The last sunny day for a while.
#4
Sadly, much
of our long-john inventory is still carried on our bodies instead of sinking
into the dark recesses of our panniers. And Bill enviously eyes the fuzzy-lined
earflaps on my Gore-Tex cap each day that I drop them into position. Snow is
expected today in
We are raring to be riding again but are resisting inaugurating our 3rd touring season with riding in strong winds and light rain. So instead, we are grateful for just-enough heat in our room and watch the hours slip by as Bill installs a few more cables and brake pads that we brought from home; we lighten our load a little by finishing another book left-over from last season; we scan through the fuzzy channels on our shortwave radio for the latest on the war talk in English; and hope for more inviting riding conditions tomorrow.
Island hopping in
We’ve also
been disappointed that we are definitely still in the low part of low season,
which meant that on
The most engaging
part of the island hopping process is watching the Greek ferries, which appear
to represent a rare reservoir of efficiency and customer service in
Since we are room-bound and not riding you are left with our more-evening-time musings rather than reports about our usual daytime exploits:
Closing the
One of our
delights in our extended travels is the critical mass of sightseeing that we are
accumulating. I am tickled each time I see history book photos of objects that
we have seen first hand and marvel that Bill is increasingly including these
less famous but still notable finds in our routes. Like at the end of last
season, I patiently pedaled over the hills in the rain to
And this year,
the critical mass effect is working the other direction too as we are seeking
out sites which we have read in places other than the guide books. The first
on the list is already behind us: the almost 8000 year old finds from the bottom
of a lake near
One of our other
sought-out sites will be a Gaudi-looking resort designed by the modern Austrian
architect Hundertwasser. His
architecture without square lines or corners and a strong influence from the
colors and shapes of lollipops is fanciful and outrageous and sometimes
pleasing. We unknowingly first saw his work on a renovated utility plant in
Words
Vocabulary has
become an interesting element to watch in our new lifestyle. I was concerned
that our English vocabularies would shrink from limited use as we traveled and
they have. In speaking with non-native English speakers we usually have to
simplify our vocabulary so our list of frequently used words is getting shorter.
And our vocabulary is shifting. Back in
A secondary benefit of writing these journals is that it keeps me grasping for those words that are slipping away and I appreciate its part in slowing the rate of decline of my vocabulary. Another strategy was the installation of an electronic dictionary on my wallet-sized PDA (handheld computer) the first year. I loved having it and found it especially useful in museums and when reading guide books, both of which are often written by non-Americans. English-as-a-second-language translators often left us stumped with their use of obscure words in descriptive pieces. And then there are all the unfamiliar architectural words that are casually tossed about that leave us guessing where to be looking. The electronic dictionary that Bill installed for me saved the day more than once when doing sightseeing-related reading.
Last year Bill
kindly installed a big dictionary into our new laptop computer which has helped
too. I still rely on the handheld for in-the-field deciphering but turn to the
laptop version in the evening to find omitted words or more complete
definitions. The audio option for pronouncing many words is a wonderful feature
on our laptop dictionary that I never want to be without it again. We’ve
embarrassed ourselves too many times by discovering that we have been
mispronouncing a word all of our lives. And for new, totally unfamiliar words,
it is great to get off to a good pronunciation start, especially since we rarely
have any other English speaker with whom to confer. And we find that the audio
pronunciation keeps us from missing the mistakes we have been making as it is
easy to ‘see what you believe’ when reading the phonetic spelling of a word. Our
only reservation about it the dictionary is that our pronunciation of our native
state of
Now I fantasize about having a British dictionary on our laptop as we encounter more British than American text. Most of the in-English history books that we can buy overseas are from British authors. In the last historical novel I read I quickly gave up conferring with my handy little dictionary because too few of the author’s unfamiliar words were included. And even when I had a chance to check the laptop dictionary, I wasn’t always assured of a match.
