0200. More pained animal wails, punctuated by odd alarm sounds - the signal for a slaughterhouse conveyor belt, perhaps? Valkyrie awakens with a start and tries several times to rouse me from my sleep, finally succeeding amidst a torrent of groans and curse words. I can count on no hands the number of times I've welcomed being forced out of bed at this hour - but it is clear that no further rest will be possible; the situation is too standard B-movie horror, two routinely lost travellers marooned out in the woods and surrounded by odd noises that they ignore to their mortal peril...
...so we pack up the tent, load the bikes, and head down the road towards the sea. Just outside of town, we find an empty field behind an abandoned gas station. The splendour of Italia stops with Roma, it seems; whereas the towns of Liguria, Toscana, and now Lazio have so far been rather picturesque - if not in the snootily pristine way of the French, who certainly have no room for tired hobo-esque cyclists on their astronomically land-valued beaches - the road out of Roma has brought us past increasing concentrations of homes for sale, boarded-up lots, and heaps of garbage casually tossed into the once-beautiful countryside. At least there is somewhat less of the latter behind this station, and so at 0300 we drift back into sleep...
...and rise again some five hours later, the sun slowly ascending over the buildings. Whatever cold spell we had upon entering France has ended, especially now that we've headed more than 700 km, much of it to the south, over the last week. It is hot, though mercifully not nearly so much as it was back in southern Spain - and the presence of the Mediterranean cools things off somewhat. We head along the coastal road for some time, our view of the sea blocked by cheap hotels and bar complexes that have collectively claimed the entire beachfront. After about 20 km of chipped stucco and slowly crumbling yet still serviceable stone, we catch a rare glimpse of the water - and then the road ducks behind a vast military zone whose borders are jealously guarded by tall barbed-wire fences with menacing black-on-yellow placards: Military Zone - Armed Surveillance! Explosions possible during live fire exercises! Access strictly prohibited to non-authorized persons!
Late afternoon. Valkyrie's tube goes flat as we bike along the coastal roads near Gaeta; we had the tube filled at a bike shop along the way, and the extra pressure must have caused the patch to fail. We've almost run out of our original patches, which are nice in that they do not require rubber cement...we pull into the driveway of a campground by the water, move off to the side, and get to work. Tube patching is an unpleasant reality of bike touring. You will get a flat eventually - and all you can do about it is to stock up on patches and tubes, purchase a pump that's at least half-decent, and wait for it to happen...
...by this point in the trip, however, our tube patching has reached a level of rapidity - if not professionalism - and we are soon again on our way. We decide to pull off the main road and bike out to the sea, where we are greeted with a vast stretch of beach. Perfect! Over mushroom risotto and wine, we toast to the day's successes and setbacks, to its sights and surprises. This is part of the daily ritual: the toast, used at first to celebrate major milestones, has taken on a life of its own - we raise the bottle, grabbing it with one hand each, and enumerate the events of the day. We drink to moments of happiness and anger and sorrow and delight and confusion, each one succintly summarized. We drink also to moments yet to come, to cities and experiences down the road that we can only anticipate until our legs carry us further. The risotto is delicious; we wash the whole thing down with a quick dip in the sea before pitching our tent over by the bikes, which we have locked up under a pavilion that functions as a café in high season but now lies dormant. There is a storm brewing. Maybe it will break tonight...