12000 and a snowstorm to boot!

Like most North American cities, Ottawa has its fair share of right-on coffee shops inhabited by goateed types banging away on Macintosh notebooks while sipping espresso. Even in the steamy environs of Bridgehead on Bank, Andrew Cameron stood out among the hippies and hipsters. Not because he was, easily, twice as tall as everyone else; but because when he emerged from the snowstorm, he was totally decked out in cycling gear: two Buffs topped by a helmet; a well-loved pair of lobster gloves; about four layers of different tops...and a big smile.

"Cycling in Ottawa in winter is like being able to go on a big mountain bike ride without getting muddy," Andrew laughed, and he would know. This past fall, Andrew had the opportunity to take part in the Tour D'Afrique (http://www.tourdeafrique.com), a twelve thousand, hundred-day-long cycling tour that cuts across the African continent, taking thirty-two cyclists across more than a dozen countries.

I'd found out about Andrew's trip through the Events board on Mountain Equipment Co-op's (http://www.mec.ca) website, and was interested in hearing more about what it's like to take part in such a long trip. Given that Andrew was a racer, not an organizer, of the Tour, most of the information that he could share with me had to do with what it's like to do something like this - useful to know what works and what can be done better.

Thanks, Andrew, for taking the time out to meet with me! And for those of you who'd like to know more about Andrew's trip, be sure to check out his blog at http://12000km.blogspot.com.

Ready to roll

Nine-forty-nine in the morning, and I have decided that I'm ready to go.

Not go to the gym, not go back to Canada, just GO and do the damn Trans-Iberian already.

The only thing that's missing is the time off. I have the maps. The GPS unit is on its way. The weather is nippy, but it's not impossible.

All I'd need is some time free, and I'd be ready to roll.

I WANT A (SUBSIDIZED) BIKE, TOO!!!!

For a couple of months now, the Spanish Traffic Directorate (DGT) has been offering grants of up to €1000 for 17 to 25-year-olds who want to get their drivers' licenses. While I'm certainly not anti-car (I had a gas-guzzling convertible once, too), it seems a little hypocritical to give money to drivers when the people who don't create pollution don't get squat - in spite of not creating more pollution or circulation problems.

So, too, do the nice people at the Plataforma Carril-Bici de Córdoba, who are calling the DGT out on this discrepancy. They're asking cyclists from all over Spain to download and fill out the PDF file on their website, reclaiming the fact that, no, we're not interested in grants to get us driving - but a bit of cash to get a new bicycle would be more than welcome!

Check it out at: http://www.platabicicordoba.org/bici-dgt.html.

Double Life

Winning a prize like the Salomon Women Will competition is fun, but it's a LOT of work. There are days when I feel really nervous about the fact that there are three and a half months left until we go on this trip; and at the same time, it feels like it'll never get here. Slowly but surely, however, it's getting there. I've started making reservations in youth hostels and campsites, and I've got the route worked out; I just need to make more phone calls, make more contacts, do more work than I've been doing...

The easiest thing will be getting on the bike and riding the route when it finally comes!!!

Dear Madam:

(From Rosa Urbión Izquierdo, General Director of Tourism, Junta de Castilla y León:)

Dear Madam:

We have received your letter, in which you talk about the difficulties in crossing National Highway 601 between the towns of Valdefuente and Puente Castro, in the province of León.

The Department of Tourism and Culture is responsible for tourist signage for municipalities of Castilla y León, as well as the Camino de Santiago, and the placement of signs on the town limits in the provinces of Burgos, Palencia and León.

Your letter makes reference to signage of highway, the responsibility of which falls under ther jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Works; as of this date, we will pass your observations onto them.

Thanking you for your interest in the promotion of tourism of this Community.

Warm regards,

Rosa Urbón

ººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº

(As-of-yet unsent response:)

Dear Director Urbón:

Thank you for your letter of the 25th of September, in which you make reference to my letter sent in August. As much as I appreciate your response, I am concerned that you did not make reference to the core issue of my letter: the danger that pilgrims face crossing that highway.

This is not an issue of signage. The issue is that this a very, very dangerous stretch of road to expect bikers, walkers and horseback riders to have to navigate. There is no way the Camino de Santiago should run right beside a four-lane highway. Nobody's arguing that the signage is good - it's the best of all the four communities where the Camino goes - but the problem is that it's extremely unsafe to walk those 350 metres. The entry into León is one of the low points of the Camino and it shouldn't have to be.

We look forward to hearing of future initiatives, on the part of the Junta de Castilla y León, to improve and re-route this very dangerous part of the Camino.

Patricia Dawn Severenuk
SPANISHCYCLEPATHS.COM

Finding Six Weeks

Six weeks of biking. The thought of getting six weeks away to do nothing but biking is....

...scary. It's quite one thing to have a dream, but quite another entirely to carry it out. After all, the nice thing about having a dream like this is that you don't have to be consistent: you can just let the dream go and let yourself be distracted whenever you want.

...worrisome. What am I going to do for money while I'm not working? How will the course coordinator react when she realizes that I need to get away for six weeks between Easter and May Day? Will I lose my job?

...problematic. What if I'm the only person who goes on this thing?

...exhausting. I'm getting pretty close to forty: will I be up to the demands, physically?

Oh my God, I WON!

Good Lord almighty!! I won the Salomon Women Will competition for Spain!

http://www.salomonwomenwill.com/sp/news/¡¡¡Enhorabuena-a-las-Ganadoras---.html

Good grief! When the hell am I going to get six weeks to cross the peninsula on a bike???

Apologies to the Community

One of the different things you learn about when you live in Spain is that apartment buildings aren't owned by individual people. The owners of the various flats collaborate in the running of the building and making decisions (what colour to paint the halls, who to pay to clean the common spaces....); since I rent, and I don't own, I don't have to get involved in the minutae of things associated with running the place.

Which is probably just as well, since I have just succeeded in doing a wee bit of damage to the common hallway. Here's the problem: I live on the fourth floor, no elevator, and the staircase that takes you down to the lobby (such as it is) is quite narrow. Narrow enough, even, that I've got to lift the bike by the chainstays and take it down the stairs in much the same manner that one would throw a Doberman Pinscher out of the house. This is not as easy as it sounds: Not only does Rocinante weigh about 22 lbs (lighter than a Doberman, given), the tires are really wide. Various points on the mint-green walls have now been smudged with pentagon-shaped marks... if the president of the community ever comes looking for tire prints, I'm done for. Not that she will. She's probably going to come looking for the person who dinged a two-inch wedge of plaster out of the wall on the 3rd floor landing.

Whoops.

THIS is going to be a problem - I can tell. I can tell that getting the bike in and out of the building's going to affect just how much I end up riding in the end....

What ever "MASS" it is... it's on tonight.

For those of you who are in Madrid this evening and would like to take part in the.... well, they don't call it Critical Mass here...it's the Bici-Crítica here....here are the details.

Riders taking part in the Crítica meet in front of the Palacio de Comunicaciones (the white, wedding-cake post office building) in the Plaza de Cibeles, at around 8:00. By 8:30, instructions are given to the riders about the route; they don't like distributing maps or giving anything graphic out because, under Spanish law, that would constitute the Crítica being an organized ride (requiring the organizers to get a permit.)

The ride usually takes about an hour and a half. Although you'll see others jumping reds and trying to keep the pack together, it's better to obey traffic rules - it doesn't mean that you're going to end up getting lost. And yes, in the best spirit of relaxed cycling everywhere, there's beer at the end of the ride.

If your Spanish is up for it, check out the Bici-Crítica's new webpage (which probably includes the biggest collection of cycling t-shirts in Spain):

http://bicicritica.ourproject.org/web/

A bit of shameless self-promotion....

Want to know what would motivate someone with a comfortable life to give up everything and move to Spain? The Toronto Star has been running features on Canadians who live abroad, so I decided to throw my bit in and see what they'd publish.

http://www.thestar.com/article/250864

I really DID do it with the intention of promoting the web site, but now that I think of it, it was a good way of letting friends in Toronto in on what I'm currently up to!

Jill, I'm about to abuse your hospitality.....!

Just got a message from my buddy Jill, who has probably spent the most interesting summer of anyone I know: she's spent most of July and August in Mallorca, learning how to be a helicopter pilot. Valencia's where she normally lives, and has asked, for the third time, when I'm going to visit her.

