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2 times to italy in 6 months you may be asking? well the answer is yes — we love it here. food is a big motivating factor when it comes to my physical activity, and italy is highly compatible with my taste buds. also, cycling is woven into the Italian culture in ways it just ain’t in other places … so food and bikes … worth crumpling myself in an a tiny seat for a 9 hr hop across the pond 2 times in 6 months.

my mom and aunt also have similar life interests in food motivated cycling, and they’d been trying to get to italy to ride together since before 2020, but pandemics, health problems, and bad luck had them cancelling three separate trips. after Tenzin and I got back from the Dolomites back in June, we broached the idea of heading to southern Italy in the Puglia region (think the heal of the boot) in November. we found some round trip tickets for 500 a piece and went for it. I should mention Puglia is also the olive oil capital of Italy — and also the most vegetarian friendly they say (although I find all of italy to have great traditional options).

we settled on the small town of Locorotundo for our home base, about an hour bus ride from Bari. I would say don’t try to bring your bike on that bus, I got mine on, but not after a bit of a kerfuffle.

We stayed for a reasonable price in one of the thousands of stone Trulli’s that dot the landscape. apparently these structures were made popular during periods of high taxation, as the dry stone roofs were able to be dismantled when the tax man came around. seems like a lot of work, but thats taxes for ya!

I thought maybe there would be a few of these handsome structures out in the countryside, but they are literally everywhere in this region. it is also illegal to knock one down, so you will find plenty that are incorporated into modern apartment buildings making for an interesting look. I didn’t take any of those photos, as I am not really into that look, and thats also not what you come here for.

we all really loved the Puglia Guys/Gays site for their hot bods and recommendations

oooohkay onto the riding — there are so many roads to chose from when browsing the heat maps on strava, it can be daunting to trace something up before you’ve gotten a feel for the terrain and traffic. lucky for me, friend Joe Cruz sent over some routes he and his wife had done on their folding bikes from a few years ago to get us started. I expanded from there, but not without a few little accidental hikes thrown in there for good measure.

My mom and aunt had rented ebikes, and while they were great for keeping the pace up on the pavement, they were a bit cumbersome when the going got rough for a pair of 70 somethings. what troopers though, they (at least they told me) loved every pebble of exposed lime stone. the network of roads is amazing, and you can really only pick a few bad ones.

I should talk about my bike briefly. I wanted to bring along something easy to travel with, and the smaller the wheel the more compact the pack job — so I opted for a lightweight aluminum Klein Pinnacle set up in my road bike position. I will do a separate post on the bike some other time. it proved to be a capable machine in a compact package that packed up rinko style in a canvas bag.

the road surfaces varied quite a bit, and a lot of the dirt surfaces were pretty rough and tumble, so the plump 2.1ish ultradynamico 26″ cava was a really good choice — dynamic even. I was using latex tubes at about 25 psi.

namz rented a bike — I am happy that we only had to deal with bringing one bike from home out of the 4 of us, as I tend to do most of the lugging. there was a great bike rental place “puglia on bike” right around the corner from our house rental, how convenient! they’re rental was an alumunum grav bike by LaPiere with 37mm tires. she did great on it like she always does.

the riding was really good. a decent amount of elevation, but not as steep as East Haddam where we live. that was a welcomed respite. thats vacation!

olive groves lined with limestone walls made up a lot of the scenery. some of the olive orchards we went through had some big ol’ olive trees. they can live to be thousands of years old.

We also did a number of old town walks. I took a lot of photos there too that I will do a non bike related post on next. I will also talk about how America does pizza better. there I said it! now here are some more bike photos.

hope you enjoyed my vacation slide show! all these rides can be found on my strava.

xo rr