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Somewhere between Terracina and Formia, you’ll find it. There’s a stark pillar along the side of a winding mountain road. I assume it’s either a milestone or the remains of one of the many monuments that line the Appian way.

The bike ride to this pillar is phenomenal, and there are at least three good reasons to make the trip. First is the “Tomb of Cicero” at one end of the bike route. Most experts agree that this isn’t the really the tomb of Cicero, but it’s near the spot where he died and that’s enough for most people.

Better than Cicero’s tomb, the bike ride from Terracina to Formia passes through a park which includes the original remains of the via Appia, as well as several ancient Roman and Medieval buildings.

In fact, if you’re riding your bike on the main road, you’ll pass through the park several times. The road winds up the mountain in endless switchbacks, while the Appian Way shoots up in the classical straight line, defying gravity just as easily as she defied the Pontine marshes. You can ride your bike up this way if you choose to. I didnt.

But my favorite thing about this section of the Appian bike tour is the town of Itri. I hadn’t meant to stay there, but I was intrigued by the scenery, the friendly locals, and the castle. After taking a long hot shower and stuffing my gullet with fresh pizza, I spent hours wandering around the dark, twisting alleys of the immense fortress on the hill overlooking Itri.

I can’t tell you much about the history of the castle, but I’ll introduce you to someone who can. On our next bike tour through southern Italy, one of my local contacts has offered to hook us up with an archeologist in Itri who can give a tour of the place. I asked him how much something like that would cost and he said, “some cafe in a bar, I assume, but not more…”

So if you’re up for an expert tour of Itri for the price of a cup of coffee, not to mention a zillion other great experiences that you can read about all over my blog, get in touch with me and join us on this trip. The dates are May 15th-June 1st 2010, approximate cost is $1500 plus airfare and bike (rental, purchase, or transportation of your own rig), and I’ll be happy to answer your other questions by phone or email.

Last week I had a conference call to hash out some bike tour details with my fellow riders. If you’re on my email list you’ll get a message about this. If you’re not, but you’d like to be on the list, just shoot me an email: jacob “at” bicyclefreedom.com.

An actual road sign in Puglia, Italy. Which way to Corato? I asked a farmer, and he said "straight ahead."

We’re going to be touring from  May 16 through June 1st, 2010. On June 2nd we’ll be driving a rented van with our bikes back to Rome.

This is longer than originally planned because we’re not ending the tour in Brindisi. We’ll head south to Lecce, which is a beautiful city with a rich history down in the very heel of the Italian boot. I’ve never been there, but an Italian I met on the plane during my last trip told me it’s “The Florence of Southern Italy.”

The longer schedule is also going to give us a lot of time for a long, leisurely trip, with a couple extended stops along the way for rest and laundry.

I’m hoping to arrange a group ride with the Terracina Cycling Club, and a couple of archeologists in Itri and Aeclanum may give us special tours. We’re also going to stopover for 2 nights in the Venosa/Gravina/Matera area so we’ll have plenty of time to see the sasse (beautiful caves that were used as homes and churches for centuries) and several other amazing sites that are off the usual tourist path.

After talking it over with a few people, it seems to make sense not to camp on this tour. We won’t save a whole lot of money by camping, because the areas where camping is available tend to have the nicer and less-expensive lodging options.  We’ll be staying in agriturismo spots most of the time.

Expect to spend an average of 60 euro per evening for lodging. This will usually include breakfast and sometimes dinner. (Keep in mind that the portions will be very small by bicycle touring standards!)

You can save money by sharing a room. I’m willing to take on a room-mate, as long as you don’t snore! Let me know if this interests you.

It looks like there won’t be enough people to get group discounts on anything, so I’ll leave it to you to take care of your own plane tickets and bikes.

If you bring your own bike, we will have a van so you can carry it back to Rome at the end of the tour. I’m planning to either rent a bike there or buy a cheap one at the Roman flea market, Porta Portese. I’ll help you with this, if it’s what you prefer.

That’s it for now. Keep in touch, and I’ll see you in Italy!

One of the best parts of biking in the rain is the looks you get, and the conversations it inspires. When you’re biking in foul weather, especially in a place like LA where foul weather is rare, people take notice. It gives you a chance to change their minds.

