the Radtrance. You drive and drive and drive. The track is not very demanding - you need to retrieve hard intellectual performance or coordination by the brain. Simply connect only. Round. Stupid fast. Connect. Mile after mile. Hour after hour. Straight.
And then the mind wandering.
flies away.
leaves the body.
And I here so by at least 40 degree hot sun air in northern Italy, cut to most of lowered my head, keep my clean-shaven calves and from stamp, the hiss of my Mavic spokes, cut the carbon by the wind, a symphony of speed and nature, I drifting away. Twilight. Brain on the back burner and flashes of thought, the flinch, theme jumps as Warpflug, only now and then, when a bead of sweat me annoying at the face or forehead runs down, tickles it, as a crawling ant to me along the body, as I was exposed to an invasion of insects. So I come away from me the mileage. So I
dawn limbo between a bicycle and mental retreat into Musikfragmete from Depeche Mode and "Volare ..."
I turn now through completely?
an hour later. I can not. I swim in myself It seems like there is between the skin and meat, a layer that is filled with water. My clothes stink, my feet swim in the Sidis. I could use an AC-lung, I think with my brain soft sun-stricken, as I drink my bottle of boiling water exchange.
So I am standing on the sand of a parking lot. Next door, rush past the air-conditioned cars as ever, and I stand there, open my shirt and hold my wet, bare stomach in the wind.
Cooling brings the no.
Only five kilometers has further opened a Ristorante. I save myself on the plastic chairs in a shady Lipton Ice Tea screens promise cooling.
Ristorante has shut off yet, but they take pity on me and sell me some water. Cold it is. It tingles, almost hisses my insides, my insides almost evaporate, as the cold wet the esophagus is brought down. Wow, what a ride, I think, of breath, than my Garmin Forerunner tells me that we already have come a long 115 km.
115 km - 40 degree heat - and I in the middle.
115 km - with the recumbent a no brainer. Warm-up period ended.
Road With ... Helmets off to pray, I think, as I think about the steps that are yet to come: The sun will remain. But the plane will go. And then there are mountains.
But everything is still so far away. Now I want first to Ravenna.
Ravenna!
I will arise just because a pair of leaves, both as to the 50, the Ristorante. He looks at me and my bike, a smile lit his face.
I wave and shout "Ciao!"
A friendly "Salve!" returns.
He starts the engine of his VW station wagon, but rises again and comes to my table. His wife afterwards. Once we have the usual "I do not speak Italian" behind us, he gets in complicated English-French out of me that I want to go to Sicily.
"Mama mia!", He is doing and again, "Molto bene!"
He talks a lot, make gestures of Bergen, in his opinion, be to scare me with vertical slopes fear, told and told his wife and translated from English into chunks and I just nod.
How far except to Ravenna, I ask finally.
"Cinque." he says and keeps me five fingers before his face.
Ah, great, I breathe in relief.
More is not really in it today.
He drives by honking dusty courtyard, behind me. And really - after a roundabout and a rather ugly, because left and run down looking, industrial area, I am there - Ravenna.
I walk around the station, just look at my Google Maps printout and I soon found the Via Roma, where my hotel was. narrow streets, all clean, all colorful and pituresk. This quiet, a gentle, pleasant cool breeze rustling with the humming of my free passage through the Via Roma. I glide slowly, slowly - do I win anything today!
Eventually I find my hotel. checks.
showers.
some cream ass - ah! - A blessing!
I stand in the bathroom contemplate, I think the red shoes and Au Backe!
pick and me with his open hand on the forehead when I realize that I have forgotten my face cream - and I bought myself a little extra in Hamburg Nivea tin.
Well then smeared her face with ass cream. What good is my best piece can not hurt my other face, right?
Rei purified from the tube my sweaty clothes I been able to distribute the slats of my blinds. They hang in the wind and will be dry within hours. Tomorrow, then again in the Cervélo-Autfit how it should be. Then I go out, the duty is done.
now controlled by only a single thought my sun-stricken Skull: food!
So I misled by streets that are so clean that you eat them The same could be: Ravenna is a gem!
the Piazza Popolo, the heart of the city that was once the main residence of the Western Roman Empire, once the sea was but because of the silting up - says it Wikipedia - now 9 km is away from him, I let myself down and order pasta. leckerschmecker, I think, when I suddenly surrounded by the Emilia Romagna oncoming storm in thunderous rain seats, large umbrellas protected, I enjoy a perfect Pasta with tomato sauce, I let the Insalata taste and refresh myself on a cold Coke. Perfect, I think - and pig had - because with this rain wheel drive, have I missed real yet!
The portion is too small. And so I order the astonishment of my Canadian operation or a portion, and standing foot is delivered. I propose the belly really full. I eat more fat and round and order a fantastic panna cotta. Must this be, I sip my coffee with relish, stretch out my calves burning, enjoy the fresh air noticeably cold rain and watch the pigeons as they too are happy to bathe in the puddles and refresh.
On my way back I contemplate my inheritance of the Romans - a Terme, city gates and temples. See see venerable churches near baroque jewels and walk on cobbles that were determined ten times as old as I am. prefer the hotel I am naked. It's hot, stuffy. Unfortunately the rain has not been able durchzulüften the room. My clothes are dry, but - and I plunder the minibar, it makes me comfortable and excited to watch chattering commentators at a World Cup match.
must be that, I think. So I
I deserved.
won the first stage. Venice to Ravenna. Zero altitude. Not a single mountain riding. And yet - against the wind, sun and heat I've trimmed quite a bit. But all is forgotten when I wegdöse slow, me cover my sparse with a sheet outside the sun sets, a couple of guys with their mopeds on streets indicate Ravenna and I fall asleep.
morning, such a stage, are my last thoughts. I blink briefly - my Cervélo see leaning against the wall. Geiles bike, I think. And
asleep.
Stage 1 - Venice Ravenna
leg length: 124.7 km
gross travel time: 8 h 30 min
journey net: 4 h 15 min
section: 29.3 km / h
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