Two Wheeled Life Part 9
For 2000 and beyond we needed more itineraries. We hoped Undiscovered Tuscany would get "discovered" enough to be viable and when it was, a new challenge appeared - convincing the hotels we'd reserved and then cancelled that we were indeed coming in 2000.
A spring R & D trip was needed as not only did we need some face-to-face time to convince the Tuscany folks we were for real, we needed to research more routes in more areas. We'd always loved Umbria for example but didn't think there was enough varied cycling there to spend an entire week. We remembered a hotel we stayed at on the Adriatic Coast, one used during the early season Tirreno-Adriatico bike race. Their guest book was even signed by Italian cycling star Gianni Bugno!
This would include our first hotel, in Orvieto, a place we'd visited with the Giro d'Italia a time or two though we thought the hotel our boss used was far from ideal, a run-down 3-star place he must not have visited before making his booking? We found a small hotel tucked away off the main street run by a nice man and his wife. No ristorante but you're spoiled for choice in this hilltop town, so that wasn't an issue.
We tried to map routes between hotels on our way to visit them, making for long days in the car. Sometimes we'd just run out of time, noting we still needed to finish one or another before that actual tour departure. From Orvieto we moved on to Spello, a real jewel of a town we learned about from an Italian friend I met at the mail-drop our old boss used as his address. From there it was a challenge, ending up in a town called San Severino, our last stop before the Adriatic Coast.
On this R & D trip there were also those Tuscans to deal with. None of 'em were a real issue except for one, an agriturismo converted from an old hunting lodge, the place we only saw through the windows the year before. The owner was running it with her daughter and both were a bit upper-crusty, not so sure they even wanted a cycling tour group, except that a large, well-known USA operator had booked their group there too. It was hard not to think this company did some of their research by looking at our website since this was their first time too, though the lodging had already been open for a few years. Over time we really wondered how much we were helping our competitors as after we'd start using a hotel, they'd show up a season or two later with their groups.
We received a bit of the "Well, this big operator is coming, so why should we take you too?" routine as a result but we assured the Tuscan ladies we'd be good clients. When we actually got there with our group, before the big operator's stay, one of our clients got up early (jet lag we assume) and made a lot of noise. This hunting lodge was small so noise bothered everyone and when she ended up in the kitchen begging the Signora herself for coffee, she began to have regrets.
Signora took me aside at breakfast and explained the issue, she didn't like her careful preparations being interrupted! She was also the cook so the last thing I wanted was for her to be angry with us. I took the clients aside, explaining we were sort-of on probation here and asked them not to get up early and bother the staff. I pointed out that for us, any individual client was expendable vs ruining a relationship with a valued lodging. We had no further issues as the next morning Signora took me aside and said, "I like you. You control your guests."
I laughed when I thought of the big operation coming there in a few weeks. Once she experienced them she'd like us even more! We turned out to have a great relationship over the years with them. Signora's other daughter's husband worked at a lodging in the area our former boss used, so they remembered us as some of the nicer folks in those groups. Once Undiscovered Tuscany became too discovered we no longer had it on the schedule, though one time we were in the area for some reason and stopped by to say CIAO.
Nobody was there but a phone call had the Signora inviting us to her apartment in the nearby village. Her daughter was there too, though Signore had passed away a few years before. This rugged Tuscan was a good host himself, telling us one time a joke about the authorities asking him about his own grappa production. He explained that this grappa simply flowed from a fountain on the property, he just bottled it!
As we talked Signora got up and returned with a bottle of the famous Vin Santo, the sweet wine you dip the hard Tuscan cantucci into. Signore made this too along with limoncino. She offered us the wine and cookies plus an unopened bottle of his Vin Santo as a gift, explaining it was one of the last bottles her husband had made and she thought he'd want us to have it. We also heard some tales about the big USA operator's program. They liked the money but not so much the operator's clients. That came as no surprise to us.
One day on the road I think we encountered some of their clients. I remember a couple, not clad in cycling clothing like our clients, but looking more like they'd just stepped off a tennis court! "Biff and Buffy" were not in a good mood for some reason. I overheard her complain the tour company staff had put the wrong kind of water in her bottles! I wonder if she preferred sparkling or still but tried to make myself invisible as they rode past, thanking my lucky stars they weren't our clients.
Before we parted ways, our former boss had produced some challenging tours in the Italian Alps and Dolomite mountains. We wanted to do the same for our clients, creating what we called our Mountain Trilogy, three separate weeks moving from east to west across the mountain ranges separating Italy from Austria, Switzerland and France. Clients could choose just one or two, or all three. Outgoing clients would be taken back to the HQ, leaving those continuing to enjoy more cycling while new clients were brought in. We offered a discount on the 2nd or 3rd week, hoping to minimize those client changes each week.
These proved very popular so we soon had a list of tours - Umbria-Marche, Undiscovered Tuscany, Paradise in Piedmont and three weeks in the mountains - Dolomites, Legendary Climbs and Italian Alps. We produced all of these in 2000, including Umbria-Marche with Heather's parents and a group of their friends. The in-laws had such a great time with us the previous year, they told their friends so much about it that we were asked to add another group just for them.