While you’re out there pedaling through Valhalla, breathing free air and attacking the most menacing hills, the mortal masses are growing dull and weak behind electronic screens. Entire generations are hyperinsulated from the real world, and we’re paying the price:

Last year’s economic meltdown was caused by a potent mix of greed and laziness, the mindset that easy money should be a given, the bovine mentality that comfort is the norm and serious effort is unnecessary.

The purely physical aspects of life have become so easy for most of us that it’s easy to get lost in this mindset, easy to lose touch with reality, almost impossible to do anything as our resources and freedoms slip away.

At the same time, the few people who stay active and engaged with the world are beating the trend and thriving. The courageous heroes who squarely face the challenges that life throws at them, or who seek out challenges on their own, these are the people who continue to grow and succeed.

If you’re a regular bike commuter, I suspect you have a distinct advantage in your social and economic life, in addition to better health. And whenever you ride, you’re a beacon to all the wandering souls behind glass panes, a reminder of the independence, resourcefulness, and work ethic that made this country great.

When it’s raining cats and dogs, especially in a place like Los Angeles where it rarely rains very hard for very long, the weather separates the heroes from the common folk. If you ride boldly and blatantly where others fear to tread, you’re forcing the world to wake up and take notice.

You have a choice to make. We’re on the cusp of human evolution, but it’s different this time. We’re not going to be naturally selected by a meteor or some other environmental catastrophe. We’re going to choose our own fate.

So get on your bike, especially when the storms are raging all around you.

You don’t realize it, but your bottom bracket holds the future of America, and maybe of all humanity.

If you’re commuting by bike and you live anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, you’re going to ride your bike at night at some point. In my younger days (and even now, truth be told), I used to party with my bike and ride home.*

This is just to say I’ve bought and used a lot of bike lights over the years. I have my favorites, and I might make some recommendations in a future post. But for now, I’m frustrated by a problem that seems to happen across the board, with every kind of bike light I’ve ever used.

Usually the mounting wears out or breaks long before the light does. So you end up with a perfect light that you can’t attach to your bicycle.

Sure, you can always figure something out with bungi cords, rubber bands and duct tape, but all of those things lead to new problems later on. As a result, I have a drawer full of flashlights that are simply retired bike lights.

My latest solution is the head lamps that you find at camping stores. It’s bright, it automatically points wherever I look, but it’s uncomfortable and I feel like I’m cheating somehow. Plus, this doesn’t fill the need for a flashing rear light device.

I know there has to be a better way, and that’s where you come in.

If you like to tinker, and you could patent some kind of universal bike light mount, you may be in a business. If your device is simple, durable, and lightweight, you’re going to be a millionaire. If this sounds like you, please get on it! I won’t ask for any credit or compensation. I’ll be your first customer!

*Yes, I almost killed myself a few times while biking under the influence, but at least I wouldn’t have killed anybody else. Don’t ever try to drive, ride, or operate any vehicle–bike, motorcycle, steamroller, skateboard, pogo stick, burro, or jet ski–when your cognitive processes are compromised. If you’re going to abuse a substance, let it be coffee!

I noticed something interesting about my mom. When I was growing up she always had arthritis, tendonitis, and all kinds of aches and pains in her arms and shoulders.

That’s probably what you’d expect for a single mom with a job that involved hours of sitting and typing. At one point it got so bad that she had to install voice-activated software on her computer. But when she retired a couple of years ago she stumbled upon a cure for chronic pain.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to buy anything or click on a special link or change your religion. I’ll tell you exactly what happened, and how it relates to riding a bike.

About a million years ago when I did my first bike tour up the Pacific coast from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz, I tried to be Superman and I rode up the steep and rolling hills around San Luis Obispo in the highest gear I could handle. By the end of the day all the cartilage in my knees had turned to liquid. My bones ached and my kneecaps were floating in wet, floppy sacks the size of grapefruits.

Oh, to be young again! The next morning a part of me was thinking, “I sh0uld probably take it easy today” but mostly I just wanted to get on the road and keep moving. It hurt, but I was excited about being on the road.

A few miles up past the Hearst castle, I stopped on the beach and saw what looked like a big stack of driftwood-but it was moving. I got closer and realized it was a bunch of sea lions, all piled together and resting in the sand.

This was so exciting I laughed out loud–and then something happened that I can’t explain. It was like someone hit the deflate button in my knee joints. The swelling went away, as if the fluid was leaving through an invisible drain, and ten seconds later the soggy grapefruits had turned into tight, healthy knees.

