It's raining at night, that I believe that the world may perish. It pladdert only way down, I believe, in the narrow alley down there would arise between my hotel and the house across the street, is a small river.
buzzing after six quarters of my cell phone: SMS in China, my darling let me know. I smile at the dawning day and decide to get up. I start my day with Goethe, whose famous travel rod I cross again today and will follow up Naples:
"For out of impatience to get ahead, I sleep dressed in white and not pretty, be a wake before the day to sit down too quickly into the car and drive between sleep and wakefulness, the date upon and to exercise it, the first best fantasy images at will. "
Well, I do not sleep dressed, but naked (other way of putting the 30 degree "cold" nights in Umbria not endure), but probably I wake before dawn in order to finally get going today but wakes me the rain. It thunders and lightning, it grumbles and rumbles. .. thunderstorms in the morning
will keep the weather is glorious Na
is -?. at least initially after a turn, unfortunately, only sweet breakfast I'm going back to the big highway that will carry me to Rome, I will achieve still not sure. In the hotel I asked the concierge just like the weather today would be well: he looked at me quizzically. And again: Will it rain or not?
"Can be." He said. "Or not."
Aha.
I kept asking. This time, two Carabinieri, how do I get the best for Roma: They send me back on the highway. Okay, I think me, if need be. "Hold the right -. And drive carefully," she advised me. I will, I promise!
The Road goes off like hell, I can give you gas, come super fast at 35 kph Light-to-reach section forward and join me soon in a round kick. Radtrance in the morning, it must be the!
The highway is fenced in by about 1.20 meters high concrete walls. Each direction of travel for himself, two lanes in each direction and relatively quiet market. outdated now and a truck rumbling me, otherwise I can get free and of good character. Spoleto is my first goal - and although the wind is slow - first from the side, later coming from the front - I have the best mood. What could be better than free and unfettered to pass through the land? Only the bike under the rear, a small bag of back, free, free as a migrant bird, free, free ... I take a deep breath, breathe the oxygen, the sun-impregnated, but moist air Umbria and am ... happy.
spectacular curls the Lanmdschaft next to me on and off, villages, sometimes elegant, sometimes even adventurous built into the rock, only accessible by narrow, steep streets, castles, palaces, monasteries, wineries - I regret that I betonerne the dragon, this modern highway only keeps them here to look even beyond the high-tech ways to see, to be really close, here what I can only admire from afar breathlessly: idyllic, beautiful space, perfect world. 
appear before me at the first mountains, which must soon be Spoleto, I think the first car next to me honks. Screw you, I think, lick me: Your Carabinieri, it allows me! Just before the city I get lost, because I believe I have found an exit, which brings me to a parallel road from which I was told: empty country road, not this road-racing track, it would be now. It is of course not: I wander around for about 10 kilometers, before I go back to the highway.
Also I decide today not to go to Rieti, but straight to Civita Castellana. And while
I still think, I almost collided with a mountain of Spoleto is: a castle perched at the top, including a nearly vertical rock wall, which I shoot at 40 km / h and soon disappears in a tunnel.
internal shocks me back my sunglasses, which I preserved to me and wonder why my heart rate reached at once the 200 limit and I feel this strange pull in the throat: Danger! And before me, the next truck, which is only 30 cm next to me with 100 km / h rushing past me frightened to death again, I shoot even out of the tunnel. managed 40 kilometers, it is just before 9 clock - the first break at the motorway service station in Spoleto.
I sit in the sun, enjoy ice cold iced tea - the liquid in bottles has exceeded my thanks to sunlight, shortly after leaving the 40-degree mark - eat two panini and type some text message to the loved ones at home. 
verabsschiede I am soon back in Spoleto, waving the back of the castle, and make me into the increase, of which one had told me at the hotel in Foligno: We would be long, very long and very steep to be. Lots of traffic. Much risk. Well look, let's see. Things happen as they had promised me the sun first appears to be just on the back. No, she bangs. I can almost physically feel how to make their rays, the fabric of my jerseys, bounce and squeeze the heat on my skin, under my skin. Water, a precious wet my body, enriched with even more precious salts, they push out.
Well. And then, then it comes: the rise. Significantly, it attracts, it goes up. Before me, I'll look at them closely, are nearly 2,000 meters ramp. Straight, ascending, no curvature, nothing - only gradient upward. And then, as above, just before the towering wall of green, forested mountain-grown, as it bends to the right. view is not what is behind the curve. But I suspect there will be no departure. No, I rather suspect it will continue. Top. Top. Only to the top - until we have circled the mountain.
