Some photos of Genoa, where I am to be this very moment though I’ll be back in Ireland tomorrow.

Despite the wonderful grandeur, and the sea and the mountains, it is the old city that enthralls me more than anything.

And it is the old city that is the hardest to capture such is the nature of streets only a few feet wide towered over by buildings that lean in and almost kiss at the top.

Here is some of the Genoa that I have seen (click to enlarge):

There’s a lot - and I’m going to stick more in - so I’ll put the rest below the fold

Read: Genoa - Photos »

Iowa

Part 44 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

The next section of the journal is taped and transcribed but as both tape and transcript are inaccessible in storage I’ll give you both a brief outline of that day from memory, and from excerpts of the journal that was handwritten, a more detailed account of the following day.

September 26.

Iowa was the place that always caused the most reaction from anybody I met along the way who asked me my route ahead.

They would listen to me reel off a list of States, nodding along until I was finished when they would say,
-Why are you going to Iowa?

Back when I was resting in Kansas City having fallen behind on my overall schedule, somebody told me they had figured out a way that I could save 2 days.

They didn’t understand that my schedule really didn’t mean a whole lot other than give me an idea of the feasibility of the whole trip, and as such it was very flexible.

Nonetheless I was intrigued by this notion of saving 2 days so I asked how it could be done. With no sense of irony or humour, I was told I could skip Iowa and informed of the route to achieve this.

Rather than point out that my original plan of Boston to San Diego is hardly the shortest route across the US even if going direct, let alone take my route of down and up and down the US while crossing it, I decided to point out the obvious:

“Or I could save 4 months by skipping the entire trip”

It seemed lost on some people that I wanted to go to Iowa. And while I didn’t actually know why I wanted to go there, the more it was questioned the more I knew I wanted to go.

In Maryville when I started it was raining.

On the outskirts of town I looked at the big blocks that are buildings by the big gash that was the highway bypassing the town, and thought how cold some of America is. This always hit me more in smaller towns than in cities, as if cities were somehow more organic expressions of concrete.

West and north I twisted for a distance of 25 miles until I came to a tiny town called Elmo. 10 miles further northwest and I reached the border with Iowa in another tiny town, this one called Blanchard.

Americans don’t call them borders. They are County Lines and State Lines and that makes sense since they are for the most part just lines on a map. When I first started cycling long distance, back when I was a teenager, I developed a habit of lifting my feet of the peddals and freewheeling across borders. If I was sure nobody was around I would add the necessary sound effect of “wheeeee!”

This was a psychological thing to celebrate my progress on a map. And I did it entering official town boundaries where indicated by “Welcome To…” signs, as well as cycling over the more important boundaries like those of counties and states.

Because I crossed the Iowa State Line in a town I whispered “wheeeee” and was immediately all excited to see what it was that so many people were against me seeing.

Corn.

And it was fantastic. Huge swathes of corn on giant terraces. And curves. And to make things more exciting the road stopped going due north. In this part of the world where everything is gridded to perfection I was on a road that bent one way and then another. Proper bends, not those kinks you get every so often on the roads going south to north to keep the roads parallel while allowing for the fact that the world is round.

And there wasn’t a soul anywhere. What a fantastic corner of the world.

This is Page County. I remembered reading of Jackson Pollock’s family living in this southwest corner of Iowa, 2 counties over to the east. 5 miles north and I’m in a town called Coin, American town names still not disappointing, and 8 miles west completes a short day of 50 odd miles as I set down for the night in the romantically named town of Shenandoah.

[An account of the next day constitutes the rest of this entry and it’s below the fold]

Read: Cycling Across America #44 »

Northeast Missouri

Part 43 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

After the previous not very effective day at putting distance between me and my halfway rest of Kansas City, I am still heading north. In Missouri.

I wrote these words at 10:30pm on September 25th 1996, a Wednesday. In Maryville, Missouri.

Surrounded by large green blotches on radar images of the central States, I’m wondering what happened to all that sunshine. Some of the blotches are a darker shade of green and worse - some of them have little yellow and orange cells in them.

Can’t complain really. I was the one that cherished the idea of being out there competing with the elements. Well I’m not complaining but I think the elements are winning.

After yesterday’s series of mini-disasters I was looking forward to moving on. Ah well.

Woke up after 10 with no time to fix those punctured tubes, as check out was 11. Then I saw my back tyre was flat. Knew I should’ve checked it for thorns. Decided it was a slow and pumped it up. Went outside and saw the heavy rain.

Bagged up everything including myself and rolled across the Truck Park back onto Highway 371. What little traffic there was I left a mile later as I used Highway A into St. Joseph. This is the only state I’ve come across that uses letters to identify its roads. As far as I can tell the specific names are unique to counties only, and I’m particularly fond of the two-letter codes e.g. BB, MM, CC. You pronounce them “double B” (double-M), (double-C).