For years after that, I had this theory that when you’re really happy and excited about something, then pain and injury become irrelevant–and vanish on their own.

This seems like my mom’s situation. Years of sitting in uncomfortable chairs, working her fingers on the keyboard, led to pain and suffering. But then something happened. She started knitting blankets and toys for her grandchildren.

Then when the economy tanked and took her retirement account with it, she went back to work like so many people are doing. She got a job in a shop that sells handmade gifts, and she started knitting hats and stuffed animals to sell in the shop as well.

My mom gets really creative with her knitting, and her stuff moved quickly. She got requests for more, and now she takes orders, sells at craft fairs, and basically–if you didn’t get this already–she’s spending most of her time sitting in a chair, working her fingers.

But she never complains about arthritis.

So how does this relate to biking? Well first of all, passion and joy and excitement are natural sources of vitality, energy and healing power.

This is why I suspect that riding on a bike trail, and best of all bike touring (or even just exploring your county for a day) will get you in much better shape than riding on a stationary bike in a gym. If bike commuting puts some fun and adventure into your day, going to work will be far less stressful.

In this blog, I’m always talking about getting around on your own power. But this goes a little bit deeper. By tapping into your emotional power, you can improve every aspect of your life.

It’s true I want to lead a kick-ass, life-changing bike tour next spring so I can charge money for the same service in the future. It’s true that I’m going to publish a guide-book with some of the best-kept secrets about bike touring in southern Italy.

But not everybody likes to read, and a lot of you probably won’t travel with me–whether it’s a schedule conflict or my smelly feet.

So here’s another option for you. I’ve put up the full route on a squidoo lens. You’ll get a basic outline of where I go, along with a few brief notes about some of the cool things to see and do while you’re biking the Appian Way. You can dig up the maps yourself, get some relevant books from Amazon, or even shoot me an email if you’ve got a legitimate question.

Here’s the link:

http://www.squidoo.com/bikeappia

By the way, if you’re not already familiar with Squidoo, you should check out my lens just to see what it’s all about. Pretty soon you’ll be posting your own pictures and stories of your bike rides and bike touring adventures. You might even make some money. (I’ve already got $1.40 in pending earnings. That’s almost enough to buy a cappuccino when I get to  Rome!)

If you’re reading this, some part of you wants to be stronger, faster, to travel, to be free. Don’t limit yourself. There’s more than one way to ride to Brindisi, and if that’s not where you want to be, you have as many challenges and adventures awaiting you as there are stars in the sky and dreams in your heart.

It was pouring rain in Los Angeles today, and I was skidding all over the place as I weaved my bike around drivers who aren’t used to driving in the rain.

But in this case, the destination was more important than the journey. I was heading for Griffith Park with two goal in mind:

1. To stop procrastinating and begin doing hill sprints–as I had told myself I would do six months ago.

2. To practice taijutsu–another promise I made to myself.

Maybe there was a little bit of the macho thing going on, riding out in the rain to do strenuous exercise and crazy martial arts stuff in the mud. But even if it had been sunny, I would have done it.

We’re not in this world to sit like rocks, and slowly erode in the weather. We’re here to rise and grow and always seek greater heights.

As the drizzle streamed down my face, I launched myself at the top of the first hill, sprinting full on, trying to get up there as fast as humanly possible. Finding the limits, and pushing beyond them. Flinging past gravity, mud, exhaustion–any obstacle that dares to say, “This is all you are. You can go no further.”

Riding a bike is the same battle, in slow motion. Every time you use your own power, you expand that power. And here you are. We are extraordinary human beings, and we don’t do ourselves justice if we stay inside our comfort zones all the time. You can do something extraordinary today. Right now.

That’s why I ride.

When the ancient Romans built the via Appia and other roads, they marked the way with milestones. The milestones usually showed the distance from the nearest large city, so you could look at one and know, for example, that the Appian Way ran right at this spot, and it was 17 miles to Benevento.

The trouble is, we don’t know exactly where each of these milestones stood. Throughout the centuries, collectors and even well-meaning archaeologists moved the milestones and put them in museums, gardens, piazzas and palaces.

