< ![CDATA[  The weather is getting warmer as we move south. October here feels like late June in New Hampshire... 20C and sunny every day with cool, crisp nights that make it easy to sleep. We’ve rolled past fields and fields of vegetables in various stages of development, from lettuce newly planted to artichokes being lovingly hoed by an old farmer with a bowed back. The vineyards have gone from green and heavy laden to barren with golden foliage. The olive trees remain a dusty green and are now heavy with ripe olives. We stopped by the road yesterday afternoon to watch three generations of the same family harvesting their olives. The young women spread the nets beneath the trees. The old men ran electric rakes through the branches vibrating off the ripe fruit to fall into the waiting nets below. The young men gathered the nets and dumped the olives into crates and carried the crates to a wagon which was rapidly filling with ripe fruit. They posed proudly for photographs and the old men (with no English) gestured to Tony to try the electric rake. He did, to the great delight of the children. On the days we ride, the thing the children most look forward to is lunch. They love looking for a “good spot” and then digging out the picnic cloth and all of the accoutrements for our noon time ritual. We always eat the same thing: bread of some native variety, veggies (peppers or cucumbers) fruit (apples yesterday) cheese (fresh mozzarella has become Hannah’s favorite in Italy) meat (almost always some form of salami) cookies and chips. We drink whatever is in our camelbacks. The camelbacks are great. They allow the kids to sip away as they ride without having to stop and without swerving all over the road. There is, however, one drawback: the boys drink all day. This means that the moment we hop off the bikes they are pressing their knees together and making pained expressions. Sometimes this can be quite funny, to those of us who are not suffering. For instance, when we’re picnicking in the empty parking lot of a home goods store and there is not a tree or bush in sight. After several strained moments of pleading earnestly with the Saint Pissoire (patron saint of traveling boys) to provide unto him a WC, to no avail, we found the supplicant kneeling piously beside the storm drain with a beatific glow of relief on his face. Personally, I think the good saint was napping... siesta is from one to four, religiously, and I’m sure even “Saint P” observes it. Today’s big adventure involved the search for train tickets to Pescara... the first stop on our journey across the Apennines to Rome in a couple of days. We went to the train station... which normally works well for purchasing train tickets. The men in the office there (which seems to have been the police station as well as the train) spoke no English but managed to communicate that we’d find the train tickets behind the pharmacy back in town. Okay. Back to the pharmacy and a long walk around the block. No tickets to be found. Where were they? In the bar on the corner. Yep. The bar. We walked into the dimmed interior and asked the lady at the counter, “Train tickets?” “Yes! Of course! Two? No, four? No, SIX?! Quattro Bambni?! BRAVI! Complimenti!” Of course. Train tickets in the local bar, silly us, why didn’t we think of that?!]]>