The rain was mostly heavy and cold but it didn’t seem to bother me too much. Until I was in St Joe 12 miles later. I was now very wet, very cold, very hungry, and avoiding traffic with little help from my rain-covered mirror. As I turned in to a Burger King two women smiled at me, not in the Hello sense, rather in the look-at-you, you’re-all-wet sense. After shivering through a King size Whopper meal I left a pool of water on my seat.

[I’ll put the rest of this entry below the fold]

Read: Cycling Across America #43 »

One of the reasons I haven’t brought you pictures and words of this trip to Italy is because I forgot to bring a cable for my camera with me.

So I have pictures; I just can’t share them with you - yet.

Actually I can’t even share them with me, as my camera is a simple affair that doesn’t have the capability to show you what you’ve taken. I love the surprise when you finally get around to connecting it to the computer and finding out what you really did take.

Genoa is the sort of city that you could take photos in every day for years and be far from finished. And that’s just of the obvious stuff, the carvings over doors and windows, the painted walls, the ornate churches and palaces.

Oh yeah, and the sea and the mountains.

I’m staying in a building with 13th century marble columns. The staircase to the apartment makes you gasp. Every day. And it’s not bad that I put a key into a 5 foot wide ornate metal door every day. So far I haven’t found any angles that work for photos of them. I might have to resort to painting.

By a fountain inside a palace today, and again later on street littered with north African shops, I wondered how you could photograph a smell. I eventually decided not to try.

But of course just the walls and windows would keep me going forever. And I’ll confess to taking a few of walls already. I may yet even spend one entire day taking photographs of just walls. I may.

And the absence of walls, the gaps that are streets in name, the improbably narrow slits through which the sun blasts through to illuminate a thousand squares. Every time I walk down a street that is just a few feet wide from building to building I imagine my son with me touching both sides at the same time. This is not America.

I took a lift to day, from one part of town to another. It was like getting on the tube in London, except when you got off you were in a competely different city, one that floats above the one you’ve just spent hours walking around.

The last lift is at midnight I’m told. A different take on missing the last bus home is the alternative, a staircase that must surely test your calves. I took a funicular railway down again.

The only buskers I’ve seen all play the accordion. I presume it’s a different accordion, and not that they’re sharing. The churches have a tardis feel. Somehow they are squeezed into tiny squares and the surrounding buildings being so close seem to make the size of the fresco covered inside impossibly large.

Today I looked in a shop window with the most elaborate presentation of olives I’ve seen. Orante arrangements of green and black olives. Except they weren’t real olives. This was a dessert shop. I was looking at fake olives made of chocolate. No I didn’t buy any - I can’t stand chocolate.

I took a photograph of St Brigid today. Well I didn’t; I took a photograph of a load of steps and an arch, and then I found out that St Brigid was in there too. I’ll probably get around to snapping Daniel O’Connell’s monument also.

This morning I went out to draw. But I didn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t see anything I wanted to draw; it’s that I didn’t see anything I didn’t want to draw. I couldn’t stop walking. The nearest I came to stopping was being held up by a couple of tour parties in off the cruise ships. Tomorrow I plan to make myself stop.

You’d love the walls here. Really, you would. Shutters on the windows. Shades of yellows and orange. And grey. I love shades of grey. Glimpses of brick, and arches. I could spend a year painting here and not dent what I’d want to do. And that’s without lifting a brush. A year of staring at walls.

I’m so happy looking at the walls here that it hurts.

Read: Wall Heaven »

North: Beginning The 2nd Half

Part 42 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

It is time to leave the rest that has been Kansas City, and carry on towards the west coast. Via Iowa. Time to cycle north so.

Barely got the energy to talk at this stage. Or the inclination.

Where are we? It’s Tuesday the 24th of September. The first day back on the bike after Kansas City, Missouri. Was meant to be back on the bike yesterday and that’s what I’d built up.

I’d been preparing ’til 4.30 in the morning, then went to sleep on the couch, got up about 6.30 to the sound of rolling thunder and lightning all around. And this just went on until lunchtime. So I called it off. There was no point in going out in that.

Oh jeepers, I’m so tired. From drinking all the time. Staying up late, talking constantly. Out again last night. As somebody said,
- if emptying people’s fridges of beer was an Olympic sport…

Last night I was taken to a Chinese place. It was a buffet so I tried lots of things. Then I remembered I should be eating lots of carbohydrates as I was definitely going off this morning and I knew the weather was going to be good.

Yesterday I also rang home. Mam told me she got a letter from the woman in the Post Office in Hepler, and a clipping of a newspaper article about me. She read it out. It sounded well put together without boring people with statistics. My response of “your whole country is out of my way” was in print. Dad said it sounded like me - so it’s good to see I still sound the same.

[I’ll put the rest of this entry below the fold]

Read: Cycling Across America #42 »

I’m off to Dublin airport now. Flying to Milan. Then a bus and a train to Genoa. And then a nice walk.

Updates will probably appear on Twitter before they appear here. We’ll talk.

Read: Italy Bound »