Day 2 of Tour della Sarda

I thought I would try to do an early bike ride, but with the time change, I combined a pretty lazy morning with the lengthy process of setting up the new bike computer.

When I bought my Wahoo bike computer last year, the bike shop told me for the simplest experience, buy the Wahoo. After spending more than an hour configuring the Garmin, I still could not really figure out how to even start and stop the ride. The initial map view was also super confusing compared to the Wahoo. During the first 30 minutes of my ride I wasn’t sure how to perform basic operations like swapping between the map and heart rate / speed views, even though this Garmin is supposedly way easier to use than previous models. 

Anyway, after figuring out the Garmin basics, I found I liked the map and climbing telemetry displays better than the Wahoo. But it is disappointing to not be able to monitor heart rate when in the map or climbing screens. I also miss controlling the computer with the blip buttons on the shifters. I'm on the fence about keeping this or selling it and moving back to Wahoo. 

Once I got outside, I reprised a ride that I had done last year. It also included a plan to visit a bike shop in Nuoro to look at setting up my Insta360 with the Garmin mount on the ride. I didn’t check the maps closely, and the route didn’t go close to the shop.

Unlike last year, I’m not carrying a camera with me, so I am not stopping to take pictures of things like the tower of Burgos or the mural near the tower on the way. It was also quite a lot hotter this year than last, and when I got to the top of the 1200ft climb to Burgos, I bought a huge bottle of water and topped off both my bottles.

At the cafe where I stopped, I saw both the guy who made me coffee in the morning as well as the young man who worked at the restaurant here in Orgosolo where I ate last night. The location of the cafe at the top of the hill is so beautiful; of course they were there. In addition, a 10 year old boy was quite curious about my bike, and the owner of the cafe wanted to know where I was going and was surprised by how far I was riding. But he didn't know what a bad state I was going to be in at the end of the day!

After I got going again, I felt pretty good and after a fun descent and a long flat section in the heat, I came into the town of Ottane, where last year I stopped at a wonderful restaurant after much searching to have some delicious seafood culurgiones. This year, I stopped at the first place I saw since I wanted to get going, and the only thing on offer was a huge meat and cheese board. It was pretty salty, and included ham, a country style prosciutto, salami, mortadella, thinly sliced hearty cheese and some soft mozzarella. I couldn’t finish the assembly, but I definitely was not running short on salt upon completion.

What I was running low on was hydration. Despite topping of my bottles again - so these were the fifth and sixth bottles of the ride only 40 miles into the ride - I was simply sweating out more than I was taking in. There was a very large 2000 foot climb coming out of town, and the lack of water hit me with the start of cramps while sitting down and climbing in both legs. I managed to hide the cramps a little by climbing out of the saddle, but I definitely stopped to rest a few times on the way up just to get them to subside. There wasn’t much civilization nearby, and I rode through two towns in which all the shops were closed for the afternoon! I wasn’t able to resupply my water until I actually arrived back in Orgosolo and luckily managed to avoid any hard cramping by either stopping or riding really slowly.

After a quick shower and plugging in directions to the wrong bike shop in Nuoro, I was sent down this very tiny back road that I had ridden earlier in the day. In the car, it was pretty hairy with oncoming traffic and short sight lines. Fortunately, I didn’t hit or get hit, and once in Nuoro, I realized that had I put into the directions to the correct bike shop, I could have taken the wide main road to get there.

The bike shop owner was not busy and he took the project of the computer mount and Insta360 mount integration as a fun project. In the end, he ended up widening the computer mount so that two longer screws could hold the pieces together. He was so happy to have something fun to do that he didn’t want to charge me, but I insisted that he take 20€ as payment.

It was dusk at this point, so I drove to Abbamele Osteria for my dinner reservation. They had a wonderful six course dinner that included a soft egg dish, prosciutto on a puff pastry, traditional pasta dressed with parsley oil and beef broth, roasted pork with bitter greens and mustard, braised beef tenderloin with picked cabbage and mashed potato, and a chocolate dessert with white mousse on top. It was a delightful experience and just as yummy as I remember the meal from last year there.