Last Day in Riccione

Miles from Home - 5509.5 miles

Firsts / Highlights - Urbino in le Marche region

Miles Riden - 73.4 miles

Vertical Feet - 6,316 ft

Route - View Today's Route Here.

Today's ride would make another trip to Italy worth the effort. Beautiful scenery, lots of ancient towns and I felt great on the bike all day. It wasn't without effort, however, with over 1 mile of cumulative climbing. The only downside is that only I get to see it. I was not able to take a single picture because my camera failed to startup again. I am going to order a replacement battery to see if I can solve that problem.

I don't know what made today different, but I climbed better than usual. Whenever the grade kicked up to 9% or more today, I was able to accelerate and ride off the front of the group. I got some shouts from behind. I know I got one "Allez" and a couple of "Attack"s. The rest may have been unflattering references to my parents, but in Italian, it sounds good. One of the German riders came up to me in Urbino and said, "You doping?", "I think unnatural". Later on the descent, I had dropped to near the back of the group. He rode up and asked, "Doping defect?".

Scene for the day - As we were arriving in Urbino (you'll have to live with a Wikipedia reference and a stolen image from Google since I don't have any pictures), a helicoper was flying overhead. We were riding on some of the roads that will be used on the Giro d'Italia in a couple of weeks. I theorized that the helicopter was there scouting scenic shots to be used on the internationsal feed during the race. I further theorized that they must have the cameras locked onto us as we climbed a 20% grade on cobblestones into the town. Although the road was only 10 feet from building-to-building, I suspect that their camera telephoto lens was able to track us. That's my theory. You can believe it or not.

It was only one week ago today that I was saying goodbye to everyone at the office. What a week.

Time to pack up my bike and head to the next town.