Another weekend in paradise!

Saturday was the perfect spring day. As you can see, short sleeves and shorts on the bike, hooray! It was Larry's first day of the year in shorts, the breeze on the knees always feels a bit odd after so many rides covered up. A longer ride was in order to take advantage of the nice day so we left Viterbo midday, heading out the "slot" road towards Vetralla but turned right to Tuscania instead. From there we headed towards Marta, where this photo was taken at the edge of Lago Bolsena, following the route we use on the first day of our yearly Umbria-Marche tour. We decided to skip a sit-down lunch in Marta and as there were not many other options, we continued up to Montefiascone. Rather than visit with our friend Paolo at his "Miralago" ristorante we opted for a quicker (as by this time Larry was pretty hungry) bar stop for a panino and birra. Heather scoped out the perfect place -- the proprietor was himself a cyclist and had a bunch of fresh strawberries! To finish off our quick lunch he (after admiring our Torelli bikes in the Italian tricolore paint scheme) served us fresh berries, Larry's with freshly-made panna (whipped cream) Heather's just with sugar and lemon. We headed back to Viterbo detouring through Bagnaia, making the ride a bit over 75 kms, just right for early April. Sunday's weather forecast is not so good so we'll content ourselves with Italian TV entertainment starting with World Superbike (for Larry if it's got wheels and a motor he's interested!) followed by Paris-Roubaix (the TV coverage here is great, almost no commercial interruptions and no annoying commentary by you-know-who) and winding up with MOTOGP live from Qatar this evening. It's going to be tough to return to the USA!