Two M's, Modena and Mantova

Italy had made it easy for us to choose our base camp spot, as the only camping place open (at least according to several days surfing in the internet) and located reasonably near the tracks was in Modena. Apparently it's off-season also here, as we have the whole place to our selves! The owner visits the site once in a while, but mainly we need to use our key card to get in and out from the gate. Have to admit that it's lot of easier then our sluggish manual gate and rusty padlock in Alhama.. We also have our own pet chicken wandering around the plot in exchange for dogs.

As you probably have noticed, we couldn't live without internet, so visiting Vodafone was one of the obligatory tasks. You could say, it was quite multilingual process.. As entering the shop, the rider first optimisticly tried english. The response for that was only head shaking. Well, next he tried spanish, and that was received more positively. The older sales woman was able to communicate with it. Unfortunately, while the rider was getting his passport from the caravan, this lady was occupied by another customer. The younger one didn't speak spanish or english, but succested, that portuguese would be good. At this point the rider was not sure if he should laugh or cry. Fortunately one nice man at the end of the line announced that he could speak both italian and english, and volunteered to translate, so we got the connection after all.

On Tuesday it was time to visit the famous GP track of Mantova. The rider almost made an U-turn as we saw hundreds of camping trailers lined up beside the spot were the track was supposed to be. Luckily it turned out, that this was some weird USA style residential area. Despite of that, also the real pit was pretty crowded. At first the circuit felt really difficult; in constant stream of other riders the long grooves in curves and rutter faces of the jumps were a challenge. However, as the track got more familiar the riding started to proceed smoother. The fine sand was exactly what we were looking for after the dry and hard clay circuits of Spain.

On Wednesday our aim was to visit a smaller track near Modena, but as normal in these latitudes, it was closed though it was supposed to be open. We made a quick desision to return to Mantova even though it was a bit late for that. As an additional challenge, the rider had only completed couple of laps when the front tyre suddenly went flat. You can see all the action in the video below. Despite of the small rush we managed, for a change, to be back "at home" before sunset. Video of Mantova can be found in the link below.

http://vimeo.com/20854585