Hello Hania

2 overnight trips and a day in Athens and we awoke to find ourselves in the beautiful Venetian belle - Hania, Crete.

On an aside, if you're ever touring with your bike and gear and you find yourselves stuck in Piraeus for the day. Check your bike into one of the many secure parking garages. You can't take your bike onto the public transit and cycling in Athens is just tiresome, but for 12 E you can be comfortably unencumbered and confident that your worldly possessions and beloved bicycle are safe. The only folks with access to your stuff are the parking attendants.

The three main big cities in Crete are Hania, Rethymno, and Iraklio. All three are bursting with the worst kind of tourism. Iraklio is a must see as she is home to Knossos. Hania, however, is the belle of the ball. Visually stunning, tasty, and full of interesting and varied shops. But Rethymno...Rethymno wears a tourist mask, but one turn off the main corridor hobbles an old lady dressed in black carrying florina peppers, fresh bread and butchered lamb from her local shops. The old quarter is still very much alive and in between the tourist tripe you'll still find the local butcher, cheese maker, and fruit and veg shop. Rethymno touts itself as bike friendly as well. This means: keep your eyes on your bike! Apparently bike theft is hot here.

The Road Less Travelled

We came to realize that the wind farm had indeed blown us into the Greek equivalent of Oz. After much deliberation as to the future of our trip, we decided to throw all caution to that damn wind and entirely abandon our original plan to cycle through the mainland checking off many "must see" tourist destinations. We decided to favour areas not so talked about in guide books and to visit roads that barely appeared on our maps. Giddy with delight at having freed ourselves from the burden of a plan, we turned, not west to the archaeological sight of Eretria, but north to Trahili. What was in Trahili? We had no idea! But we had 5 days until the next ferry and so we pedalled north.

Stopping for water in Partheni, I heard the familiar lamenting bray of a donkey. Common to my life in Mexico, it was a first for me here in Greece. As I pedalled on - real unsanitized Greece flooded my soundtrack. The donkey gave way to chickens and roosters clucking up their scandals and, in the midst of all this, the voices of the village filled the valley. We had fallen into a rift that had missed the anti-septic hand of progress. As we continued we saw more donkeys, even people riding them, more people in humble homes living with their chickens and their sheep, and, best of all, whiskered ladies in black. Wise women with backs bent from decades of hard work. Women who didn't flinch at the thought of the physicality involved when we told them we were cycling through Greece. We made the right choice in dropping our plans and opening our itineraries to lesser visited Greece.

Along with lesser visited Greece came even steeper grades. Climbs have easily averaged 10% and on our first day on the road less travelled Basil reported seeing 18% on his computer. My muscles ache just thinking about it.

Evia to OZ

I'm concentrating with every muscle in my body to hold myself and my bicycle in forward moving line on a road which has betrayed me by switching from asphalt to gravel at a particularly steep moment in a particularly strong wind. Cars pass and honk giving us the all approving thumbs up. We can barely see as the wind whips our faces and bodies and bicycles with the most portable and sharp gravel it can pick up. I grumble as a car passes too fast and covers us with even more dust and gravel. I want to shoot him the finger, but I'm afraid to take even one finger off my bicycle. The next curve delivers a terrifying blow that sends an entirely powerless and startled me straight across the entire road to teeter on the edge of a cliff that plunges a few hundered meters down a bramble filled ravine and over many rocks to a most violent sea. I laugh with a combination of hysterical disbelief and disbelieving relief. Basil screams at me to get back to the other side. I fight slowly to push myself and my bike back to the other side of the road. As the wind picks up whipping us with more gravel, I brace myself against my bike and, with my face tucked deep into my shoulder, I have an epiphany: never cycle through a wind farm. Yes, kids: never cycle through a wind farm.

Ode to Oats

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Oatmeal is really just a vehicle for honey. Soak oats overnight and you have one cheap, tasty, and seriously sustaining breakfast to carry you up many mountains before your body puts out the call for more sustenance. I like mine with apricots and almonds.