I'm right. I shall drop me up the climb. I leave a trail dripping sweat, a trail of blood, a tear trace precious salt. If I get my head up - because my neck muscles repeatedly denied their service - I see nothing but green walls around all around me and a gray band that more and more increasing. Up and up.
I look down once, I see shiny calf, strained tendons and muscles, sweat-covered strands, which are struggling to turn a crank.
A hero is different.
But then you hear the mountain below me. Just like that. The road becomes Bridge. Seamless, you hardly notice it. At first, anyway. But then, when the hillside behind and below me ever further away, and I begin to understand that this bridge spans here in at least 100 meters above a deep gorge, reach me gusts to force pull nasty winds on my bike and me to the highest concentration - and the fans continue to take me to get over 100 mph in their tricked-out Fiat at least not increased consideration. ask only one thing I am: Who builds a bridge please to rise above a canyon?
Eventually I manage. some point it's there, the final corner. I reach, take note of them - no power to delight. No sigh of relief, a winning photo, or any reaction. I drive over the vertex, sign that the pedals turn more easily, high, the more lowered the roadway. And then, I go around a curve, the road emerges from under me and then I recorded the wake of the inclined plane. He pulls me, I accelerated, making that my bangs wind in your hair, makes that the freewheeling hums a song of praise for the departure.
I am away duck, duck me and I will quickly faster and faster. Shoot from a curve in the next, joints, correct, join me, if it is just flat, brake times, when the serpentine curves are too narrow. Then I shoot from a last tunnel, a final exit and go to my second stop point: Terni.
arrival. Descending. Sit down.
I sit down to a few gentlemen to discuss the proposed in the midday heat, look at the map to see where I am and drink two Lipton iced tea away just like that, I make myself a huge Panino with Parma and mozzarella - in the climb, I hardly noticed how much I had already sent my stomach cramping warning: Hardly imagine what a Bonking would have done! you babbling beside me, as if there were plans to hurry a revolution. Somehow infected by them, I saddle after a few minutes later my bike and drive off to cross Terni.
says about this city in my travel companion Goethe: "The town is situated in a delightful place I gazed on a tour of her with joy, at the beginning of a beautiful Plaine, between mountains, which all still lime are . Like Bologna over there, so of Terni is over here down at the foot of the mountain. "
Well, the river I fail to see, but the few minutes I carried in the city to shoot, I delight in the beauty of this little gem on pituresken Velino. I regret that I do a little way to the highest waterfalls in Europe, the Marmore "can not afford and step back inside.
Behind Terni receives me start again a mountain range that I However, after a brief increase and overcome more cautious descent. is flatter, with retreat of the mountains, only when I turn around I see what I've just crossed, and only when I look forward to open those Plaine, of which the Lord Weimar Privy writes. Terni, the output from the mountains, I have done.
I think.
It goes through some small villages. The road gets narrower and narrower, also makes the surface more and more to be desired. Apparently, the municipalities or the state for the mountain passes more money than the flat sections. So I have time after time away from my - actually comfortable width - shoulder and go at times almost entirely in the middle of the road. course - it no one honks. They all get on seeing a rapid, but safe.
Well, 'tis containing Ferrari land here.
It goes uphill again at some point, which is to get over, because the increase is hardly the question value. But the headwind, which now gets caught in my wheel on my body and my helmet, is preparing to rob me of the nerve. Fiese gusts slowing me jerk off to low twenties. I have trouble to accelerate again, the eternal switching and in particular the switch from small on the large sheet and then again from the great little leaf away my nerves.
Soon I am screaming annoyed against the O2 overkill.
the Wind God disturbs all of this, of course. On the contrary, he puts something extra: In league with the slope of God.
The road is preparing to go back to being perpendicular to the wall.