Three is the magic number. And you can take bikes on the train down to Valencia....

http://www.viasverdes-ffe.com/viasv_htm/vv_xurra.htm
http://www.viasverdes-ffe.com/viasv_htm/vv_ojosnegros1.htm

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have our cyclepath for the October 12th long weekend. Valencia and its greenways, it is, then!

I'm getting itchy feet

One of the great things about living in Madrid is that there's always a long weekend coming up in the not-too-distant future which allows you to plan a getaway. Luckily, I'm not working Fridays this fall - I'm solid Monday to Thursday and free after 6:30 on Thursdays. I'm still recovering from the Camino de Santiago. But there's still the call of the open road, especially since the weather has been so crappy this summer that, dollars to doughnuts, we're gonna have a great fall.

Hmm... Any suggestions on where to go from you folks out there? ;)

I feel like racking up trouble.

Just noticed that, in front of The Casa Encendida (http://www.lacasaencendida.com/LCE/lceCruce), the cultural centre where I do most of my online stuff and photography work, there are usually four or five bikes locked to the gates, to the shrivelled plane trees out front... Considering that the Casa Encendida includes the environment in the scope of the work it does....why aren't there bike racks out front?

Hmm. Perhaps the Cyclepath needs to get involved in some civil action...I don't understand why Spaniards don't want to ask for decent, safe bike racks to lock their bikes to.

I think this is going to be a challenge for next year - see how many bike racks I can get installed around the city.

And Cyclepath makes four...

I don't know why the thought of contacting the cycling club was so intimidating. Aside from the fact that it was the same club that Tour de France winner Alberto Contador was once a member of. Madrid has two main biking clubs, and this one appealed not just because it was so close to home: it also produces people who do reasonably well in competition.

So I did it; I wrote the Real Velo Club Portillo, asking them if they would consider taking on a total newbie who wasn't just experienced, but also suffering from, as they say in Spanish, being someone of the feminine condition. A seemingly nice guy named Sergio wrote back saying no problem you're more than welcome... the other three ladies in the club would welcome the company.

Huh?

I know I nearly failed math in 9th Grade, but....three gals out of a core of how many guys?

Are they cyclists? Sympathetic moms? Girlfriends who got roped into taking part in Sunday hammerfests and never got their names out of the database?

Oh well. What doesn't kill you... is ultimately a funny story to tell over drinks.

Planning for upcoming holidays

One of the disadvantages of not taking holidays at the same time as everyone else is that, at times, it's hard to resist the siren call of planning other holidays at the same time. This fall, we've got quite a number of long weekends coming up, so here are some thoughts about some getaways that I've been toying with:

Puente del Pilar (the weekend around October 12th): The original idea was to do a fundraising Tour of the Comunidad de Madrid, starting in Somosierra, right at the top, and take three days to ride to the bottom, at Estremera. It's still in the planning stages, but Moncho and I were thinking about how cool it would be to get a bunch of people together to ride and collect money ("Queremos cambio" / "We want change") for Descubre América, a charity Moncho's brother is involved in.
Length: Three days, about 120 km
Difficulty: Easy

....or there's always La Rioja. The middle two weeks of October mark the vendimia season, when the grapes are harvested - a bit of a nightmare for finding cheap accommodation, but what colour!

Puente de Todos los Santos (November 1st): Tough one, this one, since the beginning of November is when weather starts to get a bit dodgy. That said, there's always the possibility of doing the Ruta del Quijote, in Castilla-La Mancha. Southern Castile can get really hot during the summer, but if it hasn't rained, the dirt paths that constitute the 3,200-kilometre Ruta might make a good getaway.

Puente de la Constitución (December 6th and 8th): This is the tricky one, since it means having to travel while everyone else in the country is also taking a long weekend. Personally, I'd like to try doing the Ruta de los Nazaríes that links Córdoba with Granada. I'd mentioned doing it to some other people last year, but ended up going back to Canada to visit my folks instead...if the weather holds out, it could be a great getaway before having to head into the cold of Canada the week after!

All of which means that while I'm planning this, I'm not riding. But such is life!

Contador just can't get a break!

Just heard on the BBC that the Discovery Channel cycling team will be disbanding by the end of the year. This, in spite of the fact that Discovery took two of the three podium spots during the Tour and still has one of the strongest groups of pro cyclists anywhere.

I feel bad for Alberto Contador, most of all. Twenty-four years old, thrust into the limelight, every time Contador manages to get one step ahead of all the crap that's going on, he suffers a setback. He signed with Phonak...and spent months recovering from an aneurysm. He signed with Astana... and got pulled from the2006 Tour because of Operación Puerto. He signs with Discovery, manages to win the tour for them (with Levi Leipheimer taking third), and a month later, the team announces that it will cease to exist after this season because they can't find a sponsor.

If this kid ever finds a team that offers him stability and the chance to grow, he's going to mature into a great cyclist who will kick everybody's butt, half out of resentment, half out of talent.

Biking Singles, Part Two

I'm not usually shy about giving out my business card, but I wish I'd been a little smarter about it this time.

One of my friends, who I'll call A.OK, is quickly gaining fame as the marriage-hungry member of the group. She teaches ESL, and a couple of months ago, took on a student who needed to pass an English-language exam to get a job with the Banco de España. Turns out said student is a mountain biker, so she passed on a copy of my business card for the guy to look at, and thought that I might be interested in meeting this guy.

I went out with him last night. I had a quick, ninety-minute drink with him that I do not plan on repeating. Let me just say that whatever the opposite is of "spark", that's what happened. While I don't necessarily blame A.OK for what happened, I do wonder why people assume that if one person is a cyclist, that translates into being the friend of every other cyclist on the face of the planet.

Said guy is a mountain biking geek. I don't mountain bike for various reasons, but mostly because I don't like it. I do have lots of mountain biking acquaintances with whom this guy might want to go out. I offered to send him the names and numbers of people like that. But all through the 94 minutes of our encounter last night, I kept feeling like this guy was trying to turn me into a mountain biker. (And mountain bikers, please refrain from sending me all kinds of diatribes about how mountain biking is so much better than cycle touring. To each his/her own.) Yes, it would be nice to have people to go out with. But I'm leaning towards being a roadie. No amount of nagging or probing or offering me to lend me a €4000 Specialized will probably change that.

So this morning I wake up and check my e-mail and find that this guy has sent me no fewer than six different websites dedicated to mountain biking in Andalusia. L., if you're reading this, thank you for the links. But I'm really not interested in mountain biking; otherwise, I would own a mountain bike. And in spite of A.OK's best intentions, I really don't think that I'll be quite as profligate about giving out my business card to "some guy who's interested in cycling" again.

Rant over.

Where's Deezy? Ok, that kind of explains it...

A footnote to the Deezy-in-the-Tour posts: For the longest time it was beyond me why Dave Zabriskie, time-trialist extraordinare and the funniest cycling voice gone missing on the internet, did so poorly in the Tour de France. Given his strong showing in the Giro, I thought that CSC would have been willing to push DZ harder to get a better overall showing for the team. So when DZ flamed out for being over time on Day Eleven of the Tour - and spent a lot of time at the bottom of the listings, it was like, what the hell?

I just read that Deezy (whose contract with CSC expires at the end of this year) has signed up with Jonathan Vaughters' Slipstream/Chipotle team - the one which has vowed to spend wild amounts of money (more than half a million dollars every year) on testing. There's a cultural element to it - Slipstream is pretty much going to be made up of cyclists from Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking countries - but the emphasis on being clean is a huge thing, too.

Here's hoping that the higher standard set by Slipstream will spill over to the other teams participating in cycling. Cycling will survive the dpoing scandals, if only for the contrary element that goes against what all the talking heads are screaming about. Having a group of riders who purposely put themselves in a "clean from the start" position from the start. And let DZ kick some a** after all.

Welcome to León! Here's your COFFIN!

Generally speaking, the Camino de Santiago is pretty well marked. It's evident from the amount of maps, paint and signage that the various regional governments value the money that tourism brings in from the Camino de Santiago.

So it's a bit of a surprise to arrive very close to the lovely city of León, where the architecture is wonderful and the tapas are unforgettable, and find yourself in the middle of a gap in a four-lane highway, where pilgrims are expected to dodge four lanes of heavy traffic, only to end up in the gutter of the other side, which is full of broken glass and more than one dead cat.

