We’ve finished our five-plus days of cycling with Zephyr Adventures, and it was a great experience. I’m not sure what all to say about it except … I love bicycling. Add Italian food and wine, the Adriatic coast, a fun group of people, and mostly nice hotels and there is plenty to like. The longest ride was about 69 kilometers, or 43 miles, the first 40-plus ride I’ve done in a long time.

If you’re wondering, Mark’s neck/back/arm problem was an aggravation the entire trip, limiting his ability to go longer distances. But we both enjoyed it enough that we’re already thinking about scheduling something similar when we get to Vietnam. Here are some of my favorite photos.

OK, that was the bike trip. Suffice it to say that we loved it. But then the question arose, where do we go now? We had (note tense) frequent flyer tickets to Bangkok for October 11 and assumed we’d go to Rome for the intervening six days. Hotel rooms were crazy though – $500 for a crappy room, $1,200 for a nice one. Crazy. Instead we decided to go back to Naples; we had felt when we left a month ago that we hadn’t had enough time so let’s go back. We don’t really need six days here, though, so we were able to rebook our Bangkok flight up two days; now it’s four days here and then we fly on October 9. Very excited to get to Southeast Asia … and look for new bicycling trips!

We are generally quite hostile to any form of group travel, so this week of bicycling with a group is unusual for us. Ordinarily we run screaming from the thought of being in any kind of group, we get irritated when we come across large groups clogging the streets or the museums, and we hate letting anyone else lead us around. For us half the fun of travel is making plans, figuring stuff out, and overcoming challenges. We have no interest in having someone else “make it easy” for us. We cherish our status as “independent” travelers, along with all the surprises, complications, and sudden changes of plans that can entail.

Nonetheless, we signed up for this week-long bike tour of Puglia almost a year ago — before we even knew we’d be on this long adventure! We got to know the company, Zephyr Adventures, a couple years ago when our friend Nathaniel invited us to hike the Inca Trail with him and his two siblings, Eve and Ben. Since Nathaniel and Ben knew and vouched for the quality of the company, and since you can’t do that journey without guides anyhow, we jumped at the chance. The quality of the experience was exceptional, and we’ve since been tempted to try out another adventure with Zephyr.

And they’ve come through for us again. The company is really focused on things we love — the activity (in this case biking), interesting places to stay, great food, good wine. They do a real minimum of things we hate — shepherding us around, talking at us, bureaucracy. The bike routes have been planned so well that everyone rides at their own leisure along spectacular paths, with just the amount of support you need if you run into trouble.

But most important, this outfit attracts a pretty great group of travelers who are fun to get to know — and have an impressive array of interests and talents. And this worked greatly to my benefit as I struggled with an highly unexpected and ill-timed muscle problem just as our tour was getting under way.

A few days before the group met I was starting to notice a peculiar discomfort in my back, shoulder, and one arm whenever I sat in a chair for a meal. It came on gradually, and didn’t seem like a huge deal, but it was weird. While sitting and eating I kept fidgeting to try to get more comfortable. Just before the bike trip it became worse, making me uncomfortable no matter what I was doing.

On our first scheduled day of biking, I was in pain almost constantly. That was an intro day with just a couple hours of riding to test out the bikes, so I went ahead, hoping that the bike wouldn’t hurt. My wishful thinking suggested it might help stretch me out and heal the problem. But no, riding was absolutely miserable. I was always highly uncomfortable, and sometimes the pain became intense. I was in constant pain afterward, wondering how on earth I was going to deal with four full days of riding ahead. Would I just keep suffering and deepening the injury? Or spend days riding in the van while everyone else enjoyed my bike trip? I felt like I would never be myself again.

Then my physical therapy team started to take shape. I met Bonnie, a nurse practitioner from La Crosse, Wisconsin, who talked me through the symptoms and gave me comforts I needed to relieve the pain — anti-inflamation pills stronger than my over-the-counter stuff and a heat pad that magically sticks to your skin and provides heat comfort for eight hours. That thing was like crack to me.

The next morning, as I was agonizing about what to do, John the physical therapist from Santa Rosa, California offered to talk through my problem and convinced me that riding for the day was the right thing to do. This was a treatable problem, and I wasn’t going to do myself intractable harm. Then, just before I got on my bike for the day, Rosie from Foster City, California, offered to physically check out the injured areas. She is licensed Rolfer, who checked out the muscles, quickly zoomed in on some of the trouble, and almost magically lifted some of the tension.

I’ve now completed two more full days of spectacular riding. I continue to have some discomfort on the bike, but it’s bearable, it’s getting better, and I’m no longer worried that I’m going to do irreparable harm by doing what we came here to do. It’s turning into a really fun week with a great group of people, thanks especially to my therapy team.

OK, we’re in Puglia and have finished a day and a half of biking with Zephyr Adventures. So far it’s great, absolutely great. We hiked the Inca Trail with them three years ago, loved the way they do tours, and so we signed up with them again to do this bike trip. And so far they’re living up to their reputation – great food, beautiful routes, fantastic food. That all works for me!

The first day was a loop around Conversano and then back to the hotel. We forgot our camera, but some of the pictures would have been fantastic – a huge field of fennel, another of red leaf lettuce, and of course olives and grapes forever.

Today we biked through Alberobello, another World Heritage site, in this case because of the concentration of trulli buildings.  “Trulli” are traditional Puglian dry stone conical huts; you see them all over the region, but in Alberobello they make up most of the buildings in the old part of town. Mark & I had lunch there and then we continued on to Locorotondo, where we’re staying in a trulli-style hotel out in the middle of nowhere. Well, not quite nowhere, since we’re right near an olive oil … refinery? mill? factory? … I don’t know what you call it, but it’s where they turn olives into olive oil.  Needless to say, the tasting opportunity at the end of the tour was the highlight.

Here are some pics…