Day 55: Milan, Italy, to Chiasso, Switzerland

September 14, 2015

Happy times at Milan Camping. Thanks for this photo, taken by Jane and Ted.

It rained heavily during the night, leaving one end of the tent in a small lake. But at 5 a.m. there was a break, so we quickly packed up. There was no use trying to keep any part of the tent dry, because all parts were already wet. So we just packed up the sodden mess and promised them a drying session soon.

We waited until seven to leave, since that is the hour at which enough daylight arrives in this season. We had a track in the GPS to take us to Chiasso. The track came from an Italian cycling website, and we had no idea about how reliable the information would be, and in particular, how safe the route would be.

For the next 15 km we twisted and turned through a sort of suburban landscape. Sometimes we had a little bit of a bike lane, sometimes some sidewalk, and often we were just on the road with the cars. We crossed dozens of intersections, walking the bikes through crosswalks, and we struggled to traverse roundabouts.

With so many crosswalks involved in the effort. we could see that about half of drivers respected the stripes on the roadway and the crosswalk sign. They would see that we were wanting to cross and would stop well ahead of the crossing point. With the remaining half, most were susceptible to being bluffed, or forced, to stop - as we would shove our bikes in front of them and dare them to hit us. This is generally how Italians drive, and walk as well. Some final percentage of drivers were just not about to stop, and would bully their way through if at all possible.

After a while of this, I was getting fed up. So when one lady bulled her way past, just missing hitting me, but then had to stop at the intersection, I found her car standing in front of me. I lost it then and rammed her back passenger door with my front wheel. The lady came out of her car, very concerned about whether her door was damaged. I pointed to the crosswalk sign and shouted "What does that mean? What does that mean? You don't have to know English to see that I am pointed at the crosswalk sign!". Of course there was no resolution. We know that we can not retrain a whole population, or even one person, in matters like this. So it's useless to yell at them. Our usual procedure is just to be aware and to try our best to defend ourselves against known bad practices.

In this part of the ride, there was not a single photo that suggested itself. At one point I realized that I was taking no photos, and took one just to see what it was that I was not photographing. Here is that shot:

A photo of nothing. However it does show us hugging the side of the road.

After about 20 km we came to something that I recognized as being a separate village, and did shoot the bikes at the town fountain. From this point, though, we were no longer wiggling onto sidewalks and crosswalks. Rather the route had basically become all on road. The only differentiation was that sometimes we felt we could ride as normal, with the cars, and other times we walked the bikes on the opposite side of the road.

Gerenzano, first and maybe only real village on today's ride.

Leaving Gerenzano. Dodie seems to have the edge on that car!

Through all this, Dodie was needing to consult the GPS fairly continuously. There was no map, and certainly not one we had, that could have guided us through all the specified twists and turns. Even with the GPS continuously on, the navigation is not simple. Often the GPS accuracy was not enough to tell which way to go at a "Y" in the road.

Of course we eventually drew near to Chiasso, which is the first bit of Switzerland. We had a glimpse up ahead from a bit of a hill, and could see the mountains and valleys and towns coming up. Hooray. We have had enough of Italy for now.

We passed in to Switzerland with no fanfare, just a disused border station and limp Swiss flag. But wow, right off the bat we were greeted by bicycle direction signs, and yes, Swiss Route 3. This is the route that will take us across Switzerland, but at the moment it was the presence of any bicycle route signage that brought joy to our little hearts.

The promised thunderstorms had not materialized during the afternoon, but we still needed a hotel, since there is no camping in this area. We fired up Booking.com and found a place with a reasonable price, among others that seemed unreasonable. We put the location in the GPS and soon found that we had been shifted back to Italy. We must have been looking at the Italy/Switzerland price differential. I guess we will find out just how costly Switzerland may be as we move deeper into the country.

Our two star hotel was still very nice, and we came down in the evening for the fixed price dinner. What we got was really the best prepared meal so far, so we are happy non-campers.

We are in an area now that we are not at all familiar with - the region of Lake Como and Lake Lugano. We naturally will learn a lot more as we progress. Right now, with our wet tent parts hung all around the room, we are just looking forward to a long and dry night's sleep. Tomorrow, if the Swiss can keep the cars off our tails, we could be rested and into some happy cycling!

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 2,531 km (1,572 miles)

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