A number of dog walkers gave us unusual looks as we started preparing to leave. Lachlan was keen to here the results of the cane experiment, but was disappointed to find out that I had slept with a bottle sticking through the cane into my back. All-in-all the cane wasn’t too bad, except for a few parts that stuck into our ribs.

A car came towards us and the man said something in Italian. I spoke back in French and Simon spoke back in broad Australian. Lachlan was just nodding like he could understand. I roughly understood that the man was asking if we were moving on soon as a truck was coming to pick up the cane. Little did the man know, we had spread his neat bundles of cane out under our tent. After rolling the cane back up and discovering the pesky bottle under the tent we were back on the road, well almost. As I pulled up to the end of the driveway my front brake cable snapped. Although it was an annoying problem I was grateful that it didn’t happen while we were careering through Cinque Terre a few days prior. With no bike shop in sight, we decided to press on with care – Me with loose spokes and no front brake and Lachlan with two and a half gears and a wobbly back wheel. Simon’s bike looked decidedly new in comparison. We fixed my rear brake downed a coffee and pressed on.

We’d done about 20k of pretty normal riding on average roads when it all went pear shaped. I half turned to look at a funny sign name (as we’ve done hundreds of times over this trip) and in the process had a little tyre love tap with Lachlan who was in front of me. Normally this is no drama, you brake a little and continue rolling along. I grabbed the brake, but obviously got a different response from that I was expecting. The next thing I know my handlebars are crossed up and we’ve got the second crash of Euride08. I was on my feet before I’d realised what had happened, then was surprised Simon had avoided crashing into the back of me, and then walked up the road crouching and wondering how bad my knee was going to look. I turned around and saw the boys talking to some class of ambulance. I could have timed the prang worse, we were right across the road from an emergency response centre. Sometimes I feel like my life is one big fluke like that, but still, to have three spokes go, two flat tyres, a brake cable snap and a crash all in about 24 hours I was due for a lucky break! A doctor said my knee should be fine but to stay off the bike for a couple of days. Since my front wheel was now bent in half that wasn’t really an option anyway, so we trained the remaining 40k or so into Florence. We found a cheap but funky hostel. If you can’t be with family, there are worse places than Florence to spend Christmas. We can’t wait!