That’s why nobody really knows with 100% certainty exactly where the via Appia really went.  We do have a fairly good idea for most of it. On my own bike trips in southern Italy I try to strike a balance between following the known original route and having a scenic, safe, and interesting bike ride.

But now we know a little more.

Yesterday, a southern Italian newspaper, the Corriere del Mezzogiorno, reported the discovery of a milestone on the ancient via Traiana. Here’s a quick history lesson on what this means:

Once you get past Benevento, you’re in unknown territory for a lot of the Appian way. This is always the most confusing (and fun!) part of every bike tour, and things weren’t much different in ancient Roman times. The via Appia was twisted and difficult after Benevento. It winded over mountains and was sometimes little more than a few cuttings on the rocks.

In 109 AD, the emperor Trajan built an alternate route, the Trajan Way–or via Traiana in Italian. This route starts in Benevento and follows the coast of the Adriatic sea to Brindisi. It’s longer in the number of miles, but was easier to follow. I haven’t biked the via Traiana yet (please leave a comment if you have!), but I’ve been to a lot of the towns it passes through. Highly recommended.

Anyway, the via Traiana poses a lot of the same challenges as far as knowing exactly where it went. This latest milestone dug up is a fantastic piece to the puzzle, one of the very few milestones for which we know the exact location and orientation.

You never know what you’ll dig up.

If you’d like to bike the Appian way with me next spring, leave a comment below and I’ll give you the details, which will be posted soon.

About a million years ago when I was a tour guide out of Rome, there was an 85-year-old man named Doug in the group that I was leading around Europe. Doug always seemed to disappear whenever we went into a museum or started a tour.

I quickly learned where to find him. He would inevitably be sitting at an outdoor table at a nearby cafe, sipping a pint from a big glass mug. He’d grin at you from underneath the bill of his Oakland A’s baseball cap and say, “I decided to just sit down and have myself a beer.”

This man fought in the Second World War. He worked grain elevators, assembly lines, and forklifts. I can’t ever really know what was going on in his head, but I would imagine that sitting casually, drinking a beer outside the Louvre, the Colosseum, the Ponte Vecchio or the Acropolis must have really felt like he’d finally arrived, after a long life of struggle.

Or maybe there was even more to it than that.

A few years back there was a guy on YouTube who traveled all over the world and filmed himself dancing in front of famous landmarks and in exotic settings. That was his way of sealing the experience, saying “I’m here.” And when you thing about it, we have something like that when we travel.

Dean Karnazes, who once ran 50 miles in 50 days, hints at this in his book. He sees a beautiful vista in Hawaii, Costa Rica, or wherever and he just has to run to feel one with the place, to grok it.

We take the picture, buy the souvenir, but usually there’s something deeper and more personal, even if it’s simple. I go to a new place and try the local coffee and dessert, such as it is. One of my friends lights up a small pipe with a special green herb burning inside. Doug sits down and has a beer.

This is another benefit of biking that you don’t usually hear about. It’s a ritual that gives you an intimate connection with the places you ride. In the short time I’ve lived in LA, I’ve learned my way around better than many people who have been here all their lives.

Now you have a chance to experience Italy in a way that most tourists never get to do, not even Doug. I’m retracing the Appian Way next spring, and I’m looking for companions. This is a tour of rural, heartland Italy, and you’ll get to know her in your heart, your legs and your knees.

Crossing the land on your own power (as very few people have done since the centurions), you’ll feel every gust of air and every curve and contour of the road. You’ll eat the food that was grown, raised, or caught on Italian soil. Make friends with the locals who can sometimes trace their ancestry to pre-Roman times.

Leave a comment if you want to come along, or shoot me an email: jacob {at} bicyclefreedom.com. (You know where to put the @ symbol).

This isn’t exactly about getting around on a bike, and it’s only connected to riding a bike in Italy by a stretch of the imagination.

But there is a lot of urban sprawl, even in Italy (especially in Rome!)  and there were days of biking the Appian way where all I saw was a bunch of run-down homes and industrial stuff along a lonely road through the Italian countryside

That’s why this documentary on urban sprawl is relevant. I’m hoping for a future time when enough people are willing to ride their bikes as their primary transportation, there’s good public transportation in place, and cities become communities where people want to live, instead of the wasteland that so many of them are now (especially LA!).

So if you’re interested in biking as a way of transforming the world, you may want to check this out.