Ride nine - Limassol to paralimni

Leaving limassol this morning wasn't what I wanted to do. I woke up and threw my stuff in the rucksack and rode down to Macarious street to the Micromania bike shop to get celestes rear drive side spoke replaced. I was 45 mins early and when the shop opened I was told that they couldn't fix it there and then. So I decided to stay in the shop and told them I would wait here until they could fix it. It is the most modern bike shop I have seen in Cyprus so far , trek dealer with lots of high end road bikes, and the traditional skinny rake dreadlocked grease covered roll up smoking mechanics, who knew their sh*t.

Waiting outside the MicroMania bike shop in Limassol

As I sit here and wait for them to fix my bike I am wondering where all the men in this town are, it seems to be populated entirely by women on heels higher than the leaning tower of pizza. Yes I know its Pisa. Last night I even saw one girl in said hi altitude footwear hobbling on a crutch! Anyway such are the musings of a cyclists mind when he faces an 70+ mile ride on a broken bike in the midday sun!

Having a 1.93m smelly sweaty cyclist in the bike showroom clearly wasn't in keeping with the image of bike shop cool ,as after much deliberation on spoke sizes, Celeste was quickly and fully repaired for just 6€ . Result!! Moral of this story, listen to local advice ( thank you Paris), don't accept can't as an answer, and be unwashed and smelly when you want an urgent spoke job.

So with Celeste smiling again I set off out of town in the direction of Larnaca, a reasonable sized carbunkle town with a fountain in the middle of its roundabout and decent beaches hidden from the road by package holiday hotels and the usual plethora of dirt and faded advertizing billboards all to common in mediteranen cities. The wind was constant, strong and in my face for 90% of the ride. I hadn't eaten since yesterdays wonderful fish lunch on the beach and I felt weak. Weak is not good on a bike ride, so it was time to rip open an energy gel, fill up with water and a high five isotonic drink, mtfu and get on with it!

A typical view on the rode to Larnaca from Limassol

These windmills abound here due to the ever present cyclists nightmare, Headwinds!

Demetri was taking pictures of electric pylon cables. The big ones on towers next to the street. He saw me looking concerned for his sanity and joined me on the bus stop bench, also not waiting for the bus.
He explained he was working, no doubt a spy for a rival electric cable company I summised. Demetri wanted to know all about me, age, nationality, why I was crazy enough to cycle around his island, where I was going,come from,how many women I had and how many goats one would cost him.
Demetri left my life with a laugh and all his goats.

The road from Larnaca

Roadworks. Well, more of a bunch of blokes sitting on the side of the road watching one bloke drive a heavy steam roller over newly laid tarmac. I was given the green flag and followed a line of rental cars into tarmac meltdown. Chaos ensued as the tyres churned up the steaming tarmac. Why they waved us on only Cyclops knows. My tyres sank into the sticky gunk and suddenly my ride took a new direction. The beach provided a safe place to scrape the rapidly solidifying tarmac from my Tyres and brakes. It also let me see the beautiful blue sea in the hidden rocky cove, just behind the gas works, I wondered what Aphrodite would have made of them.

Tarmac removal beach

Where is aphrodite now?

Celeste with tarmac free wheels again

If you have to remove hot tarmac from tyres this is the best place to do it

Onwards into the wind, the sun was at full strength but the cool wind took the edge off it and left me with the impression my legs weren't actually burning. Once again following the Garmin line across Cyprus I managed a mere three wrong turns, mostly due to my mind wandering back over the last two days, the mountain, the two new friends I had made, and how lucky I am to be living life instead of stuck in the life trap that is worthing.

If you ride this way take the E305 NOT the motorway!

Out of water I pulled into a petrolina garage staffed by exotic birds in cages. Much as that image might appeal to some, let just me say these birds had feathers.
"You bike is italy. Have bike is for mountain". Right. Celeste had pulled. A short unshaven Greek bloke, without a goat, had taken a fancy to her and gone in for the kill. He boasted about how he and his brother, and his goat, had ridden nearly 13km last weekend, and how pointless the smallest of the three front chain rings are on mountain bikes. Celeste and I, and about 50 caged exotic birds, rolled our eyes, as we all noted his overflowing beer belly and cigarette packet in his shirt pocket, all inwardly 'gobsmacked' at his epic achievement. I resisted telling him that mountain bikes have three rings for climbing MOUNTAINS not nipping round to stavroses offy for ouzo and another pack of twenty. He smiled and informed me again that "bianchi is Italy bike".

Now this shot could have been taken in Malaysia! Cool drink seller. Unfortunatly closed for refueling no doubt!

The odometer was racking up the miles and, as usual, the further into the ride I got, the easier the miles went by. Until I saw the bakers shop. The young girl inside spoke fluent English, like almost everybody I have met on this little tour. She welcomed me to her shop and showed me her donuts. Well what could I do, it would have been rude not to have bought two, and some nice local biscuits and a drink! I was just ten miles outside Paralimni.

Where to find nice donuts

As ever, the first sign that I am approaching a town is rapidly deteriorating road surfaces.
Here the cracks on the road and potholes did thier best to undo the good work done by the dreadlocked mechanic this morning. The wind was picking up in keeping with the laws of cycling physics, that state the wind shall increase proportionatly to how knackered you are. Nearly there then I thought.

The vertically challenged, long haired, lady in a black business suit was trying to hose down the furniture shop front windows, but clearly wasn't experienced in the art of hose pipe control.
A surprising, yet pleasant cool jet of water caught me sideways on as I passed by. She shouted what I assumed was an apology in Greek and I waved and laughed. I had arrived back in Paralimni.

I headed directly back to my friends empty appartment, had a warm shower and hit the sack. I could still feel the head wind in my face and the, by now, very familier swaying of the bike after a long hard ride.
It wasn't long before my entire body screamed FEED ME NOW! So it was back on the bike and off to the euro bakers down the road where a few days ago the lady had told me they were open 24/7.
The rest of the town was shut,it seemed, and I had no desire to ride around checking places out. I just needed to devour something, 'LIKE' NOW.

Total chicken dinner special pig out fest!

I pointed to a ready cooked dead bird and got a full chicken special with rice, salad and potatoes, enough for four people easily for 9€. This was no scrawny tough Cypriot bird either, this had more breast than even this hungry cyclist could handle. I ate like a ravanous caveman, drank a litre of milk and managed to navigate my way from the table to the sofa without my Garmin.

Here I decided not to risk exploding and  left the three tasty Greek cakes until later.
It's cooling down outside now as the sun sets and the church bells drown out the local mopeds for a while. A dog is barking in the distance as Paralimni prepares to sleep.

75 miles max speed 39.7 mph moving average 13.6mph headwind 5000mph