thursday in Piacenza

[mimitabby]

Today Raleighdon and I went for a ride in the countryside near Podenzano. The roads are very narrow, but fortunately the ones that were busy had a good shoulder and the ones that were 1 lane wide had almost no traffic.
the most amazing thing about the ride was that even though lots of heavy trucks passed us, none of them threatened us; and my only fear was my lack of coordination. Italian drivers do not "have it in" for bicyclists; and if things get too tight; they will actually pullover or stop to let you go; and no one has blasted us with their horn except for our friend saying hello.

We were both on borrowed bikes that don't really fit; but they were nice light race bikes, so it made up for the minor discomforts on a 22 mile ride. we stayed in the valley and in 22 miles went through several little towns with names like Settima, Grassono Visconti (a medieval village that you can see in some of the pictures) where we had gelato, Quarto & Gossalengo.
the weather was great (for a couple from seattle) it was partly cloudy with a little bit of a breeze, and about 70 degrees.






























we have been seeing trucks full of tomatoes like this one all week.