And sometimes
knowing the British definition of a word matters a lot as we discovered this
week. One of the tidbits that has puzzled us in museums and some books is the
reference to ‘corn,’ like “the monthly allotment of corn in the
We thought our
bikes were only going to function as luggage carts for our visit to
(3/19) We are itching to ride but the winds are still too daunting. At least today the skies are almost clear and we can actually walk around with our heads up enough to see something besides the next 6’ of cobblestones. We realized we had walked some routes several times and had been oblivious to the sights and views ‘cause we couldn’t look up long enough to notice them. Instead our chins were tucked in as we threw ourselves into the wind just to get around town. We could have left the island today had we known in time but the ticket agent had wrongly told us “Tomorrow.” We had heard “tomorrow” enough days that it was easy to believe. But after such a slow pace for almost a week we doubted that we could rush back and pack up our scattered gear in the 40 minutes we had to catch the ferry. “Manana” (Spanish for ‘tomorrow’) it will be for us again.
More like
residents than tourists, we watched the to-us-phantom
We’ve made good use of the tiny kitchenette in our cramped room and added some variety to our diet as a pre-emptive strike against the inevitable cuisine fatigue. Instead of our standard cold cereal breakfast we cooked up bulgur for a hot breakfast one morning, we made a yummy batch of lentil soup, and several nights cooked our favorite fresh tomato and garlic pasta topping that we can’t make with our immersion heater.
But despite the comforts of a kitchenette, I feel like we have just spent the better part of a week at sea. Our cramped, too-small-for-a-chair room gave us that ‘close’ feeling of a ship’s cabin; there was the short list of indoor-only activities to entertain ourselves with as when captive on a boat; the fierce winds created a round-the-clock pounding sound like waves crashing ashore in a storm; and our daily ‘fresh-air’ walks in the winds and rain mimicked the challenging walking sensations on the deck of an ocean liner. There was even enough salt water carried by the winds that our glasses would get that salt-air haze with as little as 20 minutes outside.
The forced time spent sitting has allowed us to do the things that wouldn’t have gotten done, like finalizing those 2 long Nerd News editions that had been gathering dust. I am starting on books 4 & 5 for this biking season that is only into its third week. (That’s more books that I read most years.) And Bill felt enough of the luxury of time to buy a comic-book formatted kid’s book on Greek mythology written in German to spice-up his language studies. Bill hasn’t gotten as much done on the bikes as he had hoped because we have yet to have a good place out of the wind to work on them—though he has spent much more time out in it than I would have endured.
Our main regrets
of being winded-in (after not being able to ride) have been the lack of English
news with which to follow the war talk and not having a telephone in our room
for sending and receiving emails. Once again we have a bunch of email
correspondence trapped on our laptop that has no way to get out. We haven’t had
a suitable hotel room phone or internet shop for connecting our laptop to the
internet since arriving in
It feels like we
traveled way too far to stay indoors to cook in a tiny kitchen space and read
but that’s how we have spent most of our time this last week. Since in Greece,
we could be seen:
reading on the ferries, reading in our room, reading while waiting to use a
computer at the internet shop, and reading while we listen to our riding muscles
atrophying. So, after a deep exhale to let go of the visions of the delightful
riding days on
Day 1 (3/20)
Yeee-haaa! We
finally rode our bikes on
Up in these hills we again enjoyed the sensory delights of countryside riding: the sound of birds, the dull clank of goat bells in the distance, the faint sweet smells of spring greens, the sight of herds of sheep and goats on the move, the gaiety of small springtime wildflowers in bloom, and the old guy smiling back at us as he was riding his donkey on the road.
Bill, hot on the kouros's trail.
The day was our kind of great biking day filled with little adventures and a respectable 3200’ in gain. As we rode inland into the hills I spotted the name of the town nearest to one of the 3 “kouros” or statues on the island. This kouros was left laying unfinished in its original quarry, presumably abandoned because of a crack or flaw. We didn’t have much hope of finding it without our guide book but pressed on for lack of any other destination.
