Arriving at and riding day one of Giro Della Sarda

Getting to Sardinia this year was very auspicious. It started with Swiss Air flight 55 to Zurich, after which I’d be taking a connecting flight to Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. As we got up to speed on the tarmac, it felt like the plane hit a large bump and the captain then hammered the brakes. Fortunately, my five electronic devices were wired up to their charging cables in preparation for cruising altitude and they did not meet the same fate as the airline supplied plastic water bottle which went flying into the seat in front of me. The captain calmly told us that the engine overheating light had gone on, so we had to abort takeoff. I thought maybe they were going to take a beat and try again, but then I looked out the window to my right and saw several airport fire engines accompanying us with their lights flashing.

 Clearly, we were not going to take off, and it probably was something more than a warning light. Then we were told by the cabin crew that we were going to deplane and put on another plane.

Two minutes after deboarding, a fellow traveler found an article that showed a picture of our plane with its engine on fire. Wow - good thing no one was hurt. Surprisingly, when the article published, NBC News had already gotten a quote from a passenger about the engine fire. Perhaps they were seated right over the wing, saw the fire and called someone they knew at the network.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/flight-departing-boston-puts-brakes-spitting-flames-rcna231814

As I was deplaning, I saw our friends Steve and Elaine, who were also traveling to Italy.

We spent some time catching up and talking about our recent and not-so-recent travels, which made the time pass quickly at the lounge. When we were told in the lounge to leave and board the plane, it was a bit premature, as we ended up standing around by the gate and continuing our conversation for another hour and a half. Finally, five hours after leaving the plane, we were on a new plane and took off for Zurich. Although the Swiss are supposedly organized, apparently they didn’t grab the cards with our breakfast choices, so we had to fill those in again. I know, major problems when your previous plane had its engine catch fire!

After all that, I slept pretty well on the plane. But I was certainly going to miss my connection, since Swiss Air and Lufthansa together only run one early morning flight to Sardinia per day. Sure enough, after we landed, I received an email stating that my flight had been booked for the following day.

That meant that I got to spend most of the first afternoon of my trip hanging around the Zurich airport. Which wasn’t all that bad, actually. There is a new park and business complex they have constructed since I was last there in 2019 called “The Circle” and it has a very modern and pleasant grassy hill that you can walk up

 If you’re not inclined to walk, they even built a cute electric mini-funicular to take you up the 50 or so feet of vertical feet to the top.

Unlike a lot of airports, Zurich airport is surrounded by picturesque towns, farming fields and forests, so the view from the top was pretty good 360 degrees around.

Swiss Air booked me at the clean and cheery Hyatt Place, but unfortunately their 20CHF meal credit for dinner did not work at the Lebanese restaurant run by the Hyatt Regency a hundred meters counterclockwise on The Circle. But it was nice staying a five minute walk from the airport gates, so I woke at 4AMish the next morning for my 6AM flight to Cagliari and enjoyed seeing the airport slowly open to passengers. I did manage to totally nail breakfast, though, as I spent all of my 20CHF breakfast credit on a flat white, small yogurt bowl and charcuterie plate at Pret a Manger.

Upon arriving in Cagliari, I found that per usual, TSA had no idea how to put my bike case back together. This time, they did a particularly bad job of closing it up, and my Wahoo bike computer was lost in the process. I tried a couple bike shops in Cagliari to see if I could buy a computer, but ended up finally finding a competing Garmin model at a shop in Nuoro where I had actually been to last year to get replacement brake pads.

After the bike shop, it was a short 30 minute drive to Orgosolo, where I will do rides for a few days in the eastern hill town area of Sardinia, about halfway between Cagliari and Olbia, where I will fly out of to head to Gothenburg at the end of the month.

It turns out that I couldn’t figure out how to mount the bike computer and my Insta360 camera at the same time due to a mounting issue with the GoPro interface for the Insta360, so I’ll be looking into that later this week. But while in the Cagliari bike shop I picked up a phone mount for the front of my bike, so at least I had that as a back up so I simultaneously navigate with my phone and film with my Insta360.

At about 3PM, I set off on my ride, which RideWithGPS estimated would take me four and a half hours. It is normally pretty good about ride times, but I would find out that it wasn’t so good at this particular ride. If I had looked out the route it had plotted for me from Orgosolo to Orotelli to Gavoi, I would have noticed a stupidly steep section of the ride more than halfway through.

The ride was lovely until this part. I was sent onto a tiny back road, and immediately in the lowest gear on my bike, which is nearly as low as the mountain bike gears we used to use 30 years ago, with one pedal stroke only moving the wheel forward one revolution. I started going so slowly that flies began buzzing around my face. About halfway up, I gave up and started walking. I would remount my bike when it got less steep, but then I would only pedal about 20-30 meters before hitting a super steep switchback and then get off my bike to walk again. This really pushed out my total ride time, and I knew it was going to get dark pretty soon.

I was also cramping on this big hill, which turns out to have an AVERAGE gradient of 16.7% for one full mile, so as soon as I finally finished it and got to the first town, I stopped at a bar to get my water bottles filled.. I must have been worried about the impending nightfall and quite tired, because I thought I dropped an electrolyte tab into my bottle, and I was really confused while drinking it about why it didn’t taste like the tab had dissolved. So as my cramping got worse, I finally stopped and realized my mistake, put the tab in, and started feeling much better with an injection of some much needed electrolytes.

It inevitably turned dark, and RideWithGPS sent me on a very tiny road of which I could make out less and less as it got darker. Looking down at my phone to determine where the road was headed is a sign that I had been out too long on the ride, especially without a bike light! One time, I hit a sandy, bumpy gravel section and thought for sure I was going to crash. And shortly thereafter, some dogs came running after me. (This seems to happen frequently on bike rides in Sardinia). Fortunately, I could only hear them, not see them, thanks to the darkness. After the dog incident, I pulled over, swung my phone mount towards the sky, and used the flashlight on my phone to (barely) light the road in front of me. Although it was terrible light that only illuminated about 10 feet ahead, it was better than the pitch dark of the tree covered Sardinian countryside. When I was less than half a mile from town, I stopped again because I didn’t see any lights and I was worried I had been sent in the wrong direction. I suppose that was just a wee bit of panic setting in, as RideWithGPS simply dumped me out into the top part of Orgosolo and within seconds I was in town and headed down some steep switchbacks to the B&B where I am staying.