After walking across that stretch, you then resume the regular Camino path - but I will be DAMNED if I can figure out why the hell the Junta de Castilla y León thinks that it's basically OK to get pilgrims - who may not be walking all that quickly, who may be tired or have low blood sugar, and require them to dodge traffic which can be going as fast as 80 km/h.

So being basically North American (and having a genetic disposition to cause trouble and get things changed), I decided to send a photo of the situation to the EL PAIS newspaper, who have started a "send your photos" section. And damned if they didn't print it. Now admittedly, I got the name of the town wrong (it should be Puente Castro, not Puente Fitero) but hopefully this should get things changed, because really, it's only a matter of time before someone gets killed here:

http://www.elpais.com/yoperiodista/articulo/Periodista/Espana_Leon/N601/peligro/peregrino/Santiago/trafico/trafico/Camino/peregrina/peligro/elpepuyop/20070729elpyop_1/Ies

If you've done the Camino, have found yourself caught in this intersection and want to make a bit of noise to decry the situation, the person to write to complain about the situation is:

María José Salgueiro Cortiñas
Consejera de Cultura y Turismo
JUNTA DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN
Avenida Monasterio Nuestra Señora del Prado, s/n
47071 Valladolid
ESPAÑA

Ms. Salgueiro has just taken the position over from Silvia Clemente who was a very nice woman, but not necessarily all that interested in developing initiatives regarding green tourism....

Cinderella rides a Trek

I know, I know. I really, really did want Dave Zabriskie to win the Tour, but I can't say that this year has been that much of a disappointment (come on, did you really think that anyone as anorexic as Michael Rasmussen or as banged up as Alexandre Vinokourov really had a chance of making it to Paris in one piece??)

I can't say that Alberto Contador has been that big a disappointment, though. I mean, what's not to like about the kid? Everybody loves a Cinderella story, and Contador is the kind of Cinderella who could actually inspire more people to get riding - in Spain, anyway. He's a nice guy who's been dating the same girl since before he went pro. He loves his mom and keeps pet birds and would've become a vet had he not gone pro. And in Madrid, everyone's holding their breath collectively, waiting to see if anything goes catastrophically wrong -- a blown tire that takes out the peloton, a fall, a (God forbid) positive drug test. Once he's on the podium and gets the trophy, Spaniards will go positively nuts and start honking their horns and going mad. But until then, everyone is waiting with baited breath, waiting to see if he tests positive (sad but true).

WE MADE THE MOVE

I love free tech. I love being able to have some consumer choice when it comes to free services (if you don't pay for it, does it still make you a consumer?) but after six months of fighting with the, um, other blog service, a decision was made at the highest levels of management within SPANISH CYCLEPATHS to move stuff over. So here we are, new clients of Blogger...

Over the next few days, I'll move the other entries over, so those of you who are new to the SPANISH CYCLEPATHS world can read some of the stories of the stuff we get up to. And with this new site, we'll be able to put up new photos and stuff, so stay tuned!

Dawn

Camino Take Two: Be it ever so humble....

I'm back. I'm psyched to be back. I don't know if I'm just not that good at being away from home, or if I do better when I travel with other people, or if it was maybe the really gross weather that Galicia was suffering from. The feeling of relief that I felt when the train pulled away and I knew that I was on the way home was like being dunked in a warm bath.

It's not that I don't like doing this job, writing about cycling destinations: to me, sitting on the bike and pedalling is like sitting zaizen, achieving a level of flow that I find is missing in the rest of my life. But the entire pilgrimage thing gets kind of lost when you realize that you're in the process of developing a very dysfunctional relationship with everyone else who's on the Camino. It's strange because you really don't mind seeing other people on the road, and it's fun to chat with others who are doing the Camino. As long as they're not barreling down slender paths on mountain bikes, six at a time...as long as their horses are not refertilizing paved surfaces in the rain. As long as they come two or three at at time -- not sixty of them getting up at one go at 4:30 in the morning.

And cycling is exhausting, too. Not taking care of what you eat, not getting enough sleep - it all takes a toll after a week or so. Having to do three mountain passes on a fully loaded touring bike... exhausting. Having to be up and going and riding by seven in the morning... exhausting.

I'm not sure how long I'll sleep in tomorrow morning, but as long as I can stay in my own bed, with my own sheets, no one snoring in the background, I think I'll do just fine.

Camino Take Two: Sahagún to Hospital de Órbigo

The rattling around the albergue starts early - about 6AM - and by 6:30 the majority of people staying in the refuge are up and moving, with the exception of the three guys sleeping in my area who have to stay in Sahagún since their bikes are locked in the shop until 10:00 AM. At 6:57 exactly, I push the bike out into the parking lot of the refuge/town hall/tourist office and, bleary-eyed, consult the map to find the nearest cup of coffee down the road, and head off.

I don't mind early-morning riding if I don't have to do it on a highway. Luckily, the section of the N120 highway that runs this close to Sahagun is essentially deserted, most of the traffic choosing to to use the A62 motorway instead. Five kilometres later, pilgrims are deflected off onto a secondary road - paved - which provides almost thirty kilometres of quiet bliss until they're forced, just after Mansilla de las Mulas, to dodge highway traffic until you get to León, at which point you face endless and pointless directions across the city (more on that later.) If you're not staying in León, it's almost a relief to get out of it and get back into the wide-open country and head westward, and watch the mountains come closer and closer.

I hadn't stayed in many of the private refuges on my previous Camino de Santiago attempts, so it was nice to stay in the professional, clean and very relaxed (if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms) (http://www.alberguesanmiguel.com/documents/96.html)
If you've hear nasty things about Camino refuges, that they're all dark and dirty, take a look at this video -- you'll be pleasantly surprised!

Camino Take Two: Castrojeriz to Sahagún

Flat.

Well, not griddle-flat, Kansas-flat, kitchen-counter flat, but flat enough that I know that I would never be interested in walking this part of the Camino de Santiago. There are hills, but they're like Eastern Ontario hills, barely 50 metres high and with inclines so gentle that even the kids romp up them on their little pink and red bikes.

The sky looks as if it could stretch on forever, which is good: it's when you start seeing the mountains ahead of you and to your left that you're reminded that, in a couple of days, you'll end up crossing two main mountain ranges. This is territory for going fast when you can, stopping off to see the churches and monuments that interest you, and not worrying about the ones that don't.

I love the plains, but I can understand why they drive the walkers insane. What must it be like, I wonder, to be out there, day after day, nothing but heat and wind and not being able to arrive in a town until ages after you first see it? What must it be like to walk endlessly, just clocking your progress by every town you pass and every monument you don't see? That's what's so great about biking the Camino: these flat roads become planes for practising Zen, just sitting on the seat of the bike and pedalling and not doing a whole hell of a lot else.

I'd already seen a lot of the monuments from the past time I was there, so there wasn't anything I particularly wanted to see, except for the churches in Frómista (got very disapproving looks from the church warden -- for wearing bike shorts? Never did figure it out) and Sahagún, where I stopped for the night. Sahagún made for a pleasant stopover. The municipal albergue has been built into the attic of the town museum (which is itself located in a reclaimed church) and has good, firm beds, a big kitchen, and lots of French pilgrims who don't seem all that interested in talking to pilgrims if they're not French.

Whatever. I end up spending a lot of time nosing around the Iglesia de San Tirso; I wanted to see San Lorenzo, but there was a funeral on at the time (surprising, the number of people who wear beach clothing and white high-heels to a funeral in Spain). And then a quiet night, just two or three lights broadcasting onto the ceiling of the church, the occasional sound of someone's sleeping bag rustling in their bed.

Camino Take Two: Burgos to Castrojeriz

The sun is intense, but not hot, as I pull away from the train station in Burgos. There's a slight breeze coming out of the west; the sky is filled with puffy clouds, making it look like the very beginning of the opening sequence of "The Simpsons". The fields, which were Irish-green, boggy and fertile at the end of April, have been toasted to a lovely blonde colour, and every so often, the silence of the Camino de Santiago gets broken by the sounds of combines taking in the wheat and leaving braids of hay as far as the eye can see.

