March 28, 2023
To Licata
Some days are better than others. I thought this garage door we saw in Licata walking around shopping for restaurants summed up the experience pretty well.
The day got off to an excellent start though as we were served up a feast this morning at B&B La Forelle. Definitely the best breakfast and the best stay of the tour. I should have taken a photo.
And the ride itself was excellent, for the first 22 miles at least. We followed the same old provincial road that squiggles its way around either side of the busy coast highway, avoiding heavy traffic and two tunnels that are undoubtedly hair-raising. Much of the way on this road is quite coarse and rough surfaced, but it’s a small price to pay for miles of completely empty road through the gorgeous Sicilian interior. But if you’ve been following Jackie and Al’s tour, you already know this because they followed this same route earlier in the day.
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SR71 comes to an end at the coast highway, SS115. There’s no better choice to ride back west on it for a kilometer to the junction with SR64, an all but abandoned road that must have been replaced when the modern highway came through. These older left-behind roads provide the best cycling on the island, in our opinion.
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Video sound track: Lost in the Hours, by Oregon
This is the third time we’ve biked east along the coast to Licata. We’ve followed the same route all three times, but it’s not until 22 miles into the ride that I realize it for sure. When you repeat experiences and have as poor a memory as I do, life can take on a Groundhogs Day quality. This place again?
Actually, this place has been on my mind for a few miles before we get here, as it gradually sinks in that we’re coming to a section of a few hundred yards where the road is just gone, the victim of a slide that must have occurred at least eight years ago. Crossing this gap requires carrying the bikes down and up a few steep, rubbly slopes. The first time, seven years go, wasn’t too bad. There was at least a narrow sheet of corrugated sheet metal we could walk across the deepest crevasse. The second time it was worse, enough that we turned back and biked around - but not before bashing Rachael’s derailleur. This time, maybe more experienced with rough conditions than we were four years ago, we made it through by teaming up and carrying the bikes one at a time.
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So I’d say that it’s right about there when our ride east went south. Another mile later and we approached the coastal village of Torre di Gaffe. The route I picked for us went to extremes to avoid traffic and takes a questionable route into the village, dropping steeply down to the beach and then following the sand around a small point. I decided to walk ahead and scout out the situation to make sure we’ll connect up to a road on the other side, which we will. So, no big deal really.
More strange though was that I couldn’t see our hotel. For reasons we don’t really understand, the route on my Garmin ends here - and in fact I thought we were entering the outskirts of Licata. For awhile Rachael has been confusing me by talking about a steep hill still ahead, but there’s no evidence of it on my route.
We pull the bike up into this tiny village and I start looking for the Al Faro Hotel, but there’s nothing at all commercial here. I see a work crew at the end of the block so I wander down to ask them where the hotel is, which elicits a quartet of blank stares.
When I get back to Rachael, she’s staring at her phone. She’s found the hotel, but it’s eight miles further on - in Licata, of course. This is really vexing for me especially. I’ve gone through the whole ride thinking it was 24 miles long, and so I’m mentally primed to be done. I don’t really want to bike another eight miles, or climb another steep hill. Phooey. Fortunately, Rachael’s route is correct and she is able to load it to my GPS.
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Finally we’re over the last hill and coasting down into Licata, and we come to a fork in the road, which I take. The one I had mapped angles steeply up a side street, while the other is clearly the main road to the center. I decide to take the obviously best road even though it’s not the one I had mapped, after making sure Rachael is close enough behind me to see what I’ve done.
Rachael doesn’t see me. She follows the mapped route, until she diverges from that too. I can see on the Garmins what’s gone wrong so we touch base on the phone and I tell her to just continue following the route and I’ll meet her at the other end, four or five blocks away. I come to the junction, stop, and wait and watch her progress on the Garmin. She’s at most four blocks away, so how long can it take?
It takes a full half hour. I watch perplexed as she stops, starts, stops again, stops for a long time. I’ve lost count, but I think we spoke by phone four times during this half hour, mostly with me calling up concerned that something has happened with her or that she needs help. She always insists that she’s frustrated but fine; and eventually she starts making real progress and suddenly is here.
So what the hell happened? She ended up in a warren of narrow, super-steep lanes, rough and brick surfaced, sometimes ending in dead ends, sometimes descending down steep stairs that she carefully and slowly walked her loaded bike down. The wonder to me is that once she emerges she’s quite calm about the whole thing, not the distressed wreck I’d imagined.
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So that’s enough stress and excitement for one day, right? We find our hotel with no difficulty, check ourselves in, chill out for an hour or so, and finally decide we should look around Licata before dinner. It’s strange what your memory will do, but I have (had) warm feelings about Licata and was looking forward to seeing it again. Thinking back though, we hardly saw Licata at all the first two times. We arrived late in the day both times, stayed in outstanding B&B’s both times, and ate at a terrific waterfront restaurant, La Lampara. that’s why I have good memories of the place; that, and the exceptional good luck of finding a bike store still open at 6 PM on a Saturday night that had the skills, parts, and willingness to stay open late and repair Rachael’s busted derailleur.
So obviously we’re going back to La Lampara for a third time, but when we get there we’re told it’s still closed - not until the typical 7:30 or 8, but until April or maybe May. So we go restaurant shopping and exploring the town while we wait for one to open. We don’t find much in the town to attract us really - it’s badly run down, dark, and dirty. We do at least find a restaurant that looks like it will be good enough, that opens at seven.
The idea that Rachael was sick from food poisoning was always just a theory, really. Nothing to base it on other than symptoms. There’s another possibility though, that maybe it’s a virus of some kind. This idea gains strength while we’re sitting in the restaurant finishing our appetizers and waiting for the main event. I’d been looking forward to mine - rigatoni with swordfish and cherries - but by the time it arrives the truth becomes obvious - I’m sick. My stomach hurts, I feel nauseous. I can’t even dip my fork into it. I hurriedly rush off to the bathroom while Rachael asks our server to wrap both meals to go; and ten minutes later we’re back at the hotel, Rachael eating her meal and me more or less passed out.
Quite the day.
Ride stats today: 35 miles, 2,500’; for the tour: 227 miles, 16,800’
Today's ride: 35 miles (56 km)
Total: 227 miles (365 km)
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