From Crete to rain

Mama goat guards the door where she has her little kid.

Lissos, a Roman and Minoan site, do you think our homes will still be standing in 2000 to 4000 years?


A small church made from Roman ruins at Lissos.

All over Crete the olives they are preparing for a bumper crop of olives.

Our only look at Albania, soon after this shot the rain started falling.

Don't let the sign fool you, I think these are the minimum speeds allowed on the roads in Italy.

The weather riding up thru Italy to Austria was not the very best.

Georg and Christine, our Austrian friends we met at Buck Lake, took us on a great hike up to the top of a ski hill near Innsbruck.

Well that last dip into the Mediterranean never did happen. When I emerged from the Internet cafe the skies had clouded over and the wind had started to blow, the locals were busy getting ready for gail force winds and rain. And it did arrive! That night I slept with one eye open while listening to the wind howling and the rain hitting the walls of the hotel. I had images of the bike flowing down stream to the sea or lying on the street, Ken says I have much too active an imagination! The next two days we spent time waiting for the skies to clear and the rain to stop long enough for us to head out on the road again.

The weather happened to clear long enough on one afternoon, before we left, for us to take a hike to Lissos, an archaeological site. The buildings there are 2000 to 4000 years old and still in pretty good shape, on some of the floors there is still intricate tile work and on some of the walls Roman writing. We got caught in a short rainstorm on the way back to our hotel, but we are not made of sugar(ha, ha).

We decided to make a run for the north coast of the island and by midnight on the 23rd we were on the Olympic Champion ship headed for Athens. The trip from Crete to Athens is only 6 hours (from midnight to 6 am) so we opted for the deck seats...I think we got about 2 hours of sleep curled up on the floor of the lounge. Needless to say, the 33 hour trip (11pm Oct 23 to 8:30 am Oct 25) from Greece to Italy was spent on a boat with a cabin and beds to ourselves. The first morning as we sailed past Albania I was a little upset because the weather had cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day, I kept thinking we should be riding, but within a few hours the rain was falling and I was very happy to be dry on board the ship and not on the back of a motorcycle.

Italy was wet, very wet, so we got off the boat and headed north to Austria and to our friends Christine and Georg's house in Innsbruck. The weather was not exactly warm there, 3-8 degrees in town, but they took us on hike up a local ski hill where the sun was shining and the temperature was fine. The view from 2000 metres was amazing, a sea of clouds below and mountain tops everywhere, we didn't even mind the snow on the ground.

Neither Ken nor I am looking forward to leaving Innsbruck tomorrow and heading north again but we have changed our tickets home from Frankfurt to Nov 4th so we must head out...long johns, riding gear and rain gear all on and hopefully warm enough.