LICATA (April 3) -- Riding in two groups, the hill climbers and the coasters, the seven Chippings on the Giro di Sicilia arrived in this hot, dusty, port town in mid-afternoon today after taking separate 80-kilometer routes from the hilly interior.
The climbers -- Dino, David and Gianni DeR -- gained and lost several thousand feet of elevation as they wound their way on secondary, yellow-colored roads over ridges and through hilltop villages. At one point, a family riding in a car stopped them and warned them of a pack of marauding dogs sure to attack on the road ahead. The intrepid Chips armed themselves with sticks but the dogs never appeared.
The coasters -- Jimma, Bruce, Filippo and Spazio -- glided down the more primary, red-colored State Route 117 to the city of Gela, where General Patton and American troops landed nearly 70 years ago to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation. Cement pillboxes still stand on surrounding hills. The coasters, however, faced a strong headwind off the Mediterrean in riding the remaining 28 kilometers to Licata. A gelato, a coke, a coffee latte and a bag of Cheeze-Its saved them from exhaustion.
The cuisine was much better the night before. In the ancient, hilltop city of Piazza Armerina, the Chips ate at a crowded, white tablecloth restaurant crowed with locals in their Saturday night best. It was the best meal thus far and a far cry from the usual continental breakfast of bread and coffee and the mid-day, on the road panini sandwich. An antipasto plate of cheese, prosciutto, sardines, mussels and salmon. Pasta plates of rigatoni, eggplant spaghetti and tagliatelle. Main dishes of grilled calamari, swordfish and jumbo prawns. Only Filippo and I still had room for dessert, a cassata, a baked ricotta-cheese almond-flavored cake topped with a cherry.
The two Italian bikers on the right stopped to chat with the Chips in a backwater Sicilian hill town where the cop in the piazza said the population was 15,000. But, he added, 10,000 of them have left.
Dino and Bruce stop to await other Chips at a yellow-road junction enroute to Piazza Armenia.
Dino stretches out on a bench outside the Villa Romana del Casale, a hunting lodge built in 300 AD by a Roman emperor. The villa, buried until its rediscovery in 1950, is a "World Heritage Site" famous for its floor mosaics. The best know portrays Roman girls in bikinis lifting weights and running with olive branches.
This room in the Umberto 33 B&B in Piazza Armerina was shared by Dino, Spazio and Filippo in gentle snoring harmony. A new snoring rule allows Chips to administer a kind poke to snorers in high decibel ranges.
Sicily is very green in early spring with fields of lettuce, fava beans, finocchio and grape vines just beginning to leaf. Highs are now in the mid-70s.
Location:Licata, Sicilia
It looks warm, sunny and delightful.
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