Shortly after guessing which way to turn at an intersection, we saw a road sign with “Kouros” on it. Surprised at the unexpected help, we backtracked and headed down a narrow road to discover another “Kouros” sign, this time hand painted. A second hand painted sign pointed to what at first appeared to be a shallow river but was actually a paved but flooded road (those were heavy rains a couple days ago). The silt was too deep for riding so we stashed our bikes and rolled up our pants to do a little wading in our ever-versatile Teva sandals. Bill guessed that it would be only a few blocks and fortunately the water never got more than calf deep. The third style of “Kouros” directional sign was welcome as we followed its arrow pointing up the marble-cobble pathway away from the stream. In a few more minutes, there it was, the 6’ high, 6th century bce statue laying on its back just like on the postcard in town. Seeing him was a welcome consolation prize for not being able to get to see the 30’ kouros on the northern tip of the island due to landslides on the road.
Back at our bikes we were pressed into service by a smiling Greek country woman to be additional ballast on the tailgate of their mini-pick-up stuck in the silt of the submerged roadbed. Then the 3 of us tried pushing from the front end with little effect. Bill was bubbling with ideas of what to try next to free the vehicle but the couple seemed content to abandon the truck and wade up the stream.
Hilltop quarry with a massive debris field.
After a pleasant lunch sitting on a patch of dry concrete next to this flooded road we pedaled back into the hills. There were dozens of just-cleared landslides that had covered part of 1 lane and several that had clearly swamped the entire road. The occasional huge boulder was left in place on the edge of the lane and a little wider swath cleared out on the opposite shoulder to make up for the lost roadway. Nothing at all was done to stabilize the banks and we itemized the rocks ready to fall with the slightest nudge from either more rain or a complete drying out of the soil. A couple of trees looked like they’d be in the road soon too.
White-washed,
cottage-sized Orthodox churches with barrel-vaulted roofs or blue-painted domes
were almost as numerous as the landslides. And the abandoned vehicles
in fields and near the road ran a close third for numerousness. The several
marble quarries gobbling up the tops of mountain peaks caught our eye and we
pointed our steeds in their direction. The largest of the hilltop quarries
loomed ahead like a colossal monument, but even bigger was the tail of marble
debris that cascaded down the slope like an enormous white shadow fanning out
from the quarry. We gasped at the thought of the value in the
A retaining wall made of scrap marble.
The low value of some of the marble was driven home by the sight of car-sized chunks used to assemble a retaining wall; smaller pieces were used to line a drainage ditch; and the Macadam road surface glinting from the embedded white marble gravel. In contrast huge, prized chunks of rough-sided white marble rumbled down the road towards the port in hefty trucks. The 12-wheeled rigs carrying a single block of marble looked like they slowly ricocheted on the hair pin turns as they had to creep forward and backwards several times like they were parallel parking to make their way around the bend.
There were stunning panoramas from the 2,000’ hilltops at quarry-level down into the narrow, fertile valleys and out to the ocean. And as we descended I realized that one of the 2 white-washed villages clinging to a distant hillside wasn’t composed of homes but instead was dozens of massive marble blocks inventoried at the marble slicing and polishing operation we had passed earlier. It was remarkable how the clusters of huge marble pieces mimicked the look of the next hillside village.
And as we made our way back down to our home-away-from home we shook our heads as our path was blocked by the hero of the day: the combination backhoe/bulldozer loaded on a flat bed truck that was heading down to the main town on the island. No doubt he was the one that had cleared all those rain induced landslides that we had seen earlier. The trailer only had inches to spare as it all but scraped its way through the narrow village. The local men were out coaching the driver and people lined up to watch as if for a parade. We wondered if this was the same rig we saw the day before creeping off the first ferry to dock since the storm isolated the island. Bill also noted that this mighty machine hitching a ride down this windy road wasn’t secured to the flat bed in any way.
There was often a single block of marble on a truck.
