il biglietto e bloccato !

Sunny and warm start to the day, quick six sheared, stopped for water, sheared eight more and its time for lunch. All done and the kit is in the car. No superglue, no mishaps. Glad to be shearing under cover though, temperature must have been hot, so hot I was wearing shorts. Homemade tagliatelle for lunch, quick rest and we're back in the car\minibus and off to Cesena, Chris again driving, more places I've seen before, probably, and were on the autostrada. These have tolls, so you collect the ticket before you enter, then when you get off, there is a row of lanes, some manned some not. Trying to work out where to go after the toll booths, I suggested we use a middle one, there was a car in front, and when we stopped, so do a couple more behind us. The Italian in front was having a few problems, but eventually moved off, is she couldn't get it to work, what hope did we have! Yes, the ticket got stuck, it went part of the way in, too far to pull out again. Press the red button, first we had calm Italian, we kept saying "inglese" and then we had irate Italian. We know we had a biglietto but the machine ate it. The lady in the car behind tried to help, she knew some English and we knew some Italian, unfortunately not the same ones! Next comes man in uniform, very helpfully shouted more Italian to the man behind the speaker. "Where are you from ?" he asked, "Bristol" was about to come out when the look on his face stopped me. "Uno junctionione" was delivered instead. A charge of 50 cents was punched up, then it wouldn't take the five euro note, I was wondering how many cars would build up and was it the done thing to ram the barrier. Chris found 50 cents in his shorts (insert own joke about American rapper here), which was duly deposited and we were on our way. The shearing was completed with smooth efficiency and we only got lost once on the way back. We have seen a lot of San Marino, mainly by mistake