My trip to Italy this past summer began in the Alps with lightning and rain on the early morning train moving south. Three months later, I flew from Rome heading home, avoiding the summer's first heat wave.

In between those weather phenomena was a wonderful experience of creative, low cost travel. I combined bicycle riding/camping with strategic use of train and bus. Being a mural artist, I found several opportunities for painting. The have brush will travel on bicycle mode of adventure is perfect for me.

La Costa Amalfitana, The Amalfi Coast, was my first destination, 75 kilometers of magnificent limestone cliffs, colorful towns carved into steep slopes overlooking a cobalt blue sea. It is best seen from a bicycle.

My travel had no precise timetable. Just as well because after only a half day of biking, I found my first painting opportunity. Praiano a mare is a small cluster of cafes and pensiones nestled behind a narrow cobble beach with 75 meter cliffs rising up all around. I loved the view from my balcony, the local characters, la moda of the tourists and the stray beach cats scrambling for sea food leftovers.

It was two weeks of making friends, local excursions on land and water, learning local history, moon watching and gaining five pounds.

Leaving was not easy. Neither was much of the bike riding I was heading for. The scenery going south along the coast from Salerno can be breathtaking. So can the hills. Several days i said to myself, I cannot continue like this. But hanging a Yucatan Hammock under a 200 year old olive tree with kilometers of beautiful coastline fading off into the twilight far below and a panier full of bread, fruit, veges and cheese were abundant reasons to keep going.

After a time, I did end up mixing bike riding with carefully planned use of bus and train. Certain infrequent trains are designated as bike friendly. I soon learned to be proactive; put the bike on the train and don't ask questions. A good scolding from the conductore was well worth the convenience and the opportunity to make fun excuses in Italian that invariably brought favorable results and at times some good laughs.

Nearly two weeks south and west of the Amalfi Coast, I arrived in Sicilia and then to Avola, a small town on the south east coast. This was a sort of pilgrimage for me. The first mural I had ever painted 15 years earlier was in Avola. The mural was no longer visible but I did find my vegetarian friend Vincenzo and was invited to paint a new mural.

This idea was accepted. Two weeks later there was a trompe l'oeil painting along the street with a political message, two planet earths to choose from. One blue green and alive, the other yellow and overheated, a past tense of Eden. The illusion of steps and depth suggested to people a choice, what kind of world would they prefer?

Vincenzo and I made excursions with friends or with his motorini, baked several square feet of pizza for a beach party and talked late into the night about the better world we both wanted to see.

After two weeks and another few pounds gained, I left on the train with the bike. I was finding Sicilia a bit too dry and densely populated for enjoyable biking and camping. I did visit several wonderful Greek ruins at Siracusa, Camarina and Agrigento before my urban bike adventures in Palermo.

So I was warned about Palermo. Be alert and keep your hands on your property. My memories are more of giant tropical fig trees with buttress trunks like pillars supporting huge lateral branches, beautiful parks, historical places and the intimacy of cruising narrow twisting Middle Ages vintage streets that only bikes can provide. Biking in Palermo is great fun! You just have to bike like the Italians drive.

After staying four days in Palermo I left on a train with the bike for Trapani and the ferry that would take me to Cagliari, Sardegna.

Sardegna greeted me in a friendly way. I had a forty mile per hour tail wind, came upon one of the very few bike paths of the trip, a loaded fig tree and a place to put up my hammock for the night with a postcard view of a gorgeous beach.

Sardegna is considerably more inviting for bike travel. It has a lower population density and is greener than Sicilia. The Island is hilly but with forethought, manageable, for the most part. Unofficial campsites are easier to come by, especially with a hammock.

I biked and swooned over the landscape for eight days before arriving in Cala Ganone, a sunny seaside resort town of exceptional geographical endowment. There is a 45 kilometer coastline beginning south of town with no roads and uninhabited, a truly remarkable circumstance, perhaps unique on the European side of the Mediterranean. The coast is precipitous, inland rugged.

The day arriving to Cala Ganone included two major descents, one dropping some 2000 feet over twelve kilometers, the second about 1000 feet over six kilometers of switch backs through a forest of low oak trees. Both descents included stunning landscapes of rocky limestone mountains and deep gorges.

Cala Ganone would be my final stay in Italy aside from leaving for Oregon.

More painting awaited, one location in a four star campground's restaurant and later at Dive Center L'Argonauta, just across the street. from the campground.

Again, i stayed in an idyllic, beautiful setting. There was warm hospitality and fun places to hang my hammock. I found a couple of local out of town roads great for an evening bike ride. One south above the beach, the other a dead end gravel road hundreds of feet above the Med with towering peaks above. I experienced rapture numerous times on both roads.

One day's all day excursion was taking the bike on a bus to forty kilometer distant Orgosolo, a hillside town known for dozens of political wall murals painted all along the main streets.

One message translates "You can cut down the last tree, catch the last fish and pave the last bit of land but for a fact, there is no way you can eat money."

Returning to Cala Ganone, mostly down hill with no heavy pack was a joy. I visited a remarkable spring, saw an ancient dolman, met the very informative custodian of a roadside warm spring and scorched my breaks for the final descent to the dive center. The day was perfect with the bike.

I miss the cave filled shoreline, evening bike rides, underwater adventures, stories of life and love and nighttime promenades by the beach. My leaving day arrived, I loaded my bike on the bus just as the summer's first heat wave was expected. My return to Oregon had begun.

For me, an unstructured travel with a bike is the optimal way to experience a foreign country. I have biked in Austria, Greece and France with similar enjoyment. Bicycle riding allows time to think and reflect, to tune in more closely to and interact with the environment, both physical and cultural. We learn who we are by interacting with unfamiliar circumstances, at times a challenge, always creative. I look forward to the next curve in the road.