I thought the trail would be full of people walking to Santiago, but that isn't the case: in the stretch between Burgos and Castrojeriz, I only meet a dozen walkers and a handful of cyclists. (I later find out that the numbers of pilgrims are down this year - fewer Spaniards are attempting or doing the Camino, and most Germans have decided that they'd rather do it in the spring.) Not that that's a hassle: Several times during the afternoon, I stop, get off the bike and just listen to the sound of distant combines, wind rustling the drying hay, and I become acutely aware of how silence is such a physical feeling - almost the same feeling as when you arrive in a new land and all you can feel is the pressure around your temples that comes from a noise you're not accustomed to.

The riding is generally smooth, except for the descent into Hornillos del Camino (which is always too washed out and too eroded to safely go down on two wheels.) The sun is suave, the wind just enough to keep sweat and bugs from being a problem. If it keeps up like this for a couple of days more, at least until I get to Astorga, then I'll be well on my way to forgetting all the crap that I had to endure at the end of April.

Cherry tomatoes and getting picked off by the cops!

THERE ARE TIMES when I think that the toughest thing about trips like this isn’t the acutal trip itself; it’s getting your butt out the door in the first place. It’s lugging your bike down the stairs as you try not to wake the neighbours, try not to smudge tire marks on the wall, get down to the street and not get paranoid that people are staring at you from their cars (which, let’s be honest, they probably are. Especially if you’re lugging yellow-and-black panniers that make you look like a Barcelona taxi.) And once you’re on and actually riding, then it’s not quite so bad. It’s just that the initial push to get yourself going really, really sucks.

************

I FORGOT the cherry tomatoes, the red pepper and the big bag of M&Ms in the fridge. Well, at least one thing won’t be green and fuzzy when I get back from Galicia.

************

ONE EMBARRASSING episode on the train between Ávila and Arévalo: I was sitting in my seat, minding my own business, when a young-ish looking couple, claiming to be members of the Policía Nacional, came up to the two tourists beside me and asked the couple for their passports.
Now, I should mention that nothing, nothing angers me more than people who try to screw tourists. It seems craven, at best, to rip people off when they’re making an honest effort to see and know a country, so I found the behaviour of this couple very, very strange. Both of them were in their early 20s; she wore hiking pants and a white t-shirt; he had long hair and an Adidas backpack. They spent about ten minutes going through his and her passports, and the whole time I kept wanting to shout over, in English, “Be careful – you don’t know for sure that they’re cops!”

Once they’d left, several of us went over to the couple and asked them if they were all right. The guy who was sitting behind me talked to the girl, who turned out to be from Bolivia, and asked her what had happened. I think he went to find the conductor to explain what happened. I told them that they should go right to the police station located within Valladolid’s Campo Grande station – all in all, everybody seemed to agree that the entire episode was more than a little weird.

Well, with a couple of strange people wandering around the train, I decided to give my seat up and go up to the front, where the bike was stored. Generally speaking, very few people want to get that close to a fully loaded touring bike, but at a moment like that, you never know. The couple came up to me about ten minutes later, and I gave them a very surprised look – not a dirty look, just more of a visual “Yyyesssssssss?” that had a clear undertone of: “Back off.” They decided not to approach me and went back to where they were sitting.

Five minutes later, the revisor (ticket collector) came up. I’d had enough.

“Excuse me, sir?” I said in Spanish. “I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this but there’s a couple of young people in the other car who are going around, claiming to be police officers and I thought you should be aware of the situation.”

The revisor looked at me kindly and said, “Don’t worry, they are cops.”

Excuse me?

“The police got word that some of the human-trafficking mafias were taking prostitutes all through Spain through the trains, so they put plainclothes police officers on board the trains to check suspicious couples.”

Oh.

[SFX: Deep blushing; mad scurrying under bike in embarrassment.]

I wonder what the Belgian-Bolivian couple thought of that when they talked to the cops in Valladolid?

Go Deezy!

After the last couple of years, admitting you're looking forward to The Tour de France is kind of like admitting you like the films of Fassbinder - only a select few know what the hell you're talking about, and even then, those who do know what you're talking about could very well consider you to be some kind of weird obsessive...and obsessive about something that could be worthy of scorn. Lots of drugs, f'instance. And lots of perceived lying about drugs.

But I keep hoping. I wasn't a Lance fan, so I can't say that I was angered one way or another when the French tried to stick EPO doping charges on him. Roberto Heras broke my heart when he got busted after the 2005 Vuelta; until recently, I had a picture of Heras riding in Vuelta 05, blood pouring from a knee-area gash and the doctor of the Liberty Seguros team trying to affix gauze and cotton to Heras's knees, even though they're both travelling at 40 km/h. Heras's face is the color of cookie dough in that shot, but he still went on to try his best. And for what?

Then Floyd. Being Canadian, I have a weakness for underdogs, especially those with a comically chippy sense of humour and an undercurrent of rage that gets things done. I want so much to believe that Floyd didn't do it. But I like Pereiro, too: I don't know who will technically end up winning Tour 06, but I do find it depressing that it's the day before the Tour 07 and the matter has still not been settled.

So that leaves David Zabriskie. I know that the easy way out is to give into dimestore cynicism, that I should just say screw it and ignore the whole damn Tour. But I can't. There's just something in me that wants to believe in the entire, beautiful Tour, every gutbusting minute of it. So this year it's Dave Zabriskie: great legs, brilliant time trial results, sense of humour like a producer from The Simpsons. Gotta cheer for someone. And boy, would I like to see DZ win it, clean and simple, and deny the French another winner.

Is it ethical to hit on your wrench?

Normally I don't like stopping by the shop on Saturday. It's not that I don't want to run into the owner - though that certainly is part of the equation - but because I know that HeyZeus is generally pretty busy with non-bike people on Saturdays - moms, people from the Chinese embassy, weekend warriors who haven't been on their Treks since Greg LeMond was riding the Tour.

"He's cute," says Candy, after I give HeyZeus his bottle of wine, a token of thanks for spending an hour on the bike, fixing it before setting out in La Rioja. "Is he single?"

TRANS-ANDALUZ: Day 9 - Down to Three, then One

(Photo: Claire climbing between Cantarranas and Vejer de la Frontera.)

We wake up in our respective tents at about eight-thirty in the morning, and boy, is it COLD. See-your-breath-through-the-sleeping-bag cold. Put-on-everything-you-own cold. Which means that we're going to get a nice blue sky, and that should mean that we'll get nice weather at the beach. But it also means that Claire half-froze to death last night, her shoulder's all kinked up and the idea of spending another couple of nights camping near the beach isn't particularly turning her on. At breakfast, she decides that she'd rather cut the trip short at Vejer de la Frontera and head down the Algeciras, where she can get the train back to Ronda. I feel bad - after all, she did leave home at 4AM to drive seven hours to get here - but at the same time, neither of us is going to pretend that the weather is going to suddenly turn splendid and allow us to spend the weekend basking in the sun on the beach.

We stop for sweets and quick phone calls in Alcalá de los Gazules proper, then head westward towards Benalup de Sidonia along a quiet secondary highway that's been repaved and tilts ever-so-slightly down, giving us the chance to blast ahead. And that's when the rear cassette goes - just as we're being passed by a group of fiftysomething Brits who are doing a road cycling training camp.

At first it's just a couple of gears, like what happens when you don't oil the cable enough. Then it's the four in the middle. By the time we get to the turnoff to Benalup, I'm down to three gears, nothing more, and even then, if I want to change gears, I have to lean over and pluck the chain over with my index finger. The good news: I'm only seven kilometres from the coast. The bad news: There are two climbs involved, both on roads with no shoulder and lots of traffic.

I bid Claire goodbye at the N340 turnoff; she rides down to the Barca de Vejer bar where, miraculously, she manages to grab a bus to Algeciras about ten minutes later. Then it's an hour of white-knuckling it across the highway (thanks to the traffic more than any inability to gear up and down) and up the coastal road, towards El Palmar. The sea is quiet and calm and, at about 15ºC, way the hell too cold to even think about swimming as we did last year.

So that's it. The trip is over. I made it. I pull into the campsite and Juan, the gardener, gives me a big wave hello and yells over, "Have you visited the cash machine yet?" (When we were here last year we got caught by a specific dearth of functioning ATMs, and the campsite at El Palmar didn't accept credit cards. It does now.) The cool, wet weather has decimated business at the campsite: where last year you couldn't pitch a tent for love or money, I can count on both hands the number of tents I see in the entire joint. Not good.