Our outing
had a fitting end: as we stopped in town for Map Man to purchase a suitable map
for the next day's ride we saw the 2 young German speaking women who left
The War in
3/20
The start of the war would have been
easy to miss in
3/22
The war coverage certainly isn’t
all-consuming on Greek TV and unlike when big events occur in the US, it was easy
for Greek viewers to watch their favorite shows without interruption. The part
of the TV coverage that astounded us was the program hosts shifting to reading
the newspaper headlines to the viewers. We had seen this before but can’t
remember if it was
We always struggle to eek out news in English. We did an online update about once a day at the internet shop; tried, tried, tried to tune-in BBC’s World Service with some days only getting a few minutes of decipherable news; and read the news tickers on Greek TV. The Greek news relies heavily on other services for the reports so we got flicks of Reuters, Fox, and CNN news tickers along with the video. Sometimes the feed from one of these services was 1 of 3 windows on the screen and we had to stand within inches of the small TV to read a few words. Other times the screen was overlaid with such an assortment of Greek text that there was only a one-word-long slot that we could see of the ticker. And, at least for our needs, they seemed to wildly switch from one service’s video to the next with a jarring start and stop of the tickers.
We kept the TV on continuously while in the room with the audio off and the remote handy. We'd look up from our reading now and then to see if any news ticker was running (sometimes there was none for a half an hour or more) or if there was a coalition representative speaking with Greek subtitles. If there were Greek subtitles then we knew that the speaker’s words would not be obliterated by the translator and that we could catch a little audio. It was a huge effort to shift out a few tidbits of news. We vowed to shop for our hotel room in Santorini with an eye to getting English news on the TV and a telephone connection.
The first day of
spring was ushered in with a rowdy rainstorm that abated shortly after sunrise.
We hoped for the best as we headed out for our second 30 mile ride on
Giant saws & cranes at the marble plant.
Broader and more fertile valleys were a part of the panoramas than on the previous ride, a fact punctuated by our first sightings of John Deere tractors—none of the fields on the hillier route the day were big enough to warrant tractors. There were more of those cute white baby goats looking clueless as how to respond as we rode by and another half dozen donkeys scattered on our route, either with an old man atop or patiently waiting alone for their next outing.
The bizarre assortment of exposed geology kept us guessing about the history of this land. Some stretches of road were framed by giant slabs of rock, other sections were lined by mounds of rounded boulders and in one area the uplift and erosion process left jagged, protruding rock formations that looked like a series of ancient cannons guarding a crumbled fortress.
We stopped
to ponder the goings-on’s at a gravel quarry and processing plant—not as
glamorous as the marble quarries but interesting nonetheless. We were
surprised to happen across a pure-bred vizsla (the breed of our one-and-only
dog) and several other pure-bred bird dogs and had to wonder what these bird
dogs were doing on a Greek island. The couple of lose dogs reminded me of how
comforting it is to have a handy holder for my pepper spray this year. I hope
never to use it but the cheap little cell phone pouch made for strapping on a
bike frame is the perfect size for the spray and keeps it in easy reach on my
top tube. We did read that
The touristic (a frequent Euro word not acknowledged by our dictionaries) highlight of the day was a small, reassembled ancient temple on a knoll in the middle of a fertile valley. Apparently it was a highly productive agricultural area even in the 6th century bce when this temple was built to thank the gods for the bounty. The archeological sight was hardly a ‘must see’ but it was an easy enough detour from our route to take it in.
The too prominent "USA" banner with a swastika replacing the "S".
Our pleasant day
exploring the inland villages and countryside was marred upon our return to town
by the sight of a huge “
Passivity in Public Spaces
The European
attitude toward public spaces is different than ours and we still struggle to
understand the origin of those differences. My first reaction to the
USA/swastika banner on the
But over and over
in
I wonder if
rather than passiveness if it isn’t a different sense of entitlement in public
spaces. In the
I suppose it could be argued that it is our cultural “uppitiness” about space beyond our doorstep that has emboldened Bush to be an international bully.
Update
We are now a little farther south and on Santorini island. The towns here are precariously perched on the upper rim of this ancient, partially submerged volcanic caldera. It has warmed up some but it is still cool and very windy.
We have seen 1
peace banner but haven’t seen any anti-Americanism sentiment expressed here and
the service industry people are all welcoming to us. Weather permitting; we will
catch a ferry to
Love,
Barb
