Austrian roads had been lovely - winding and mountainous with picturesque lakes, deer and birds of prey crossing my path. I crossed into Italy via the "Plockenpass". If this road isn´t famous, it should be.
It´s not one of those drop-as-much-altitude-as-possible roads which are just hairpin, straight, hairpin, straight like Top Gear take Ferraris to, but the most intensely compàct set of bends, climbs, drops and hairpins you can imagine.
It felt like it must be going under and over itself again and again. There can´t have been a straight longer than 30 metres for half an hour´s riding.
The bike was perfect for it, I couldn´t have used any more power if I had it. It was quite busy, and soon I found myself passing slow and then well-paced cars in the quest for some clear road. Once really into the spirit of it I even kept up with some real motorbikes. For a bit.
I spent a couple of days riding through the Italian Dolomites, and felt very stupid when I finally twigged that people weren´t talking to me in German because they thought I was German (for a while I also thought I had crossed back into Austria too!), but because there´s a German-spaeking part of Italy, and I was in it.
The superglue had lasted about three days on the chain slider, and when it went this time a small chunk from the middle had broken off. I filled the gap with liquid gasket and tried the last remaining adhesive I hadn´t yet tried, Bostik All-Purpose.
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