But, hey. I made it. I made it one piece, had some good stories to tell along the way, and know that I can do a long trip by myself. Not a bad feat for someone who's this close to forty!

TRANS-ANDALUZ: Day 8 - Gibraltar, HO!

Under the watchful eyes of a an elderly couple, Claire and I managed to get the stuff off the train in record time (having received a finger-wagging from the conductor NOT to hold the train up; this, in spite of the train leaving fifteen minutes late from Ronda station.) We got the bikes assembled, went to the bathroom, wheeled the bikes out of the Cortes de la Frontera station and took a long, long look up into the hills - stunted mountains, really, great slabs of limestone poking out of the hills at odd angles, and dotted yellow with lichen and broom, which was in bloom.

The secondary highway leading up into town was narrow, but it seemed like drivers were used to packed bikes slowly making their way up the hill: no one blasted by at stupid speeds. A short toot of the horn, a smile, sometimes a befuddled look - and from one woman driving a Range Rover with British plates, a round of applause.

Riding with cyclists who are better than I am makes me realize that I AM getting better, slowly but surely. Our ride takes us sixty-five kilometres across the southern end of the Parque Natural de los Alcorconales, and I only had to get off and push twice - not bad, considering that the entire day consisted of nearly 600 metres of accumulated climbing.

This is bike touring as it should be: good, resurfaced roads with lots of green hills on either side, lots of (not THAT high) mountain passes with scenic lookouts (perfect for picnics) and the occasional group of guys who have escaped from their wives to reclaim their youth, complete with litre bottles of beer and a couple of chunks of chorizo -- and a tent they readily admit they've never put up before.

We're heading towards the town of Alcalá de los Gazules, but there's a hitch: Claire didn't realize how cold it was going to be down here, and doesn't want to camp. I'm pretty sure that we're going to be S.O.L. trying to find anything that's not a campsite - and, sure enough, anything on the west side of the Iberian mountain system, where the weather is better, is booked solid.

At about 6pm we roll into Alcalá and hit the campsite, which, to be fair, looks about as appealing as a down-at-heels Florida trailer park where people have lived for so long that they can't be bothered to take care of the lots. Turns out that impression is not that far off the mark: the vast majority of people staying there have GBZ - Gibraltar plates. Gibraltar is only thirty miles down the road, and this is the weekend getaway for a lot of British troops stationed on the Rock, as well as for gibralteños with kids who want to get away on a regular basis.

We go to sleep with the lilting Andalusian Spanish which is interwoven with phrases I don't understand...and punctuated with the occasional statement right out of EastEnders or Beverley Hills 90210: Crikey! Whoamgod! Duuuude!

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Seven: Time to be TOURISTS!!

How did the idea of being a tourist get such a bad rap? Sometimes the only thing you can do is be a tourist, stop hiding your camera and just ogle in the experience of not being stuck in front of your computer. Claire makes it down to Ronda in a record six hours, and the afternoon is spent having a long, leisurely lunch in the Ronda Parador, before wandering around Ronda with the cameras and seeing how many megapixels we can cram onto the cameras.

The only disadvantage to travelling like this, shamelessly being tourists, is that we stick out like a pair of sore thumbs, especially when we went to a Semana Santa procession. One young cofrade looked at Claire and with his best Andalusian accent, made even more difficult to undertand thanks to having lost most of his baby teeth, asked her where she was from. "Inglaterra," she said. "¿Y tú?"

The preschooler looked at Claire, then looked at his mother and lisped, "I don't understand what she said!"

There are times when all you can do is embrace your foreign-ness and be thankful you're on the OTHER side of the camera!

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Six: Up, Up and Away (Horizontally)

There's something wonderfully sinful about waking up in a suite for six - by yourself - and realizing that you don't have anything going on except a day of biking. Andrés had a pretty crazy day, trying to organize lunch for four hundred hungry bikers who were taking part in the Encuentros Cicloturísticas organized by a biking group in Málaga.

Not wanting to get in his hair, I made myself scarce somewhat early. Or tried to. Andrés was off doing his stuff while I met up with, and coffee with, the newly renovated Juan Ramón Toro, the manager and owner of the Coripe Station Restaurant/Bed and Breakfast, who has been extremely successful at remaking his life: in addition to running the station, he has successfully lost at least eighty kilos - sixty in the form of an ex-wife. Success suits him; in spite of working twenty-eight hours a day (his estimate), he looks happier and healthier than when I first met him three years ago. After a couple of cups of coffee (and some flirtation that really didn't take), I headed off.

When the weather is nice, the ride over the sierra into Algámitas must be lovely. When I hit the pass, after 400 metres of climbing, it still wasn't bad, opening up to give a view of the snowy peaks of Grazalema before the rain came in...horizontally. Lunch in Algámitas was a given, as a way of avoiding the rain; but the weather was unpredictable enough that there wasn't much choice but to take the bus into Ronda.

Andalusian cities tend to get overrun during Semana Santa, but Ronda was a lovely exception probably given that the weather had crapped out so badly. I settled into the Hotel Morales, run by Juan Domingo, a friendly hiking enthusiast who has a soft spot for cycling tourists (the hotel boasts a warm, dry room for the bikes to sleep.) And then after a warm shower and to explore the city during Semana Santa. The celebrations, after all, do not rely on the tourists, which makes it better for those of us who make the effort!

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day 5 (pt 1): Going Green and Shooting up the Church

The biggest highlight of Day Five was getting to see the wonderful Andrés Ordóñez, leader of the Patrulla Verde (a group of local young people dedicated to the preservation and development of the Vía Verde). I'd first met Andrés four years ago, when I was writing an article about the Vía Verde, and things have gone swimmingly for him since then -- to the point where they've even opened their own rural apartment for rent in the town of Coripe, a six-bedroom loft facility with full kitchen and (hurrah!!) satellite TV. (One hundred channels with nothing on is a lot more appealing when you haven't had TV for a couple of days.)

And it's worth pointing out that noting that Coripe doesn't just have the nicest people in that part of Andalusia; they have one of the wildest and most non-traditional Easter Sunday celebrations in Andalusia. Residents basically select Jerk of the Year (past candidates have included former Prime Minister José María Aznar - for getting Spain into Iraq - and Telefónica President César Alierta - in 2002, when the town lost phone service for six weeks.) Rather than burn the Jerk in effigy, the effigy is placed at the front of the church and anyone with a firearm is welcome to have a go at the effigy.

My jaw must have dropped a lot more than I thought it did: "Doesn't the priest get, um, a bit peeved at the gunshot damage on the façade of the church?" I asked.

"Why?" asked Andrés, smiling. "Every year he gets the church repainted for free!"

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Five: STUCK!!

They knew. The two Guardia Civil agents who were parked behind the hermitage, high above the small town of Pruna, probably knew that I'd camped wild, just by looking at my Gore-Tex pants.

I thought I would have been able to escape my camping/hiding space on the side of Mount Terril and make a clean (and I do mean clean in the original sense of the word) getaway. But shortly before six AM the staccato pip-pip-piriririp of drizzle began hitting the tent. It let up shortly before eight, giving me ten minutes to strike the tent and get the hell out. And that was the first time I hit mud.

Never camp in an olive grove if it's raining. Not just because olive trees offer precious little in the way of protection against rain, but because most of them tend to be planted in clay-y soils -- something I didn't know until I got stuck.

I did get out. I managed to scrape the four inches of mud off the wheels, out of the brakes and chainstay (hint: don't pack your bike in the rain -- push it to the nearest road-like surface and put on everything there.)

So when the Guardia Civil officer took one look at me, one look at the bike and one look at the mud drying on my trousers from the knees-down...hell, they knew. I got a knowing little smile, I didn't get a lecture, and half an hour later, I got stuck. AGAIN.

