For lunch the bus disgorges us at the sort of place that is really kind of geared for the disgorgement of busses but they are still kind of arrogant about it.

In the back they've got fifteen things going and they can pull a haunch of something off for you and maybe the beef -- its finished.

Whatever. Its lunch time, mothafucka and if you want to bust through this time zone construct you've got built up in your head you'd better eat hearty.

Haven't really had a true meal since we started this adventure 20 hours ago, just crap and snacks since then. High fat, high carbo junk that burned up somewhere over southern France.

Get the pizzocheri -- its the local thing. Heavy, paste-like noodles with some sort of ground roughage inside. Bulk cheese, some melted, some intact. Equally colored jewels of tiny potatoes.

Good eats, get some insulation on.

Dennis and I are left with the Unaffiliated, those not from LA or Reno nor PHX. Riffraff traveler sort.

I grab a table as good as any other.

The mysterious Eastern euros sit with us and are kind of rude in a way not to be expressed by other people who share your nation of residence. Our other companion is this guy Wayne.

Wayne looks like he spends a fair amount of time out in the sun. When you find out he used to be a rancher and worked down at Aerojet and did a lot of other weird shit you are not surprised.

Wayne is one of those guys you see backpacking across Tuscany by way of bike, cruising under load.

He did this not so many years ago that he wouldn't be an old man even back then. Probably just as leathery.

He has a conspiratorial sense about him, and if so then its this:

Wayne is traveler par excellence. For me, he's the group's good luck gnome. Wayne doesn't ski. He's probably not even going to go to the sauna.

He is the ultimate ski widow and will be having his own adventure coming along to S. Moritz and a number of other places where its easier to let someone else do the worrying.

There he just goes hiking and explores neat stuff...

When I run into him later in the week he's waiting for the Internet cafe and the one workstation with the American keyboard. Bormio, like any good resort town anywhere on the planet, knows how to milk the tourists.

We chat.

Of anyone on this trip, I am envious most of Wayne. I wish I had two weeks, one after to go poke around the ruins just outside of town, easily accessible by way of Perego bus. Go see that church all isolated up on the hill. See a dozen of them, in fact.

He's dressed like a successful world explorer, layers and pockets. Material that never needs cleaning, resists fire and is indestructible in all conditions short of shark attack and children under three.

"Oh yeah", he says. "You should go check out that church," -- and its the one just down the way that I had known was a church -- "and the other one."

Well, the other one was busy and rather haughtily so but the nice people at the flower shop still showed me how to get in. Nobody there wants you to fail in whatever the hell it was you were trying to do, even if you're an ass. Nicest folks that way.

But wow. That's some cool stuff to have in the middle of a little town.

Wonder what else there was around there, where else still run bells at the end of the day. End of the day, time to get down while you can still mostly see town. Ding dong.

I would not see Wayne again until the end of the trip.

Sat

*

Sun

*

Mon

*

Tue

*

Wed

*

Thu

*

Fri

*

Sat

*

Sun