Well, this is it, the end of Italy for me for now. I'm taking a night ferry to Corfu tonight. And just when I'd reached a good comfort level with the language (how about that, those 2 years of high school spanish actually helped!). Now on to a new country, money, language, food, phone system, road signs, etc, etc, etc.

The past few days have been back on the road, in various forms. I parted ways with my friends in the Sicily campsite, sadly and with many kisses goodbye - I actually like the Italian habit of men kissing each other on the cheek (well, kissing the air, really. Thankfully.) I will miss them and hope to see them again sometime. The thought has crossed my mind several times, as I sit waiting for the boat, that I could always spend the winter in Sicily working on my Italian.... Naah, its too tempting to try it. I was finding it hard enough to leave after only 10 days there, let alone a few months. I'd end up falling in love or something and never leaving this beautiful, sunny, friendly, fun, tasty, sensual place. And i wouldn't want to do something like that, would I. Would I?

Spent the next couple of days back on the bike, readjusting various parts of my anatomy back to saddle-form, including a sore left knee that had me a bit worried. Still working on that one. (Just one more reason to take a nice long recuperation period!) I had a couple of nights camping wild - once when the campsite I was headed to that was guaranteed to be open wasn't (I slept most securely in a field nearby) and again when my knee started giving out on a serious hill. Said knee failure just happened to worsen right when I was passing a tiny church with attached olive and citrus grove. Pass it up? Not on your life! So I spent the night in absolutely stereotypical southern Italian surroundings, overlooking the bay and nearby town that were bathed in the almost-full-moonlight, and woke up to the sound of nearby farmers plunking olives in buckets the next morning. Aah, life is tough! (Of course, I'm leaving out the part where I nervously grabbed my stuff together and scarpered - haven't yet experienced a wrathful Sicilian farmer and don't hope to soon!)

Took a train from the toe of the boot (Reggio d Calabria) to Brindisi, where I currently await my ferry. Sorry to leave Sicily - as you can probably tell, I really enjoyed my stay there. I hope I get to regret leaving ALL the future places!

The train ride was an adventure. With the help of a tourist service I got (I thought) a ticket for me AND a bike - wrong! And it wasn't until I tried to board the train that the conductor stopped me. "But the train...! La senora told me...!" A combination of (probably garbled) Italian excuses and persistence won me a train ride, albeit grudgingly. (Actually I think he was more impressed with my ability to yank every bag off the bike within 5 seconds than in my garbled excuses.) So the lesson is, trust your own instincts and double check everything. I trusted in a tourist service that was not really concerned with being too accurate, after I'd already established for myself with an Italian train guide that a limited number of trains had bike-carrying capacity. (And that mine wasn't one of them.) But I guessed they knew better than me. Wrong. I'll rely on myself more from now on.

Actually, there's another lesson here for me: The further afield I go, the less concrete rules actually are, and the more bending of them I can manage (if necessary), provided I have the right combination of urgency (or immobility, depending on the need), respect, and persistence. Could be useful in the future...!

So, onwards to a new chapter in the adventure! (Man, I'm looking forward to some non-seafood-based meat....:)

Mark