With Jerry's bike now NOT MIA, assembled and good-to-go, we headed out with a crew to find the registration and start locations in Nerviano, about 5km away from our hotel. We did some wandering around on our bikes but eventually found the registration locations, following one of the support motorcycles who'd spotted us and introduced himself. From there we followed him to the ride start location, finding Fermo, the organizer and getting some info on logistics Many of the logistics are not documented on the website, unfortunately.
Then Ed Boltz, an American with whom I've ridden and roomed, showed up at the start location and we rode back to the registration area, then to a gelateria and had ... gelato !
After diddling around some more, we headed back to the hotel, arranged our drop bags (more on this later), snoozed and generally hung out. Late in the afternoon I tried to track down Hamid and Shab, with no luck, and we ended up eating at the hotel bar along with several other riders. I had pizza, the first time in a long time; stuffed myself.
Up early this morning, Aug 16, we grabbed breakfast when they opened -- 7am -- and shortly afterwards headed to registration. There we got our numbers and kits, which included drop bags, so we didn't need our own bags, road books (cue sheets), bike plaques, control cards etc. In 2010 those drop bags were plastic; this time they are more like tyvek material, likely indestructible, and emblazoned with our rider numbers -- 319 and 327. The kits were supposed to include an "electronic badget" which I presume is a tag like we had for PBP, but that was not in the kit. Presumably we'll get those at the ride start.
We're supposed to be at the ride start by 7:30, but will get there earlier. It's a "free start" from 8:30, which means that we'll queue up, depart in groups of 20-30 with an escort through town, with 10 minutes between groups. With 500 riders that could take quite a while ... guess what ... I'll queue up long in advance to try and get out early. Our first overnight at Valombrossa is a long ways away and I don't want to be leaving here at midnight which would mean a dawn arrival 36 hours later at our overnight !
We've now organized those drop bags and will take them down to the ride start in a bit, getting that out of the way. I don't want to carry those on my bike, although that is possible, slung over both shoulders. That's probably how we'll get them back to the hotel after the ride ...or with the car ... we'll see.
Sleep doesn't come easy as we're both keyed up and also adjusting to the time change. Throw in an overnight ride of 500+ kms and it's easy to see why we'll be pretty tired by this time tomorrow night !
The hotel is full of randonneurs from around the world. Ireland, U.S., Canada (Fred Perman who did the Granite Anvil), Brazil, Colombia, U.K., just to name a few. Many people are wearing PBP country-branded jerseys, so it's a colorful crew. We've now got our Miglia jerseys but I won't wear that until it's over; bad luck. This time I ordered a large; my medium from last time is snug.
What else ... don't know ... brain dead now and it will be worse soon. My SPOT will be on, hopefully, but my cellphone will mostly be in airplane mode.
Here's the group of us at the registration locations, day before it opens -- Peter Turnbull, UK; Jerry Christensen, Wisconsin, motorcycle support crew, me and Hamid Akbarian.
Here's Jerry at registration this morning, looking at ride posters.
Italy has more rides in store -- the red one is what we're doing this year. The yellow one starts in Rome, hits the Amalfi coast etc. That would be beautiful ! That ride is in September 2017. The Green one hits all the toughest climbs in the Alps between Italy and Switzerland, 18000 meters of climbing ! Yikes ! Maybe ... I don't have any plans for 2018 yet ...
Onward ?
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