San Marinoh..oh..oh.oh...

Forza for the reader of this piece! And forza for our friends back home!

EU TARMAC TO THE MAX:
Since our visit to Greekycountry we ventured a great ride (although cold and wet, which fits perfectly in the spirit of our motortrip) to Ignomentsia, the Greek harbour town.

We took it easy that day. We woke up. Packed up our stuff. Got some coffee and cake from the NCRV Caravan Vakantie Club and listened to their quire songs and Wilhelmus. The usual stuff you do, I guess. The trip led us through an amazing landscape with wide, European Community funded roads. You just gotta love the European funded tarmac, hope we got lots of that stuff in the Netherlands too one of these days (...).

We even came across two German endurobikers whom we met a couple of days earlier on the campsite in Meteora. What are the odds to 'bump' into each other in the middle of North West Greece, each having their own separate itenary destinations? Not little enough it appeared. All in all it was one of the best touring-days of our trips (Lisanne might disagree on this one, she was floaded with Greek rain from head to toe).

ODYSSEA:
The day topped when we arrived in Ignomenitsa without a ticket to cross to Ancona, Italy. The 'Gods of Travelling' again worked in our favor; whilst arriving at 7pm, we could get our tickets immediately (with 30% discount hey hey) and hit the boat at 8pm. Just one hour waiting time and enough to get some of that cheap Greek fuel (89ct's in some places) and get a sixpack of Amstel and some breakfast elements. Enough to cross the Meditereanian seas cheap and convenient.

We got deckseats. We took these seats with the idea that you could get some decent sleep in decent seats aboard. After we asked the third ferry-attendant on board where we could find our seats and he replied in conjunction to his predecessing colleagues: "anywhere on ship" we understood we were left in the middle.. ..shit.. ..great stuff to be allowed to sleep in the windy chairs on the outer deck, the chairs in the basspumping discotheque and not to forget: the cosy stairway corridors..

After we could not find our sleep, but instead could find a bunch of drunk malakkas around our sleepingspace we decided to rent a small room aboard. Finally, we've found the sandman rather than Sandeman..

SPAGHETTI DI STRADA:
The next day we arose fine and fruity, ready to conquer our next destination: Italia! We rode our bikes to the beach, got our first Italian espresso at lunch. Sure enough we found ourselves in a different country. In particular, the traffic seemed to act more nervous and it was without doubt a crowdy fight for fast tarmac.

San Marino was never our goal, as far as country concerned. But then again, why shouldn't we meet the nice San Marinese and enjoy the spectacular panoramas from the San Marino Borgo Maggiore castle (hey Menno ;-))

The road from the autostrada to San Marino is best compared as spaghetti. Lisanne and I were really getting into the driving style: driving sideways, upways and getting lost - just like Valentino Rossi. FYI, Signore Rossi was born in this area so we weren't a stone's throw away from driving come uno Italiano.. ..or were we?

Eventually we found ourselves a good campingsite with a friendly (Dutch) hostess. She ended up with an Italian and decided to move to the country of Tartufi (San Marino is famous about its pasta dishes enriched with the local truffle). Despite we had a tiring day we ventured to the top of the old town of San Marino. The town was desolated, but ready for some bursting tourism. And yes, our friend Menno was indeed right: the view from the three towers sieging from the high San Marino hill is spectacular. It is said that on a clear day, you could even see the former Yugoslavian coastlines on the other side of the water. Lovers of big medieval castles galore!

ROUTE ROUTINE:
The next day, we woke up in a rainy Martini. We waited until the rain stopped and packeted up our stuff again. The almost daily routine. We got on our bikes after getting breakfazt and started our journey to Rimini. From Rimini we would drive to Lago di Como and camp overnight. Then we would drive to Zurich to meet our friends Arjan and Geert followed by a visit to (one of our favorite German towns) Freiburg and to our favorite white wine eldorado in Bruttig-Frankel at the Mosel. The trip would end in an organized welcome motorride with friends on Sundays. Driving from the Dutch border to return home after three months scavagging the Eurasian axle, experiences all its grace, warmth and occassional grievances.

This is not how it ended.

ROTO ROUTE ROUTINE:
We drove away from the campsite in San Marino heading towards the Autostrada and Rimini. The air was dry and not there was not much sun to discover. We followed the dwindeling streets down to a fly-over junction. We crossed the junction underneath the highway and turned into a steep and sharp curve, we made a U-turn. Prior to engaging with the highway we had no opportunity to assess the frequency of the current traffic. The highway was "tucked away" in between high sound barriers. The entry lane was not long, just 50 meters at max. In retrospect the San Marinese government decided to build a petrolstation at the end of the entrylane at the cost of additional meters of entryspace just five years ago..

..Lisanne and I were driving up the steep U-turn ending up at the entrylane. I was driving behind Lisanne. The lady in front of Lisanne driving a light-blue cart (Honda Logo) halted to assess her entry into the highway lane, hit her gaspedal, then suddenly braked her car and stopped. Lisanne had to make an emergency stop. I was meters behind and busy assessing the traffic on the highwaylane, halting and had a rather unpleasant pursuit of a bumperrider in my dust.

The moment the lady in front suddenly braked we faced ourselves in a losing position. There was simply too less time to assess the highway traffic, slowing speed for entry and then to be suddenly confronted with a unsuspected braking frontrunner. Lisanne reacted perfectly by her emergencybrake. I couldn't stop my bike on time, being confronted with a totally different traffic-reality then Lisanne when entering the entry-lane. Like the scenery of the San Marino Borgo Maggiore castle was a little railway fairytalesland, the size of the San Marino entrylane was actually like the size of a little railway fairytalesland..

..I drove the BMW into Lisanne's selfmade motorcycle topcase. Pushing her bike, torsing it over the frontsuspension. This was a direct result of Lisanne's emergencybrake, which you take with about 80% of your frontbrake. Then seconds become minutes.

To be honest, we could re-assemble the occurence because we stayed together very closely the last couple of days and talked it over a lot. The accident actually happened last tuesday. Lisanne suffered a light concussion and could not communicate on an ordinary way directly after the accident. Thankfully, she reacted to impulses and she had fire in her eyes. But her memory was temporarily continuously being erased in small intervals. This resulted that the doctors and I had to repeat every question and answer continuously to her.

After the crash, I immediately tried to stand up. My leg was lying under my BMW, so I pulled it away. Basically this is your first reaction, as you have no idea where exactly you are lying on the surface of the tarmac: on the highway, or still at the entry lane? Therefore, you just have to get yourself out of that situation as soon as possible. This action presumably has cut my upper legimates (pezen) of my left foot and strained some muscle tissue around knee and upper leg.

Lisanne was still lying on the tarmac. Besides her concussion she had a shoulder fracture. The ambulance arrived, taking Lisanne to the hospital. I remained with Police at the scene until the point that my foot was starting to scream a bit for attention. The Police brought me to the hospital.

We can, but for now will not go into all details. It's just too fresh now and we figure: if you're really interested, than give us a call anytime or come around for coffee. A blog is a blog, and a conversation is a conversation - so let's not mix that up. For now it's enough to know that we are fine and in relatively good condition. We are due to arrive - without motorbikes - next Sunday. We will take the train (taking airflights is still in violation of our overland spirit of the journey) from Rimini to Arnhem, via Milan.