January 13th & 14th 2024

I experienced a new extraordinary sensation today. It gives me goosebumps just to relive it in detail in order to describe it to you.

As I pedaled a long straight stretch through orange groves in the Ribera region, I spotted a cloud of starlings several hundred meters ahead of me, swirling in the sky and forming a dancing, shape-shifting cloud. I'd never seen one so huge, it was impressively wide ! And its wisps, all over the sky in front of me, were hypnotic. But when this murmuration, as it is evocatively named, passed a few meters above my head, in a light but intense rustle, I was ecstatic. And when I looked up, I had the impression that the sky was stroboscopic and suddenly much darker. It was an almost magical visual and auditory sensation... All those flapping wings around me... Like being engulfed in a living, swirling, enveloping cloud, and being "in it" for a few seconds. Wow !!!

It was the opposite of the feeling I had at the start of the day when I left Menfi, which was closer to that of a curse.

I was supposed to take an old railway line, transformed into a cycle path, which would take me to the seaside after winding through the hills. On Google Maps, and from what I'd seen yesterday, it looked perfect and mostly hard-surfaced. But as I turn off to take it, it's blocked by a large concrete block, and what I can see of it over the first few dozen metres leads me to believe that it's not very well maintained. But it's well concreted and lined with interlocking wood fences. I tell myself that the block must be there to prevent cars from getting in, and I set off, zizagging through the vegetation, which is sometimes a little overgrown. My little pleasure doesn't last long, however. After a few hundred meters, I have to stop. The track is completely blocked by a flow of mud from a nearby field. I've already had my share of mud (see my stage between San Giovanni Gemini and Sambuca di Sicilia), and as this doesn't bode well for the number of kilometers remaining, I prefer to abort and turn back. This is the second time I've been frustrated by not being able to make a steam locomotive noise as I ramble on pedaling... Never 2 without 3, you say ? I hope this rule will suffer an exception. Because I know that just outside Syracuse, where I will be in a few days, an old railway line has been converted into a cycle path. And I fully intend to ride it ! Thank you in advance for your incantations to the pedal god, so that I can finally live out my little delirium !

Last anecdote, to bounce back on recurring events... Tomorrow's Sunday. And what am I going to do, do you think ? Have you guessed ? Yes, I'm in Agrigento, and I'm going to visit the Valley of the Temples, one of Sicily's most popular tourist spots. Again, a coincidence of the calendar, but it's getting to be a lot... If I had postponed my departure from Switzerland by two days, do you think it would have been different, and that I would have visited all these touristic places on Tuesdays ? Or is it a second curse, along with that of the reassigned railroad tracks ?

Never 2 without 3, you say ? Nevermind...

Trapani to Adrano