Titles can be overemphasized Hi Gang! I want to write about all my adventures to the Amalfi Coast, to go along with these pictures that I have, but I just can't do it all in one shot...!...these words now don't flow from my fingers...So I can do something in the mean (median, or middle..not angry or disconsolate) time...I can post the first of my pictures and provide a small background and story. I'll leave this post as an open-ended, part one, of a as-of-now UN - NUMBERED many...

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Last friday at work, Kelly and I decided to go on a road trip with our bikes to the sea. We planned to take the train saturday morning to Sarno, and then from there bike out over the mountains and towards the Amalfi coast...Neither of us had ever been on this trek before, but we assumed it would take about 2-3 hours to get to the sea. We planned to take a swim and rest for a few hours before heading on back, either by way of the coast towards Sorrento or Salerno, or just right on through the way we first came. This all certainly sounded nice, so the plans were settled.

Kelly works Saturdays so I met her at 11 AM in the office. I brought my backpack with me cause I needed to carry along some gatorade and towel, food, swim shorts, etc....Kelly argued that this was not a necessity and that I would regret bringing it along 'cause of the extra weight, and although it was a hot humid day in the sun with the pack on, I did not feel at all like it was un-necessary and was in the end glad I had brought it along....so we were off, me looking like a pre-amateur (debutante?) on my old, ragged, rusty mountain bike, mean-while (still in the consolate manner), Kelly looks like a real professional cyclist, (which in fact she almost was at a time in Scotland), all gear'ed up with the fancy biker outfit and road-bike to match...ooh!, I wish I had taken a picture of ourselves.....

...so the blah begins with the train tickets bought and locomotive subsequently caught, all the way to the termini of Sarno; out again into the sweltering heat of mid-day (I first broke a sweat brushing my teeth in the morning) and along our way getting lost a few times for an hour or so until the we treked over the foot of the mountain in the certainty of the mean-time....

And now the monumental began with the burn of my anaerobic quads lactating pain and oozing booze (for I have time and again taken to drinking and this, my first big leg-streaching exercise in a while shot the remaining toxins out of my skin faster than they were absorbed in); Kelly made swift progress up the mountain while I trailed behind....I quickled learned to not look at the scenery while ascending. The combination of little oxygen, immenent dehydration, the heat of the road, the car fumes and the sweeping panoramic all caused an early break to my day when I had to get off the bike and walk it up the hill for a few hundred meters cause I felt dizzy and light-headed....thankfully that was the first and last time I felt like that....

So we continued the climb for the next hour or so, and by the end of it all I was pretty tired. My mantra for the entire day had been 'For every mountain I climb there's a mountain I come down', and sure enough it turned truer than I could have ever envisioned with a sense of hands-free, coasting joy and sometimes further enthralled with the screming, white-knuckled exuberance of rolling at 30 KMpH on a bike I just know isn't a precision machine (sorry Mom); all feelings which sweep up the pain and nearly the distance of the past 2 hours in only 15 minutes or so, the last part culminating in a ride down the winding face of those mountains on the coast, glimpsing at cars on hairpin turns while concentrating on the spectacular sight of the mediterrainian's unknown shore beyond the horizon and its nearer wave splashed beaches of gold and grey....And then, WHACK!, I'm right there in town with all those tourists and honeymooners, glad to be close to the sea-breeze but still with memory alive of the recent mountain gust and surely shaking from the adrenaline pumping through my veins....

Now it was time to swim, so we headed out to the end of the pier and I hesitated for a minute or two while I changed into my swim trunks and found a path down to the water on the concrete pilons that make up the out-cropping....Kelly had to find a
place to change into her costume so off she went to do just that and I hesitated again a minute or so, planning my dive into the sea so I wouldn't get cracked or crunched in any way...finally, I akwardly dove into the water and floated around for a while, trying to make up my mind which view was better: the open water or the high cliffs....I noticed a huge 'sea-cave' in the cliff not too far off which I vowed to go check out...I leisurly practiced my swim strokes -the doggie paddle, the back
stroke and my modified breast stroke which I'm told is called the frog- and then out again onto the rocks where I rested and took these photos of Amalfi for myself and for you:....



Sorry, for now its almost lunch and I'm quite hungry....We'll have to pick up from here the next time;... P.  ¶ 05:42