Day 16: Camping Fusina to Chioggia

September 22, 2023

When the rain comes

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This is a lovely campground we've been staying at, but our camping experience has been terrible. It's very humid, the mosquitos are out in full force, there's a bird sitting in the tree above us that decided to make our rainfly his own personal latrine. We ran out of camping fuel right in the middle of cooking dinner. We got rained on for a better part of the night. Mama mia, what a string of bad luck!

We rose at dawn and broke camp. We're not super efficient, but we're improving. Last night I decided that we would brave the thunderstorms -- "severe at times" (let's use an old-timey radio voice for that quote) -- but shorten our day. I set my sights on Chioggia, which looks like a nice place to hunker down for a bit. The arrival of the weather system had been pushed back from 10am to 1pm. The place we booked allowed checkin as early as 11:30, so I was thinking we could probably outrun this storm. Regardless, we weren't on the road until 8:30. It was going to be a tight squeeze.

When we approached this lock two days ago, the gate was down. We didn't know how to get it to open. A biker approached from the other direction, and it magically lifted. We still don't know how he did it, or if it was just a coincidence that the gate rose when it did. Thankfully, today it was open when we arrived.

We again rode through a variety of surfaces, mostly along canals:

We got a little taste of rain along the way. At a certain point it seemed like it was turning into something steady, so we put on some of our rain gear. Then it stopped. So predictable.

Not a Disney fan, but this little roadside decoration lifted my spirits

We stopped at a Decathlon for a fuel canister, but once again they were out of stock. Womp womp. We're going to try some hardware stores tomorrow.

We reached Chioggia right after 1pm. Our hostess greeted us with keys to the bike storage room (!), and whisked us through checkin. We opened our room and cranked up the air conditioner. We weren't hot. We just wanted dry air. It's so strange to think that only a week ago, our lips were cracking.

Since we were safe from the thunderstorms, of course, they never happened. After a well-deserved rest, we wandered the streets of town. We love it! It's so beautiful, but also super laid back.

Maybe this is the bike bridge into town. Jump!

We found a cheap and tasty pizzeria to celebrate a day in which everything came up roses.

More potential weather tomorrow. This time we don't have much of a game plan. We're just going to ride as far as we can and then look for a place. Maybe it's not the best idea to try this on a Saturday. Why are we pushing our luck? Beats me, but we're doing it!

Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 815 km (506 miles)

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