The ANNOTICO Report

This is written by a Senior Citizen, so I have deleted many, but not all, of the references to "ailments" that Seniors seem to dwell on. :), and also deleting amusing cycling concerns.

 Otherwise, it is an absorbing commentary that makes you feel that you can see, feel, and smell her total experience.

It's heaven on wheels for every level of rider
Miami Herald
By Dorthy Stephens

Special to The Herald

Sun, Mar. 27, 2005
TUSCANY - I'm riding my bike up a steep, four-mile hill in Tuscany, pumping as hard as I can in the lowest -- the ''granny'' -- gears.
The sun is warm on this late September morning, but the air is refreshingly cool in the hills.
When the endless slope relents with a brief, almost level stretch, I catch my breath and steal a look at silvery olive groves and vineyards of purple grapes climbing the opposite hillside. Magenta bougainvillea tumbles from the roof of a nearby villa, and roses bloom along a crumbling stone wall. Below me are clusters of red tile roofs of villas and villages, and beyond them the sea, calm and blue.
At 80, I am the oldest, and often simply choose to ride alone, absorbing the sights and sounds and smells around me. Other times I have to bow to the inevitable and accept the fate dealt by age and tired legs...and resort to the escort van.
In this case,  keep pushing the pedals around, and eventually I reach the medieval hilltop village of Casale Marittima.
At a tiny trattoria up a steep cobbled lane, a special Tuscan lunch has been prepared for us: crusty warm bruschette topped with fresh tomatoes and basil; a thick, delicious minestrone; a leek and zucchini fritatta; and Tuscan cake with apricot filling.
We fall on the food, devouring it hungrily without shame, stoking the engines for the return ride to our agriturismo, or Farm Hotel, where another sumptuous meal will await us.
DAILY ROUTINE
This is the pattern of our days here in the part of the Tuscan coast called the Maremma. Little known or visited by tourists, it lies on the west coast of Italy between lavender-blue hills and the Tyrrenian Sea, encompassing beaches and forests, walled hilltop villages of stone, and some of the best vineyards and olive mills in Italy.
Each day we ride for 25 or 30 miles through the achingly beautiful Tuscan countryside, past green-shuttered farmhouses and villas of pink or golden stucco. We stop for lunch at small trattorias in medieval villages with views of the sea and hills, and feast lavishly on Tuscan specialties like ribollita -- a rich, hearty soup, almost a stew, made with beans, black cabbage, and other vegetables and poured into a bowl over a slice of Tuscan bread. Or cinghiale -- wild boar -- that appears on every menu, either roasted or served in a wild boar sauce over pasta.
As for the pasta . . . I don't think Italians are capable of creating a bad pasta dish, but at the top of the list, for me, is spinach and ricotta ravioli with sage and butter sauce. I'd go back to Italy in a heartbeat just for that.
Tuscan bread, though, takes some getting used to. It is rough textured and unsalted, but dipped in one of the excellent local olive oils -- and sprinkled with salt if your American palate insists -- it is quite delicious.
Various theories attempt to explain the origin of the unsalted bread. According to our Italian guides, Angelo and Gianandrea, the custom goes back to the Etruscans, the original inhabitants of this region. To them, salt was precious. They used it to preserve food, but also as money, in exchange for other goods, and were therefore reluctant to waste it by using it in bread. Perhaps, said Angelo, they also came to prefer the taste.
These shadowy, mysterious people, the Etruscans, came probably from Asia Minor and settled in Tuscany more than a thousand years B.C. A young Italian woman, Lunella Donati, comes from Florence one evening to lecture us about them.
On another evening, we learn about wine-making from Luigi Brunetti, our host at the 17th-century Agriturismo Elisabetta. Signor Brunetti is not only the chef who produces the gourmet dinners we enjoy each evening, but is also a vintner.
Earlier, when we first cycled through the inn's entrance, we had been assailed by the all-pervasive fragrance of fermenting grapes -- sour and pungent and heady. Now, after the demonstration, we have an opportunity to taste some of the wines.
COMRADERIE
With obvious pride, Signor Brunetti urges us to try a Brunetti red that has just won second prize in competition with over 2,000 other Italian wines. The red wine connoisseurs among us proclaim it excellent.
It is raining the morning after the wine-tasting, and we linger over breakfast at the Elisabetta, then don our rain gear and take off as the rain begins to lessen.
The younger cyclist are very  helpful, making sure I don't fall out of sight, or that I have good directions -- it's that kind of group. I sometimes see one gung-ho cyclist, who rides up and down the steepest hills twice just for the fun of it, waiting far ahead until he is sure I see him making the next turn.
On this rainy morning, near the town of Cecina, Neil and I are joined by our guide, Angelo, and Mary, a recently retired teacher from Colorado. As we ride along the sea, the sky clears and we can see on the horizon the blue hump of Elba, and behind it the misty outline of Corsica.
Along this coastal area, forests of umbrella pines, like rows of upside-down feather dusters, have been planted. These peaceful pine forests shield farm crops farther inland from the salt winds off the sea, but they have also helped reclaim land that was once a malaria-infested marsh. Like giant siphons, the pine trees take up water through their roots and with the aid of a series of drainage canals, have dried the land and eliminated malaria.