To get to the Vía Verde de la Sierra, near Olvera, I thought, shit - shortcut. The main road going into the town of Olvera, where the turnoff to get back down to the Vía Verde itself, involved five hundred feet of climbing and a rodeo of an extra mile and a half. So when I saw the shortcut, I thought, hell, the station is only five hundred metres from the highway if I don't go up to town...
I have to say that, once I managed to pull the bike out of the mud, the workers rebuilding the gardens of the Olvera Station-Restaurant, were quite helpful... once they stopped laughing and staring. They lent me their hose, they provided horse-hair brushes, and the everlasting questions, once they got going, were acutally quite welcome. And I learned something new about burying your bike in clay: Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats water, a nail brush with firm bristles, and a good sense of humour!

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Four: When two kilometres is NOT two kilometres

My vote for the best breakfast in Andalusia: English Country Foods, in the town of Sierra de Yeguas, north-west of Antequera. Run by a British couple who moved back after retirement (her parents originally came from this area), six Euros will get you a belly-filling English breakfast that will keep you going for miles.

Which is just as well, because my plans for the night are to stay in a campsite which I know lies outside of the town of Algámitas. Algámitas sits some 50 kilometres away, on the side of the Zamorano mountain pass. I've biked this way before, heading from Fuente de Piedra to El Saucejo with the gang before, but we didn't make Algámitas to go camping.

And it's just as well: the campsite, which is listed in all the campsite guides as being two kilometres west of town, DOES lie west of town...three kilometres away, and uphill. But that's not the worst of it. The entrance to the campsite is three klicks west of town. Then it's another two kilometres up to the reception area of the camping area, up 10% to 18% grades which are so steep that you have no choice but to keep pushing and keep pushing. I feel like some fourth-rate diva, dodging the cars as they come down from the campsite, muttering to myself, "This is NOT getting any good publicity on MY website!"

Some 1500 metres later, I think, FORGET IT. It's 7:35 PM and if I end up pushing the bike all the way up that hill, only to find out that there's nowhere for me to stay, I will have the Mother of All Diva Meltdowns. So I do what all biking divas do: I jump on the bike, mutter several prize obscenities in the direction of the building that I think is the reception area, and head down to a copse of holm oaks that lay between the highway (well, county road, more like) and the entrance to the campsite.

Now, technically, this is illegal. Not only is the tent being placed on private property, I'm not entirely sure that I'm outside of the one kilometre limit established by law. (You can't camp wild within 1000 m of a legal campsite, but I don't know if that means one kilometre by road, in which case I'm fine, or one kilometre as the crow flies, in which case I'm breaking the law.) But I don't care. I'm angry, I'm tired and all I want to do is sleep. I scout out an area where I won't be seen on either side. I cover the bike with the poncho (still dirty from last year's pernoctation in an olive grove). I put up the tent. (Thank you, Coleman, for your love of green nylon.) And then I sit there and try not to obsess about the sounds of barking dogs, infinitely amplified by the limestone peaks immediately behind me.

I call Candy.

"You all right?" she says.

"I'm a little flipped out by the dogs barking, but I don't think anyone can see me. I'm pretty far away from any road, and the tent is behind a pile of stones. You'd have to be looking for me to really be able to see me."

"All right. But call us if anything happens, okay?"

"Will do."

The worst thing that could happen, really, is that I get busted by the Guardia Civil for camping illegally. That would mean spending the night in a jail cell. Right now that doesn't sound all that bad.

And then the wind picks up, making the temperature drop by a good five or six degrees.

And then the moon disappears, bringing in the rain I'd tried so hard to avoid earlier on in the afternoon.

Damn.

Where are the cops when you need them?

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Three: Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

And when it comes, it comes down HARD. Big gobby raindrops, the kind that normally precede tornadoes, bouncing five or six centimetres off the surface of the road. Thank God it's Saturday and there's not much traffic on the roads. Thank God I put on every slightly waterproof garment that I own and am more or less dry in the parts that count, and that there's no wind, so there's no risk of hypothermia. This wasn't supposed to happen. The drought risk for Andalusia was supposed to last straight through to 2008...

Anyway.

Eight-six kilometres in the pouring rain - luckily, most of it on recently repaved and remade roads, and with very little traffic, thanks to the constrant downpour. And what do you know? Renting a cabin at the campsite in Fuente de Piedra is only twenty-two Euros a night (complete with VERY hot water in the shower and very effective central heating over the bed.)

It's not a question of how wet you get the way - what matters is how hot the air is after, so you can get nice and toasty dry!

TRANS-ANDALUZ DAY TWO: Enjoy the Silence

Recover the human geography, I told myself before I started the trip. Yes, bad memories can be just as valid as good memories because they're all part of what makes you human. So every so often, I'll see something and think of something, and think, "Oh! This is the point where we...had lunch...saw the bunny with the red eyes.... took the photos of the sierra... slept in the olive grove..." and then think, okay, that was then. (But was that really a year ago? Has twelve months passed since that happened?)

I made a point of leaving early in the morning. I wanted to get an early start so that I wouldn't have to kill myself to get to Zuheros before dusk, and I was glad that I did; partway through the day, a ring appeared around the sun...that classic sign that rain is on its way. And I just biked and listened to nothing.

Well, not NOTHING, really - the crunch of tires biting into the gravel surface; the slight breeze combing the countless olive trees that followed the route; the sound of the grackles fighting off the crows and hawks. After all the noise of the city, the apartment, after being surrounded and swallowed by noise for the previous two weeks, it was like someone smashing a helmet off my head. Just the sound of... nothing.

TRANS-ANDALUZ, DAY ONE: The hardest part isn't the riding

Every time I go on a trip like this, I never get a good night's sleep the night before. Sleep usually consists of a couple of hours of tossing and turning the night before, stomach roiling like the North Sea, and it's not because of the trip per se... it's because travelling the 1.4 kilometres from my bedroom to the butt end of the Regional Exprés, without a doubt, is a travail worthy of Luis Buñuel.

Today's journey was no exception. Get out of the house at quarter after eight; stares from people all along the street. (I tell myself that they're just jealous of my spiffy new Ortlieb panniers.) There's the usual crush of cars trying to get across Plaza Tirso de Molina. In spite of them literally being bumper-to-bumper, I manage to wedge my way through and head down calle Atocha to the Atocha train station, even getting waved through by a traffic cop. Down the escalators in the rotonda (even though that's not really kosher), to the ticket check: "Do they really let you take that thing on the trains?" I'm there with fifteen minutes to spare. Over to Platform Five, then wait, and wait some more. Even though the train's supposed to leave at nine, it doesn't pull up to the platform until three minutes after, by which time the platform is filled with elderly Andalusians who, fearing that they'll miss the train, crush up to the doors and push and shove each other to get on....kind of oblivious to the bike and the fact that I only have one door when I can get on, as opposed to the ten or twelve that they could, logistically, use. Luckily, a guy my age helps me lift the bike up and direct it towards the back of the carriage, gently shooing the grandmas and grandpas out of the way: "Careful! Dirty!" (an old cry that market porters used to yell to get the oblivious out of their way.) I check my ticket. The only space that they have for bikes on this train is in the back. The ticket office has put me in the front carriage. Again.

I don't mind sitting in the back with the bike; aside from one Galician railman who's deadheading the trip down Jaén, I have the entire section to myself. The Galician and I try to swap conversation, but give up soon after; he doesn't seem to have an ear for foreign accent and his accent is so heavily tinged with galego speech that it takes me a couple of seconds to register what I think it was he said.

And so it goes all the way down to Jaén. And I pull out the camera and take some pictures of wind farms situated cheek-by-jowl with fifteenth-century windmills, the kind Don Quijote used to go after; take pictures of myself with the bike, noting how much looser the Gore-Tex pants are this year than they were last year. And then I pull out my journal and start to ponder: What did we talk about last year when we were travelling down south? All the pictures I have of us, we're all smiling and laughing and you can tell that everyone's just looking forward to being on the road. I craved silence before leaving, and I have it now; but what took the place of that silence before?

Final preparations for the Trans-Andaluz!

Dani from Ciclos Delicias finally called last week to let me know that my new Ortlieb handlebar bag was in (only took, what, five weeks?) so I got that on today, after I picked the bike up from the old bike shop I used to work for. The Owner wasn't there. Either she wasn't there, or she was hiding. Either way, good for me; I've already told them one porky about teaching English outside of Madrid (which is really only a half-lie, when you think of it: I am teaching English -- I just didn't want them to know that I was as accessible as she might want.)

