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  • 标题:ILL-TIMED ACCIDENT WON'T DETER VERD FROM CYCLING GOAL
  • 作者:Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
  • 期刊名称:Spokesman Review, The (Spokane)
  • 出版年度:1996
  • 卷号:May 3, 1996
  • 出版社:Cowles Publishing Co.

ILL-TIMED ACCIDENT WON'T DETER VERD FROM CYCLING GOAL

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review

"It's good to be back home," said John Verd, "but this isn't quite the way I'd planned it."

With a cast to his thigh, the bicyclist is back in Spokane, licking his wounds after a truck smashed his leg, as well as his dreams to pedal around the world.

Much of the story was told in Tuesday's paper. But having pedaled 7,500 miles since he left Spokane last summer, Verd hasn't given up hope for completing the dream trip.

"The way I'm thinking now, I'd like to work for a year or so and save enough money to go back to Italy and pick up where I left off," he said this week.

Getting run over by a truck in Florence is a major part of the first leg of his abbreviated adventure, which crossed the United States, through Portugal, Spain, France and part of Italy. But Verd accumulated a wealth of insights that might intrigue adventure cyclists. For example:

"If you don't mind hill work, the scenery on the Mediterranean coast of Spain is fantastic, with palm trees, views of both the ocean and the mountainside, incredible wildflowers and more open spaces than you'd think. Some places in northern Spain resembled Montana. Roads are narrow, but there's lots of cyclists. Motorists seem to be adapted to them."

Services were far between in the French countryside, forcing Verd to carry up to seven liters of water. "Restrooms and even pay phones are hard to find. You pay for everything here."

Peanuts were Verd's international staple, but in France he ate figs: "They're widely available and pretty cheap. I'm also eating vast amounts of pasta and garlic. I even bought a garlic press, one of my few splurges."

Verd succumbed to the urge for a Big Mac only three times while in Europe: "They cost three times as much as they do in the United States. A cup of coffee is $2.50. But I can get a glass of wine for $1."

Perhaps his greatest insight into foreign countries came after his accident.

"Put it this way," he said, "I'm not going to be an advocate of social medicine.

"It wasn't so bad waiting for a long, long time in the emergency room with no pain medication. But then I find out there's no crutches or wheelchairs. I finally get a clerk to help me to the bathroom because there's no nurses around. There's no lid on the toilet, no soap in the dispenser and no toilet paper.

"I was wearing a scarf when I went into the hospital, but not when I came out."

On the right side: Local bicycle activists are applauding a Spokane police officer who wrote a $140 ticket to a woman cyclist last weekend for pedaling on the wrong side of the road. Ironically, the woman was in a fund-raising ride for local Rotary groups, which underwrite bicycle safety programs.

"The ride instructions clearly tell bikers to stay to the right," said Margaret Watson. "But the woman was on the left riding toward traffic. When a bicycle comes to an intersection, cars aren't looking there. The lady was struck by a car.

"We're glad she wasn't seriously hurt, but we're happy to see the police take the violation seriously."

Elk blues: Hear the latest on a long-range investigation into the decline of elk in the Blue Mountains at a program featuring state research biologist Woody Myers.

The free program begins at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council, 6116 N. Market.

Smear job: Trout fishermen often look to newspapers for tips on when the fish are biting. Another harbinger is your vehicle's windshield.

When bugs are hatching, fish are feeding.

One angler I know from Island Park, Idaho, carries his fly rod in his rig all spring and summer. Every year, on some unpredictable day, his windshield will be smeared nearly opaque with green drake mayfly goo as he crosses one bridge over the Henrys Fork of the Snake River.

Incidentally, a biologist tells me that the average car traveling from Spokane to Seattle could collect more than 200 species of insects on its windshield.

Identifying them is a little tricky, though.

Copyright 1996 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

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