Only one of them was a cyclist, the rest were "VinoItalians" as we called them. We hired a guide I'd met on a tour-operator junket a few years before to look after them and they had their own separate van for transportation and sightseeing. Heather's father insisted on driving and I asked the guide to humor him as all the clients inside were his (or more honestly, his wife's) friends. The tour started off a little rocky for them, with one of the guests need to make a potty stop just 10 minutes after leaving the lunch stop on the tour's first day. And it had to be a place of her choosing, despite having a decent bathroom at the ristorante they'd just left, annoying Heather's father.
Already annoyed and in his rush to pull over once this person had pointed out her favored potty stop location, he bashed into a parked car! Ooops! No real damage to the van so rather than wait around they left a note with the night's hotel phone number and continued on the tour route, navigating just like our cycling clients. The exasperated clients arrived a bit later than our cycling group and relayed their experiences. Amazingly, the owner of the damaged car was a friend of the hotel owner, so the issue was quickly settled to everyone's satisfaction. Overall, they had a great time and begged us to provide another VinoItalia tour but we wanted to concentrate on cyclists, a group we were better able to delight.
We felt that CycleItalia was now pretty well established and starting to produce some profits as the start-up expenses were covered. Our itineraries appealed to a wide variety of cyclists, from the hard-cores who wanted to test themselves on the Giro d'Italia's iconic climbs to those who really liked Italian wine and food and thought cycling through the challenging routes we created was the best way to deserve their enjoyment. This was work we enjoyed doing and when clients joked about a return-client discount we'd reply that we should give them their first tour free and charge double for the next one.
We had one client so interested in seeing Italy with us, she called to explain she had just started to learn how to ride a bike, but could she join us anyway? It was obvious "Margherita" didn't want to just ride in the van as some partners of our clients did. We rarely had an issue with this since there was (by design) always a seat in a van for every client at all times. You might think that's obvious but our former employer had been known to set up tours without this feature, crossing his fingers it wouldn't come back to bite him.
One time it bit him (us) was in Tuscany. His HQ was near the Milan airport, making a transfer to Tuscany pretty long so he'd put clients on a train and pick them up in Tuscany, hand down their bicycles and away they'd go. Or not. Heather went on the train once with the group while the rest of us drove. Once the clients with us had gotten on their bicycles I was to drive back to the train station to pick them up so they could join the tour.
When I got there, no train! I finally understood there was a strike and there would be no train. Now what? Eventually I understood the train had stopped at the next station up the line so off I went. This was in the days before cell phones were common so Heather had no way to let us know of the strike. It all worked-out in the end but we swore we'd never let this happen with us!
"Margherita" was insistent about joining us, but very nice about it. She said she was riding with a coach of some sort so I agreed that if this coach would confirm her riding skills were adequate, she could join us. I'd hold a space for her until he could do this and eventually he did and she reserved her space. She was great and had a great time.
Another time we had a client in the mountains who claimed to be a "spin-class" instructor. "Sara" was indeed strong on her bike, but her skills were limited to riding a stationary bike...she had no real cycling skills at all. The thought had never crossed my mind that someone so "into" cycling would be so unskilled at it. After a few harrowing descents she decided to ride down in the van with me. The guy who rode up the climbs mostly to enjoy the descents just scratched his head, at one time joking he'd get in his bike and let her drive the van down!
One more client story - a lost client one. This fellow (we'll call him Bob) insisted on wearing a belt pack on the bike. How he could stand having that thing around his waist baffled me - why not use the pockets on the back of the cycling jersey that was included with your tour? One day this idea came back to bike him.
"Bob" tried to tuck his printed cycling map into what he thought was one of the pockets but instead it was just under the belt pack strap and when he reached for it again, it was gone. He was lost but back then we gave each client a pre-paid phone card to use in a public phone, just-in-case something like this happened. We put a sticker on 'em written in Italian with "I'm lost, please help me contact my tour group at this phone number..." which was the number of our cell phone. Whoever was in the van had this phone at all times.
.jpeg)
I got a call from "Bob" saying he was lost, would I please come and rescue him? "Sure, where are you?" was my reply. He said he was in a bakery, spelling out P-A-N-I-F-I-C-I-O. "OK, but what is the name of this bakery? What town is it in?" I asked. Since he didn't seem to be at a pay phone but actually in someone's bakery I asked him to hand the phone to whoever had made the call for him. An Italian lady came on the line.
"Where are you?" was my first question. "In my bakery." was the answer. I started to think of the old "Who's on first" comedy gag but this was real and I had to rescue "Bob" since he had no clue as to where he was. Finally, I got the lady to tell me what town her bakery was located in, a town so small I couldn't find it on the map! Now what? I popped into a small grocery store, went up to the cashier and asked where this town might be, showing her my map and where I thought we were.
Customers gathered around, seemingly each with their own idea on how to get to this tiny town from the grocery store. Eventually a consensus of sorts was reached and I thought I understood enough to find it, so off I went. The route they described seem to match the landmarks they'd noted and soon enough I arrived in a tiny town to see a bicycle parked in front of a bakery. "Bob" was enjoying a treat from the bakery while his host fretted over his dilemma but was now happy to see me come to his rescue. Once "Bob" was back in the van we drove back the way he said he'd come to intersect the mapped route again and continue the day's tour. "Bob" was dropped off with some other cyclists complete with another map copy and instructions not to lose this one!
No comments:
Post a Comment