Off to Korinthos for the Hellas Rally!!!
After wondering around the pit I found Jim and Deb pretty quickly. (His rig kind of stands out) I knew once I found Lydon, that I would find Jim. Since Jim spent a long time at Lydon’s place during the Covid lockdown of the UE.
When I booked my trip and rentals, I picked an apt. that was just across the ancient Corinth Canal. It would have been a five minute walk to the Bivouac but they had to move it to another site. It ended up being a 10 min car drive. Still not too bad. The apt that I rented was just awesome.
It was just a 2 min walk to the canal. I had a relaxing stroll to the beach every night. The views and sunsets were amazing. The apt was really large, had a great deck area that over looked a nice field that had goat in it a few nights. There were lemon, orange, and olive trees. It was really nice.
Since this Rally had a stationary Bivouac there wasn’t driving to new places each day. It was nice that since I wasn’t Jim only support during this rally, I was able to sleep in every morning. I would go explore during the day, I would head to the Bivouac for the evenings. So I could hear about the day from him and other riders. More quality time than the am when they’re all tense and wound up for the day. Not to mention much more fun.
The first day I took Deb into Korinthos so she could do laundry. Not an exciting day, but I was actually rather tired. I think I was really worried about driving around Athens and navigating to the Bivouac. It turns out that I was worried about nothing, it was actually pretty easy, thanks to google maps. Also most of the road signs are in Greek and Romanized/english letters.
There were a few nice things so see in Korinthos.
The next day was the prologue, it was a short day just getting everyone used to how the roadbooks were going to be for this rally, as each organizer lays the books out slightly different.
I had dinner with Jim and Deb, I was then off to my apt for the night. I wanted to wander around and walk on the beach for the night.
The next day I was off to see some of the touristy areas around the Peloponnese area of Greece. In researching my trip I read that it wasn’t a huge touristy area, but it should be as there are many things to see, it a better representation of Greece than just the islands that most people go to.
I found a number of things that I really wanted to see, there were a number of things that were just a short drive away.
Now after spending the entire day with Deb, I needed a break the next day. She was rather, obnoxious in her behavior with taking my phone constantly so she could follow Jim performance with live time tracking. Now, I understand wanting to watch, but it was my phone. It was burning up my data for the day, it was killing my battery, she also kept messing up the google maps so that we got off track for where we were heading a number of times. I don’t mind that so much, but it wasn’t very polite behaviour. I used my phone for all of my pictures, it was rather rude that I had to keep asking her to give it back at places so that I could take pictures.
I spent day three on the beach in Loutraki. It was hot but the water really nice to walk around in. I spent a few hours there reading.
At this point in the Rally Jim was doing GREAT! He was in the top two of his classes and the top twenty overall out of 269 riders.
There were a few issues with the SxS in the rally. They had one catch fire each day, resulting in some serious injuries. This made the organizers cancel the third day of the rally. We had a great idea of going to a spa for that day, but didn’t. Instead we ended up hanging out in the bivouac waiting for bikes to get teched. It was really hot this day, so I decided to take a drive up to the top of one of the mountains to a monastery. I just asked google for things to go see. It was a great choice.