Only two more days before I go. I had a weird attack of The Lonlies in the kitchen last night as I was making soup, hanging out and generally enjoying the quiet that is so often lacking at our place. Seven days by yourself - even if they're seven days when you're going to be staying in hotels and not doing anything super-antisocial like sleeping in olive groves or something like that - is a lot of time by yourself. I just hope that I don't freak out halfway through, get the heebie-jeebies about being on my own or something like that.

Anyway, this time I can't back out. I have got THE PROJECT. And THE PROJECT dictates that I have to do it for real this time, that I can't fink out or back out. I have to do the entire route by myself.

I wonder how long it'll be before I start cursing out THE PROJECT.....?

Biking Singles, Part One

Last Sunday, Claire and I went out for a drink with two guys (well, one guy and his buddy) who she met over the internet, a guy who's just gotten divorced and is looking for people to ride with. Well, we didn't go out for a drink. We spent the better part of Sunday getting pissed. (LM's ex-wife wouldn't let him do that.) Claire says that he's a good biker, that he likes going out on Saturdays up in the sierra and biking around the forestry paths. (LM's ex-wife wouldn't let him do that.)

LM is a nice enough guy, I suppose, but Claire says that she's already starting to feel the pressure of her being the woman who'll do (and let LM do) everything that his ex-wife wouldn't let him do.

I'm not sure that "biking singles" is such a good idea anymore....

I have been living in this city FOR FAR TOO LONG!

Picture the scene: last Monday at 6 pm, heading home, I am rushing to try to beat a particularly fast red light on a particularly short street. I almost made it when BRAAAAAAAAAAP! Some idiot in an ice-blue Ford Focus lays on the horn. He does this as the light is turning yellow, meaning that he's basically pissed at me for preventing him from doing something illegal at a particularly dangerous intersection.

I drive. I know how irritating it is to wait. But I also know that if I sit here at this intersection with this Burberry-clad twit, at some point he's going to say something. I mean, hell, the guy's sitting at an intersection and he's white-knuckling the steering wheel. My heart is pounding, and the only thing I can think of is wrapping the bike around his neck, except that it would be a waste of a good bike. But I can't let this go unchallenged.

Then I see that, alongside the sidewalk, there's a space where I could launch myself from. I (somewhat ostentaciously) pick the bike up, smile at him, carry the bike over to the curb, wait for a moment for a space in the traffic flow....and then I turn around and blow a kiss to him, waggle my fingers goodbye, jump on the bike and RIDE LIKE HELL.

That dude either needs to drive less or drink more. Or trade the car in for a bike. I hope that he has at least one euphoric moment driving his car because, canned up in a vehicle, he's hardly living the TV-ad life of a car owner.

Oh yeah, I blew by him at the following red, too.

Saved by The Hell

Over the past few months, since I told the G-Man to go take a flying leap, I've started to notice how much the little things about him really would not have made him a good long-term partner. (As the Barenaked Ladies famously quipped: Absence makes the heart grow fungus.) There has been a cautious rapprochement since New Year's (initiated and guided by yours truly, since G-Man cannot be bothered to do anything by himself, frankly.)

So G-Man has decided that he's going to start a new job in Suburbialand, leave the big city behind and (he says) have a job that's closer to home that will allow him to bike to work. (No comment.) In starting this new job, G-Man only has four days of holidays during Semana Santa. No skin off my nose, I thought. He still lives at home: Either he'll have the money to do something on his own or he'll scootch off with his parents, like he usually does.

I don't know what the hell got into my head, but for some reason I was feeling overly charitable last week. No, I'll be honest. I know what it was. Elevent months after the fact, he took the photos that I took - I was the only one who'd bothered to bring a bloody digital camera - and made a small video of it. (He'd talked about doing it before but hadn't gotten around to doing it.) And seeing that video reminded me that we really had a good time together, so Dummy Here thought, oh, wouldn't it be great to have him along again....

There's a theory in linguistics that says that native speakers of any language tend not to say more words than the absolute minimum needed in order to get the message across. Well, there are times when I am convinced that G-Man lives his entire life by that idea. I send him a message, saying that I'm glad to see the video and that it brought back great memories, and it's a shame that he couldn't come along on the trip. No response. Throughout this supposed period of rapprochement, it has struck me that, at no time, has he talked about what he wants or what he's prepared to give. As in, I wanna be friends again...but what proof do I have that he does, too?

Cut to yesterday, when, after being online for the better part of an hour, he finally sends me a message. We chat about the usual inane crapola for five or ten minutes, then he brings up the fact that his parents are going to the anti-ETA protest convened yesterday by the Partido Popular (who, it will be remembered, lost the 11 March 2004 elections partially because they lied about ETA being behind the bombings, when it was known, almost from the start, that it was the work of Islamist terrorists.) I won't bore anyone with the details, but G-Man basically cut off the conversation and shut me out once it became clear I didn't agree with him.

And that may have been the final snap I needed. After seeing him behave like a child in a situation like that, I thought, nope. No more kids in my life. So I'm thankful I didn't ask him to go with me. I'm glad that it was nothing more than words in an SMS message, the modern equivalent of words, whispered into the wind only to be blown away, yadda yadda yadda.

Sometimes it just takes the smallest gesture to realize where your priorities are.

Where are all the gearhead girls?

In spite of having something that threatened to turn into a nasty hangover, I almost made it on time. Jorge and Moncho had agreed to meet outside of the Fuencarral metro at 8:30 AM, and I was only ten minutes late. The ride started well, if chilly; and by 10:30 we'd made it up as far as Colmenar Viejo, some twenty kilometeres north of Madrid. And I didn't die. I was sure that somewhere around Tres Cantos I would surrender and have to turn around, but I didn't. I made it all the way up to Colmenar, where we had a break and a sandwich and a breather.

Being that I'm usually one of the only (or few, if Claire's along) girls who go out on rides like this, I usually notice how few women are out on their bikes on Sunday afternoon club rides. What was unusual was that Jorge (who's from Colombia) and Moncho (who's Mexican) picked up on it, too: they also noticed that the riders tended to fall into two groups: either they were older men, dressed in washed-out Lycra shorts, looking to reclaim their glory days; or they were youngish guys, riding very expensive rides. And as we stopped at the side of the road to take a breather and have a drink, even the guys noticed it.

In the end, we counted 12 women. A dozen women among a good two or three hundred men, during the whole time we were out. And that includes the four girls on the tandems and the mother with a kid on the back of the bike.

On the one hand, it makes me think, damn! If I were to join a club and start racing, I could probably be one of the top-ranked riders in the entire community. In the entire province! I could be in the Top 100!

And then I thought, dude-ette, if there are only sixty-eight women competing anyway, that's not really a good sign....

Today's Bike Count: 15

Moncho the web guy doesn't carry a lot of lights on him when he rides. He goes 30 km per day up to the very north end of Madrid, on an old Cannondale that he's lovingly restored.

Yesterday when we met up to hand stuff off I'd just ridden back from an ESL class. I feel like I teach better when I've had the chance to ride to class. And I came across five or six people who were riding. And as I was saying good night to Moncho outside of the bar, three more people rode by us. That's not including the increasing number of bikes you see chained to posts and fences around town.

Slowly but surely....I don't want to say that we're winning, but at least I'm not getting the weird-ass looks I used to any more....

I got spanked by traffic yesterday.

I got seriously spanked by the traffic yesterday as I was riding up to class. And not just traffic -- they're rebuilding the interurban bus stop (intercambiador in Spanish, though it's more like a series of informal bus stops that really ought to be a station). I'm starting to wish that I was riding a mountain bike. Thank God my bike has front suspension because even riding singletrack is not as wearing as riding on the Castellana.

You can tell it's election time in Madrid. The streets are ripped up, supposedly in the name of progress, but all it ever seems to do is raise peoples' blood pressure levels.

It took me an hour to get to class, which is what it normally takes me if I take the Metro. I'll still ride up there at least once a week, but dan...I think I need new tires.....

Fear of Flying Solo

I don't know how much thought other cycle tourists give to travelling alone or travelling in groups. I didn't, really, until this year. A lot of the time, if I said that I was going on a bike trip, I'd have six people express interest, two of whom would actually come along. But this year is different....aside from ending a relationship (such as it was) with a guy who was (almost) always ready to head out on a trip or two, if he could...and learning the hard way that a lot of my friends are... um.... well... not as up and prepared for cycling long distances as I am... I'm doing two long trips in the space of six weeks. I'll be heading to Andalusia between March 29th and April 9th; and then heading out to do the Camino de Santiago between April 26th and May 8th.

