It was an exceptionally pleasant night out in that field near Cattolica. Raindrops started to compose their meek melody falling upon the tent’s fabric. This caused some minor nuisances: needing to urgently run out and make sure that everything is covered properly: but, otherwise, it only filled the air with that sweet freshness which knowingly guarantees such a balmy sleep as one could imagine sleep to be in paradise.
By the first light’s advent, the last raindrops were still falling hesitantly upon the saturated field; so giving us a good excuse to snooze over a bit. A sky crammed with thick, reddish clouds and an abundant layer of dew upon the ground was what I saw as I left the tent after the sound of the falling raindrops had completely ceased. It was time to get up.
We spent a lazy morning drinking coffee and having a slow breakfast. By the time we started packing up, the sky had cleared up and the strong morning sun had vaporized every single drop of dew within its reach. When we started rolling the bicycles down the hill, the time was almost 12:00.
The first part of the day’s way was ascending a hill; which was quite steep and the fact we needed to start ascending it as soon as we sat on the bikes’ seats made it seem even steeper. Fortunately, that was all the significant uphill we’d encounter for all the day. Upon reaching its top, we beheld the pleasant spectacle of the road meandering down the hill’s northern slope, leading to an extensive flat plain preceding the rock of San Marino, which became now visible in the distance.
Our idea for the day was to go to Rimini and stay at some hostel or something where we could also leave the bikes and go to San Marino by bus the next day. So we’d made it to Rimini by early afternoon, but, being Saturday, pretty much everything in the city was fully booked and all our tries to find cheap accommodation were futile. So we needed to proceed with the alternative plan.
We first went and sat in a nice cafe where we enjoyed a cappuccino cup and a pizza while charging the power banks inside. Then we started pedaling through Rimini’s beautiful Renzi Madre Elisabetta park, heading towards San Marino. Just a bit before sunset, we’d made it near the foot of the rock where we found yet another nice field to name home for the night.
We pitched the tent under the foliages of two neighborly, large oaks. After all was well trimmed and we were having a cup of tea while darkness had started to occupy the sky and the earth, a brief and sharp, creepy, creaky sound coming from the poplar tree next to our oak permeated the quietude. “What was that?”, asked me, Christina. “Not quite sure… maybe some birds.”, answered I… And no more than three or four seconds later, producing a vigorous bang, a 10-meter long and half-meter thick bough broke off the poplar’s trunk and crashed against the ground. That was splendid! It was the first time in my life I ever witnessed such a thing. Who knows for how many decades – if not centuries – that bulky bough was holding on, resisting gravity; and it, finally, without even the slightest wind blowing, it just yielded to the impelling tension and ended up on the ground to become termite food, right at this random moment we happened to be there.
Taking some moments to investigate the occurrence, and a few more to become assured that the oaks’ boughs do not have similar dispositions, we returned back to our normal evening. Now the time is past eleven and I need to stop writing this and give myself over to Morpheus, as the alarm shall bring me back by dawn tomorrow.
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