How Many Departures?

July 30rd

How many departures were there? And how many will there be? Each time it is the new departure; each time I have to kiss a friend good bye or each time I leave a place I won't see for a very long time. A new departure each time I start pedalling again, and each time the people who had come to cycle with me leave: It was a hard departure saying goodbye to my sisters in their refuge, and another one going out of France by its edge, in the mist and wind of the Mont Cenis, as if someome wanted me to prove that I really wanted to leave.

So we never stop leaving, and each day I realize I really have to unroot myself out to leave again; I had dreamt of freedom, of liberty, I realize how much I' "rooted" to places and people I love.

Going down from the edge of France where Gabrielle and I had climbed, at the very end of that Valley of the Maurienne, a real pass indeed, here we are, in Italy in the heat, betyeen hills and rice fields, down in a few kilometres from our 2060 m.

We couldn't have dreamt a better start to this journey, where nothing really goes as planned, but always better.

The bike here has woked even better in the last five days than in France as a smile-producting-machine. Each time we enter a town, we are in an Italian film where children run after us and old men cousciously smile.

mi sieme un astronave, iit looks like a space machine, I quote a nice old man from Turino,

It's such a joy to be in Italia ! and it's a brilliant idea to have come here cycling! tanto semplice !