Before I can enjoy this view, I'm fighting myself a few kilometers up an ever increasing absurd, ever closer, small country road. I look up, I see more and more winding, with each part of the 200 year-old passer-by, I overtake, whose smile is wider. You know the good, I'm apparently not the first racing cyclist who is doing this slope here. some point I read what I try to just desperate to reach: Narni.
top, I pass through a gate of thick stones. But the road does not on the plane. On the contrary, with each meter, which I am opposed to the center of this place the gradient seems to be steeper. Absurd, my muscles groaning. But there is no answer: no more energy for the brain. Stupid do the legs, which was applied to them at the foot of the mountain. 
some point I'm up. Stand there and see what is Narni: a dream city. One, like those from "Lord of the Rings." Adventurous carved into the rock, buildings cling to the hillside. Far below, in the valley since ironed, zero slope, of the modern smooth, the highway winds through the woods. But up here I breathe Italy. I see history - because I know I just know that every stone - even those elaborately carved from a block of stone bench on which I have a break enjoy - historically. Whether Goethe had not sat here on this rock terrace, one day? Here, where now my great carbon-powered car so casually leaning on the grid?
Everything is so beautiful here, to look so beautiful. Italy, I finally understand why they are all so passionate about this country, its beauty, this wilderness - that nature. Or is it because every stone away from the old Roman trade route Via Flaminia, where I reel off my miles for some miles, breathes really history? "What am I not become the last 8 weeks guilty of friends and insight, but also trouble cost me's. I just keep my eyes open and always hit me the items a right. . Judgments I would not if it were only possible "
right has he, sir. This flow so many things on me that I'm glad it at night to be able to reasonably fully capture in my diary
so overwhelmed me everything here, so completely freed from everyday life, be free!. Here am I "
I stand for a while and enjoy the view Not to good to be true, I think, and forget it it also determines the disadvantages of living up here: everyone going to the Supermarket is a 30 minute drive to Terni, every minute of free time is here again show running for delighted tourists - what I as a traveler passing through lovely idyll, may be annoying to residents everyday. What is this, to be 17 years old in Narni? Is there a disco?
I look around me, as I leave the city - high above I go on the narrow ridge of the mountain, on whose back this old city is built. And I look forward in eager anticipation: Sure it's steep and fast downhill as soon as I have come earlier steep uphill and absurd. 
nil. Mile after mile, the road winds high on the back of the mountain. Almost an hour I curve around - but realize that it steadily downhill. But as disappointing slowly that I hardly ever break through the 40 mark. is boring me here, however, because all around me is spreading around a beautiful green valley where the sun is very pretty. Fruitful because it may be down: the olive harvest here, which I love so much?
The road is little traveled. They probably all take the highway. I want it to be right. I have time to look around me have to step thanks to the slight downward trend of the road have low and can finally relax on the bike. What is difficult, for both back and legs to sign in slowly, I was in the mountains is clear: Tired, tired. The slope of work takes its toll.
When I'm there?
20 km? Rather
30, right?
More and more I fall in Raddepression. What half an hour ago could still evoke the highest ecstasy rebounds, now in my jaded mood: I can not anymore. The headwind has increased again and the deeper I get, the more I feel it. Needs to come hard, has a lot of work for my km / h.
The road leaves me back to the Mind. This is not a coating, which are ancient mosaics, they have just sloppily put back together. Each groove, every little hole caused me pain in the butt, especially the wrists. evasion has become meaningless: The whole road is a patchwork of asphalt fragments. It seems as if an entire Panzer army on a brutal march had passed through here.
And also listens to the sound produced by my 8-bar relentlessly hard tires on the ground.
have roles?
No way!
Then, coming as it does, the departure. Briefly catapulted me to 55 mph - I still wonder how my Carbon this Schütteltour abkann ever, and already it is over. I must go through a small forest - a few rows of trees impenetrable hear my side of the highway - then cross over on a bridge and selbige I find myself in a plane.
It's hot.
hot Brooding. Stopping means exposing yourself to the perfect calm. That's going to be like in a convection oven. Only without air circulation. I can see the sweat evaporate. Even the incessant chirping of the crickets seems to be hard. Here it may be in the sun very well be 47, 48 degrees.
And then: A shield. The rescue! "Civita Castellana Centro" it says.
What? Already the center? Then it can indeed not be far!
New Hope germinates in me. I take a deep train of the hot broth, which was once iced tea and try reinzutreten.
I kick and kick and kick me in hot trance. Need only smile about the signs that line the avenue, and the "town center" tell where this is not even a city, nothing, only fields and trees, the plane and this shimmering heat to me all the water from the veins draws. It deafened in my head cool, I need cooling. My travel companion Goethe was driving on the very same road as before: "The road, from the height to Civita Castellana is in this very beautiful stone lava went smoothly, the city built on volcanic tufa, in which I believed ash, pumice and lava discover. From the castle, the view is very beautiful;. The mountain Soracte stands alone because even picturesque, probably belonging to the Apennine limestone "
Also I look at this Soracte that before me, elusive as the Cheops pyramid as a single obelisk out of the plane projects. Behind it, I think, must come at some point then Rome.
