Sardinia, Part 2
The pilots and flight attendants of ATI (Air Italy) pronounced must less frequently over the plane’s public address system than their American counterparts. Gone were the weather reports, the friendly greetings, the mid-flight updates and the arrival and departure details, other than those necessary to the business at hand. Since these announcements are typically inaudible, loud and ignored, it was a fine respite from the unnecessary.
Unnecessary to date is any need to check my email for 10 days. I keep two primary inboxes - my personal Apple and my corporate. I spent and spend a fair amount of time and diligence in my personal box keeping it free of clutter and spam and it works for the most part but I still get a lot of email, but it’s typically quick to go through on that side or things. My company’s inbox is another matter and to a testament of which I have crowed about more than once, the men in the office for the past week have mostly insulated me from any dire urgent and emergencies. I’m sure they are out there, I’m sure they are happening, I’m sure there is more than one grenade sitting in the inbox, but to date, they haven’t needed my intervention.
I think maybe this coming Monday I might wade into them. Being 6 or 7 hours ahead, I can spend a few hours in my time zone addressing, commanding and leading, then go about my breakfast and pool routine first in North Sardinia at the W and then in Southern Corsica in Bonifacio.
The primary initial reason of why I am in Sardinia is to embark and accomplish at 1000+ mile motorbike ride with a company named bikerbnb.com. They offer tours in the Scottish Highlands, Spain, Sardinia and Morocco. 5 days, 4-6 hours a day on the bike, with curated routes that include a lot of technical and curvaceous roadways, and a fair amount of non-paved surfaces ranging from sand to gravel to compacted dirt. The riding averaged under 70km an hour and many times much less because of the nature of the roads selected - twisty, turns, steep ups and steep declines. Small roads that demanded attention and care. We started in northeast Sardinia, traveled south, then west across the island, north and then east, crisscrossing the island in unusual ways.
I’m not sure they is a space as small as Sardinia that packs the diversity of landscapes that this island does. It’s not a small island, but once you calculate the terrain changes from coast to desert, to agriculture to forested mountains, it punches far above its weight in terms of unexpected environmental diversity.
For the first time in years, the weather didn’t fully cooperate on one my weather-dependent trips. Be it skiing out west and up east, overnight bicycling, and a myriad of other events, excursions and activities that are impacted in part or in full by the weather, I’ve been sailing on an uninterrupted run of good fortune. That changed here, in a very unusual and improbable fashion.
First, it was chilly. Especially once we left the coast. Two, the sun hardly came out with 1, made it feel more chilly, and 2, left a cloud cover that threatened rain. So while I was looking to warm my chilled northeast bones, I was left layering up and thankful for the overpacking of base layers, a few which I loaned out to others not so well-prepared. We skirted storms for a few days but our luck ran out on Wednesday where after a long lunch, our remaining two hours of riding was through a downpour and low 60 degree weather. Few things are as not fun as that, especially then checking into a hotel in a rural area and hoping to find a dryer to dry out for the next day.
We did successfully dry out with the tag team combination of hotel dryer and hotel room blow dryers. My room’s blow dryer had never seen such a workout drying out my boots and gloves and helmet.
Even the next two days were overcast, and now Saturday morning, it’s clear and back to the weather one expects of Sardinia and thankfully I have an another week here to suck this sun up.
I was reading Farewell to Arms, the Hemingway WWI classic, and somewhere he referred to a trade route in Spain or similar that propelled goods, ideas and knowledge. And it made me recall all I learned about the Eric Canal last summer. The push of goods, ideas and knowledge. The foundation of cultural expansion.
I watched Back to Future on the airplane over, the first and original, and I enjoyed it. But what caught my attention was a quick, a very quick, capture of the villains who were out to murder the eccentric scientist - and low and behold they were the head scarfs of an Arab or Palestinian and it reminded me of the very true insight I read or learned that the philosophical makeup up of Hollywood rarely depicts Arabs as anything other than villains, comedic, tragic and untrustworthy. It is, and always has been, that way. A little dirty, always untrustworthy, typically simple-minded and parochial. One of the few tripes you can get away with these days. Why you never see sympathetic documentaries or sympathetic storylines.
Lots of small cars here on the island. Doesn’t look like many people are taking out 6 years, $1000 a month car payments, stealing their future wealth for odd cosplays of superficial and for the most part, false wealth impressions. Also, a notable number of young men with their leg missing below the knee, with those bionic legs with shocks and curved aluminum bottom section - I attribute it to the moped and small motorbike culture - the lower leg is the first to go in an accident where the leg gets hit or trapped under a sliding bike.
Traveling well is the only way I travel anymore. If the effort to get there and back can’t be done in style and comfort, count me out.
