San Lorenzo Nuovo

Sunday November 28, 2010
During the night it started raining, and it sounded very heavy. The sound of the drops falling on the tent was so loud that it was hard to sleep.
When it became lighter in the morning, it was still steadily raining, so I kept dozing. The rain continued the whole morning, so I just kept dozing, even though I didn't need the sleep, I would have happily gotten up at 7 am but I didn't want to get up in the rain.

Looking out my tent from inside, unwilling to get up in the rain, in San Lorenzo Nuovo.

My campsite for the night, and indeed the whole day and the following night, in San Lorenzo Nuovo.

I drew the line at 12:30 pm and got out of bed. This gave me 14 hours of sleep! Although most if it wasn't proper sleep, I was often only just in the sleep realm, dreaming a lot. And it seemed my dreams were melding with reality because they were centred around rain. I dreamed that I'd set the tent up in a bit of a ditch, and because of all the rain, a steam started flowing right under, and into, the middle of the tent.
This wasn't far from the truth as I discovered when I got up, water had soaked through the base of the tent, and outside the whole ground was like one big puddle, water everywhere! I started packing up and ate breakfast inside the tent because it was still raining. Then I thought "okay, I'll just wait a little longer, it's been raining all night and all morning so it will have to stop soon. I waited, and listened to podcasts of Dr Karl on triple j in the meantime. It continued to rain, and I just couldn't bring myself to pack up and start riding in the rain. Besides, I'd woken up with a bit of a blocked nose and sore throat, and I didn't want to make myself sick by riding in the rain.
One of the local residents must have noticed me camping there because he came out to see how I was going. He couldn't speak much English but I got that he was offering for me to sleep in the back of his van where it was warmer and drier than the tent. I think he was a tradie of some kind, and his van smelt of fumes. I politely declined the offer.
Then he asked if I liked pasta and lasagne, and I was like "yeah, definitely", and he was like "you wait here, and in five minutes, I come back". Sure enough, in five minutes he returned back with a plate of lasagne and a bag of mandarins. What a kind man!

A meal of lasagna and pork ribs donated to me by a local resident of San Lorenzo Nuovo.

As the hours passed by, the option of spending the whole day in the tent and camping there the night was becoming more likely, I was convincing myself of this. It was still 130 odd kilometres to Rome, and call me soft, but I really didn't fancy riding for seven hours in the rain, it would just be miserable. I knew it would put pressure on me later on in the trip, trying to get back to London in time, but i thought this would be better.
After making this decision, I wanted it to rain heaps justify my decision.
Speaking of the word 'heaps', I'm conscious of whenever I use it now, because Simon, the guy from Bavaria, indicated that it was fairly uniquely Australian thing to say and that Europeans typically didn't use the word. I use it all the time though.
I had another dream that I just remembered too: We were catching a bus, not sure why or where, but it was in Victoria. And at one point we stopped in the main street of a town and I met Colin Lane's family, he had lots of brothers who all looked similar so I wasn't sure which one Colin was. And I think it was Josh Cowan [friend from college] who was telling me while we were on the bus something like "yeah the amount of rain we've been getting is astonishing, we've had 500 mm and 600 mm in the last two days", and I was like "wow, Melbourne's average annual rainfall is only 600 mm."
At one point I smelt smoke from a wood fire and it made me nostalgic of camping in Australia. I think The experience of camping is greatly enhanced by having a camp fire. One of my favourite parts of camping is having a yarn with friends around the campfire while drinking beers. And call me bogan, but I reckon one of the best beers for camping is VB in cans. I don't drink it normally but for some reason it tastes really good when you're camping.
So I guess I've been camping for about half the trip so far, and this is one aspect of camping I miss.
Anyway, the plan for the day was to temporarily adopt the lifestyle of a cat, and go to bed early even though I'd woken up at 12:30 pm and had fourteen hours sleep. Then I would wake up really early the next morning (I'm talking 4 am or a little later if it's raining) and set off to Rome. I have to go tomorrow morning whether it's raining or not, I'm not going to waste another day in the tent.

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