Domaso - flat solo ride

These ear plugs are awesome. Great nights sleep. My room faces the strada provincial along the lake shore, cobbles, motorbikes, trucks, very very noisy. I wake at 8am and wander down to the local for a cafe macchiato. And another. Flat ride today out to the western side of the lake. Again. Makes a change not using a ferry.
I honestly think we are staying in the wrong place. Not once have we looked at riding out east.

Click in is 9.15. But faffing about has to happen first. Faff until you can faff no more then do some more faffing. Faff faff faffity faff.

Faffing about 9.19, clock is incorrect

At 9.19 SuperModel clicks in and we gently set off on slightly damp roads. Turn around after a few minutes and no-one is there. WTF? SM explains that the 'damp roads blah blah blah' So I start riding at 24kmh. Eventually I get passed. Everyone rides off, I feel no compulsion to keep to their program, I'm enjoying the scenery, not pissing around with tech for five hundred metres and punching bottons on cameras or mobile phones or gps units. We have a tailwind and eventually I come across the group who have waited for me several kays up the road.

They take off again at a pace I again feel no compulsion to match. Byee.

Later they stop again, BB is off exploring an obviously wrong route, everyone else is a slave to the gps again, and I just roll through heading to Colico and not Sondrio. Sit and wait in the warm air at 10am next to a cemetery, and they roll up and then start heading entering a friggin SuperStrada! Do not slavishly follow a GPS telling you to enter a 130kmh road.


Err NFW

Why go right here? That way madness lies...

My heartrate barely gets above 130 as I head to Domaso, the place Sandy, Caitlin and I visited in 2008. The road is familiar but there has been much development. I stop at a cafe at 10.30am in Domaso just across from the place where we rented bikes last time. The lads roll in some time behind me. Lovely cafe and biscotti.

The lads are talking about climbing up the hill 'like they did last time' and ... well I'm not. Flat ride only today. Seeya

Solo ride north and then east and south retracing my route and see the lake from a different perspective and light, its a very different place in the north of the lake, more industry, and agriculture, and absolutely stunning in the clear light.

For an alternate take on todays ride read this 

Get back to the accommodation and I am trying to sort out Qantas and buying extra baggage for the trip home. They pinged me $108per kilo for four kilos overweight, despite not being able to prepurchase extra before arriving at the airport check-in. So I phone Qantas in Italy and they say because I bought a 'sale' ticket in September 2015 (!) I cannot buy extra baggage, and this was in the T&C's, and so on into bureaucratic hell. I keep my cool, I get refused an escalation to discuss, basically "computer says no"

"Contact our customer care webpage" - There isnt one just a generic webform. Not pinning my hopes on Qantas here. Webform completed, response requested, not holding my breath.

I usually buy extra baggage limits for Adelaide but this trip is 5 weeks, three cycling, two non. 30kilos for five weeks including cycling gear for high mountains (layers), some tools, spares and a bike and that leaves me with SFA for clothes for Venice and Florence.

Pissed off.

OH AND WHILE WE ARE AT IT, WELL FUCKED UP AUSTRALIA, VERY WELL FUCKED UP INDEED YOU STUPID FUCKMUPPETS