But from Rome, I may now have yet imagined. I drag myself along the road. In my cycling shoes prevailing conditions such as short after the Big Bang, I think to myself, woe to the receptionist who has to sell the same to me my room: I stink like a madman determined after the battle. But still no city. No city, on which I made Goethe so desire.
misery goes along the road, go straight. In the end - nothing. Absolutely not. No goal in sight, no fixed point, not a place where I could say: Since, I have to go! Is still far away, but I can see it! No, this is nothing.
Only the flicker of heat on the asphalt. Only my sound of rattling and clattering Lungeln links.
thirst.
water.
Stop! The
Pulse, here and now to stop just to be stronger and stronger. Just look for shade. Stop. Sit down. Just like that. Stop. Maintenance. Off.
And yet ...
some point, I am there. Eventually I see the city on the hill behind their strong walls. Above sits a church. Towering above homes. And up there, I know there is somewhere above a hotel in which I can take a shower immediately. I rats - after I've entered via a narrow bridge, the city - over rough cobblestones, a police officer ask for a hotel and sent me on one of these narrow streets.
Then I stand at the 4-star outfit called Relay Falisco . Wow, I think, which is determined not be a cheap flophouse, and reserve the right than I am - a little shy and I contrast that make a sweaty, ready, stinking road cyclists here to the tasteful antique atmosphere must be fully aware. The interior promises top-class level.
80 euros for the "large single room" you want to have breakfast by myself. Well like that! And few minutes later, my toilet is in the journey 3.99 bathroom next to the exquisite hotel shampoos.
hole from the minibar I happy and satisfied an ice cold beer. Make myself comfortable in my really big, knight-like Bedroom and rub cream into my legs: for they have really done a great job today. 
Then I nod off briefly, but arouses violent stomach growling me. I dress and look for the sometimes only 2 yards out after a narrow alleys Ristorante. I pass a beautiful chapel, look down into the valley of the thick walls, you hear far away a mama mia Mama scold the children and follow my nose in a restaurant that looks very inviting.
Here I sit, let me bring a pint of excellent Umbrian house wine and order a pizza with wagenradgroße centimeter-thick layers of fresh arugula and Parma ham. buzz next to me in his usual manner sympathetic aufrdringlich-two American women.
It turns out that the two are from my second favorite city in the U.S., from Seattle. And when they ask me where I was then, and I would drive home here so I also tell them that I finished in her hometown of Seattle a year ago my tour through Canada. amazed because they tell me and again that they were on a 3-week shopping trip for an American pottery chain by Italy, Spain and Portugal. Oha, I'm there - no unpleasant way, a living to earn ...
Rochelle and Melinda are concerned, when I told them the news of the day tell - because France has a monster downpour today called for 15, 20 deaths. A single heavy rain, that's incredible, I say. "Sounds like Texas," entgegenet Rochelle. And since I have to laugh.
The sun goes down, we stroll back to the hotel, because as it turns out, the relay is the only house in order. We are in the great hall, the foyer is now, I say goodbye to the Internet corner and write my sweet a love email, I too heavy, the creaking wooden stairs to climb up in my boudoir. 
runs the TV, the stage of the Tour de Suisse, I'm still a Nastro Azzuro on and put your feet up. Done for today, I congratulate myself and cheers to my bike. And tomorrow, tomorrow, then Rome. Morning, the 5th stage. The fifth and final stage - and finally a rest day in the city of cities. A day of rest. Peace. Time not connect. Time not torture. Time wheeze not thirsty.
Rome. Madness!
I turn around, puffing gleefully into bed and hold it as the Lord Privy Councillor of Weimar . "Tomorrow night in Rome so I think it still hardly and if this desire is fulfilled, what should I do after? I know of nothing more than than that I might end up happy with my pheasant Kahn to home and meet my friends healthy, happy and benevolent. "
Well, my trip will be in Rome is not quite finished, on the contrary, but sounds nice anyway - and reminiscent of the overpowering, huge anticipation and excitement for the eternal city, I fall asleep, dawn away in the heat and dreaming
Stage 4 - Foligno-Civita Castellana
leg length.
107.7 km gross travel time: 4 h 30 min
Net travel time: 3 h 57 min
section: 22.1 km / h
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