This happened as recently as the mid-20th century, with Mussolini getting some of the credit. It helps explain why this part of Tuscany, having gotten a late start, is more sparsely settled than the rest of Italy, and why it has remained relatively undiscovered by outsiders. During our week here, we met a few German tourists but almost no Americans, and nowhere was it crowded.
Turning inland, we follow a raised bike path along the Cecina River, past oleander hedges that bloom beside luxuriant gardens of tomatoes, cabbages, and yellow squash.
Then along the Cypress Road toward the tiny town of Bolgheri. More than 2,500 cypress trees stand like tall sentinels on both sides of this famous avenue, enclosing it in walls of green for a mile and a half.
POETRY IN MOTION
The trees were planted over a hundred years ago by the wealthy family who owned the land, and were immortalized by Tuscany's 1906 Nobel Prize-winning poet, Carducci. He lived in Bolgheri as a child and described the trees in a poem as ``the cypress trees that in Bolgheri go tall and frank . . . in double file.''
Carducci is much revered in the Maremma, where the town of Castegneto honored him by adding his name to theirs, which then became Castegneto Carducci. His statue looks out over the rooftops from a square at the top of the town.
At breakfast one morning our guide, Gianandrea, reads us one of Carducci's poems in Italian, and then his, Gian's, own English translation. The Italian version flows like warm honey, but the English is beautiful too, with lovely lines like:
``...under the mistral wind
The white and frothy sea screams.
But from the small roads of the borg
The bittersweet smells of new wines
Cheer the soul.''
Like the poet, we are cheered as we ride not only by the bittersweet smells of new wines, but by the abundant wild herbs -- basil and rosemary and sage -- growing everywhere, their sharp intoxicating fragrances distilled and warmed by the sun. They flavor everything we eat, the pastas, the sauces and salads, the olios (oils).
When we visit Oliveto Fonte di Foiano, one of the mills that produce the oil, I find Angelo waiting for me at the foot of an almost vertical, rough cobbled lane.
``You will have to dismount here and walk your bike up to the mill,''he says. ``It is very steep.''
He gives me his quick smile, hops back on his bike and whirls up the hill, his legs a blur of fast-forward motion. I obediently and willingly walk my bike up.
At the mill we are greeted by owners Michele and Simone De Gaetano who demonstrate, again with Angelo translating, how the oil is extracted from the olives. Shiny blue and silver machines wash, slice, crush, and shake the olives, then separate out the oil.
Normally the pits are included in the crush, but the De Gaetanos are experimenting with removing them first. Michele tells us this produces not only the highest quality oil with a sweeter taste, but is far healthier, having three times the vitamin E and antioxidants of other oils.
We taste their pitless oil and agree that it has a distinctive flavor, very mellow and rich.
We further sample the De Gaetanos' olive oils when we are invited to a long outdoor table under trailing grape vines and are treated to a harvest lunch of wonderful antipasto and homemade pesto pasta.
We drizzle oil over crisp mounds of arugula, on slices of crusty bread, over platters of fresh tomatoes and mozzarella and almost everything else we eat. We are fast becoming true Tuscans, who even pour olive oil into their soup.
After three days of strenuous uphills, we have a whole morning of magnificent descents through chestnut and cork forests that wrap themselves around the hillsides.
The cork trees provide bark to make corks for the local wineries, and from the chestnuts the villagers grind flour. Angelo tells me they use it in place of corn flour to make a somewhat sweeter and delicious version of polenta.
The forests are also home to wild boars in such numbers that they have become a pest to the farmers. They hide in thickets and come out at night to forage in the fields for roots and grains. The boars are hunted for their meat all over Italy, in the great tracts of forest that the government has protected and preserved.
SOLO STINT
On our last day we ride to Castiglione della Pascaia, a seaside resort and the southernmost point on our route. I am biking alone again, enjoying a leisurely ride on the flat coastal plain through fields of vegetables, with the olive and grape-covered hills behind me.
At Castiglione I lock my bike in a flower-filled park and walk along the canal where sailboats share dock space with brightly painted wooden fishing boats unloading their catches. Nets are piled up along the promenade, and open stalls display all sorts of fresh fish, octopus, calamari, and shrimp.
Narrow cobbled streets climb to the top of the medieval part of town, where from the castle walls I can see, over red-tiled roofs cascading down the hill, the boats in the canal, the wide sand beach, and the sea.
I find my fellow bikers at a seaside cafe, where we lunch on the only Italian pizza we have all week, made with a thin crispy crust and fresh chopped tomatoes.
Afterward, I  swim in the sea. The water is clear as window glass, warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to be refreshing. I lie on sun-baked sand for awhile, then pull on my biking shorts and collect my bike.
The late afternoon sunlight is slanting over fields and hills as I ride the 14 miles back to our inn in Caldana.
I've found the answer to that question I was wrestling with at the beginning of the trip. For this year, at least, the answer is yes. And next year? I'll be 81 by then, but I'll keep riding as long as I can still hoist myself onto a bike.
Meanwhile I'm signing up for Italian lessons.
 

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/
living/travel/11216726.htm