Tuesday 13.04.2011 - Somedays you just cut your loses and bite the bullet. Today was one of those days. We woke up in Salerno expecting bright & sunny weather like we have been having for the last two weeks. We looked out the window and saw RAIN! Off to breakfast and hoped that by eating our oats it would somehow magically become fine. It didn't work. Anyway, we set off with the intention of riding up the Appenine chain of mountains which runs north-south down the centre of the Italian boot. We committed the cardinal sin before we even left the hotel - failure to put on our wet weather gear, again in the forlorn hope that this would somehow make the clouds lift and the sun come out. Again it didn't work. After we cleared the city and got onto the Autostrada, you guessed it, it bucketed down.

Being on the Autostrada, it is not so easy to get off to so you can put on your wet weather gear. By the time we found an exit we were wet through. We pulled into a servo and parked right near the front door because it was under cover. We then pulled out the wet weather gear and suited up.

This tall, young, good looking Italian guy came out and wanted badly to talk to us even though he knew less English than we did Italian, Obviously he was struck by the good looks of the Pommie-Ducati. He produced soft paper so we could wipe down our helmets and also clean the rear vision mirrors of the P-D. Then, as we struggled into our wet weather gear, the young guy came out with a bowl of lollies and offered some welcomed sustenance. His name was Pietro, and as a reward for his kindness Greg gave him a Qld Police Service cloth badge.

He was estatic with this small gift and shook Greg's hand with genuine affection. We then remounted and continued our journey, gladened that there are still some nice people left in the world that show strangers a tiny piece of kindness and then receive an unexpected surprise in return.

After about 15 minutes we took an incorrect exit off the autostrada which literally lead us up the garden path. By now we were both cold and wet and at the end of our tether. We back tracked from our detour up the garden path and fortunately found our selves right out the front of the Cristal Hotel, Avellino.

It was 11.00 am and we had travelled all of 35 km so we decided to cut our loses and check in, dry off and generally catch up with the blog, read emails, do internet banking and lay in a warm bed and watch the rain come down. For those non-biker readers, you must thoroughly dry out your wet gear asap because if not it smells (real bad) and rots!


Funny thing was when we went into the Hotel we thought the counter guy told us we couldn't check in until 12 noon. No worries, OK by us, we'll unpack the P-D, wipe her down, put her cover on and then wait in the warm and dry foyer until we could get our room.

At 12 noon right on the dot the counter guy told us the RESTAURANT was now open for business. b*****! He thought we wanted a bloody meal when what we really wanted was a room! Anyway, well fed later, we were given our room and laid out all our gear to dry. Fortunately the room had air con and we set it to heat and layed back and relaxed for the rest of the day watching all 200 channels of Italian speaking TV and not understanding a bloody word said. But we were having the best of times! Just one of those days when you roll with the punches.