Alone.

As in, I'm looking forward to this "camaraderie among cyclists" kind of thing because, truth be told, I am REALLY excited to be doing these trips...but I'm also freaked out, too.

One of the disadvantages of being in a cycling relationship with someone (which does not have to be the same as a romantic relationship, by any means) is that you get kind of lazy about finding new partners. Maybe it's a kind of hangover from being in a romantic relationship, as well - you get so reliant on one person that it doesn't occur to you what would happen if that person decided not to take part in a trip. Or when that person becomes effectively divorced from your life. It's like losing a part of your geographic memory. And at the beginning, I was really excited about going solo ("Thank God, no more snoring/nookie at weird hours/silent treatment/listening to his teeth chatter because he's in a summer sleeping bag/complaining about pain/complaining about having to cook"), maybe out of a misplaced sense of superiority, maybe because people are really good about mouthing off about how much they don't need people - and how they do it when they're at their most vulnerable.

And there are practical considerations as well, too. Things are a lot more expensive when you travel by yourself - hotel rooms, food. There's no one to share pannier space with if you decide to camp. But it's a lot easier to get you and your bike onto a bus when you're by yourself. You don't have to justify changes in the schedules to anyone but yourself. You've only got one voice whining at you, if at all; you know that at least one person is going to find your jokes and wry observations funny. The worries that typically come with travelling by myself don't tend to worry me ("You're gonna ride off into a gulch and break your bike/neck/ankles/legs and no one will know where you are!"...or..."You're gonna get raped/attacked/robbed/hit by a semi/food poisoning/sunburn...")

The first bike trip I did was supposed to be from Écija to Ronda, going through a lot of the mountains that I plan on doing this year. My inexperience (and a €99 bike) meant that I had to cut it short after the second day because I didn't have enough strength and experience (and chain ring power) to battle the wind coming in from Africa. And I remember being scared absolutely SHITLESS when I set out because I wasn't entirely sure that I wasn't going to die. Sure, things happened. Five kilometres out of town my bra strap snapped (right in front of a pig farm, no less), nearly sending me into the ditch in shock. I had a head-on collision with the sirocco winds the next day. The trains linking Seville and Osuna (where I'd stopped the night before) didn't take bicycles. But things weren't totally unmanageable, either. There was no problem getting the bike on the bus to Seville, and then onto Ronda (three cheers for midweek travel!). I can still taste how good the avocado and shrimp salad tasted on the terrace of the restaurant in Marinaleda. The owner of the hostal in Osuna couldn't have been sweeter. So, yes, a five-day jaunt got cut short by about three days because of various problems. But that was fine.

And I know that it'll be fine when I go. I'm a smarter, more prepared, fitter cyclist. I don't anticipate having to deal with a lot of problems on the bike; but if I do, it's no big deal because I know what I'm doing. I know the territory where I'm going, and I know that I'm never further than a phone call away from reassurance. And I know that I'll be a much better person when I finish these trips, because I will know how to deal.

I forget which suffragette said that a bicycle was a key to freedom. It is, and not just when it comes to questions of mobility - it's also a key to gaining confidence when you feel that life has knocked you back a bit more than what's fair.

I don't know how much thought other cycle tourists give to travelling alone or travelling in groups. I didn't, really, until this year. A lot of the time, if I said that I was going on a bike trip, I'd have six people express interest, two of whom would actually come along. But this year is different....aside from ending a relationship (such as it was) with a guy who was (almost) always ready to head out on a trip or two, if he could...and learning the hard way that a lot of my friends are... um.... well... not as up and prepared for cycling long distances as I am... I'm doing two long trips in the space of six weeks. I'll be heading to Andalusia between March 29th and April 9th; and then heading out to do the Camino de Santiago between April 26th and May 8th.

Alone.

As in, I'm looking forward to this "camaraderie among cyclists" kind of thing because, truth be told, I am REALLY excited to be doing these trips...but I'm also freaked out, too.

One of the disadvantages of being in a cycling relationship with someone (which does not have to be the same as a romantic relationship, by any means) is that you get kind of lazy about finding new partners. Maybe it's a kind of hangover from being in a romantic relationship, as well - you get so reliant on one person that it doesn't occur to you what would happen if that person decided not to take part in a trip. Or when that person becomes effectively divorced from your life. It's like losing a part of your geographic memory. And at the beginning, I was really excited about going solo ("Thank God, no more snoring/nookie at weird hours/silent treatment/listening to his teeth chatter because he's in a summer sleeping bag/complaining about pain/complaining about having to cook"), maybe out of a misplaced sense of superiority, maybe because people are really good about mouthing off about how much they don't need people - and how they do it when they're at their most vulnerable.

And there are practical considerations as well, too. Things are a lot more expensive when you travel by yourself - hotel rooms, food. There's no one to share pannier space with if you decide to camp. But it's a lot easier to get you and your bike onto a bus when you're by yourself. You don't have to justify changes in the schedules to anyone but yourself. You've only got one voice whining at you, if at all; you know that at least one person is going to find your jokes and wry observations funny. The worries that typically come with travelling by myself don't tend to worry me ("You're gonna ride off into a gulch and break your bike/neck/ankles/legs and no one will know where you are!"...or..."You're gonna get raped/attacked/robbed/hit by a semi/food poisoning/sunburn...")

The first bike trip I did was supposed to be from Écija to Ronda, going through a lot of the mountains that I plan on doing this year. My inexperience (and a €99 bike) meant that I had to cut it short after the second day because I didn't have enough strength and experience (and chain ring power) to battle the wind coming in from Africa. And I remember being scared absolutely SHITLESS when I set out because I wasn't entirely sure that I wasn't going to die. Sure, things happened. Five kilometres out of town my bra strap snapped (right in front of a pig farm, no less), nearly sending me into the ditch in shock. I had a head-on collision with the sirocco winds the next day. The trains linking Seville and Osuna (where I'd stopped the night before) didn't take bicycles. But things weren't totally unmanageable, either. There was no problem getting the bike on the bus to Seville, and then onto Ronda (three cheers for midweek travel!). I can still taste how good the avocado and shrimp salad tasted on the terrace of the restaurant in Marinaleda. The owner of the hostal in Osuna couldn't have been sweeter. So, yes, a five-day jaunt got cut short by about three days because of various problems. But that was fine.

And I know that it'll be fine when I go. I'm a smarter, more prepared, fitter cyclist. I don't anticipate having to deal with a lot of problems on the bike; but if I do, it's no big deal because I know what I'm doing. I know the territory where I'm going, and I know that I'm never further than a phone call away from reassurance. And I know that I'll be a much better person when I finish these trips, because I will know how to deal.

I forget which suffragette said that a bicycle was a key to freedom. It is, and not just when it comes to questions of mobility - it's also a key to gaining confidence when you feel that life has knocked you back a bit more than what's fair.

Today's Bike Count: 15

Moncho the web guy doesn't carry a lot of lights on him when he rides. He goes 30 km per day up to the very north end of Madrid, on an old Cannondale that he's lovingly restored.

Yesterday when we met up to hand stuff off I'd just ridden back from an ESL class. I feel like I teach better when I've had the chance to ride to class. And I came across five or six people who were riding. And as I was saying good night to Moncho outside of the bar, three more people rode by us. That's not including the increasing number of bikes you see chained to posts and fences around town.

Slowly but surely....I don't want to say that we're winning, but at least I'm not getting the weird-ass looks I used to any more....

Three Cheers for Arroyomolinos!

Okay, if you've never been to Spain, you've probably never heard of Arroyomolinos. It's a suburb-commuter town located about twenty kilometres south-west of Madrid. I don't really know how many people live there - technically, it's probably a part of the city of Móstoles - but I want to give them a quick tip of the helmet for having inaugurated twenty-two kilometres of bike lanes throughout the town.

Given, twenty-two klicks doesn't sounds like a lot, but given that we're talking about a place that doesn't even have ten thousand residents. However, that just might make them the community in Spain with the most kilometres of bike lanes per capita.

Three cheers for small towns!

Madrid, get your act together already!!!!!!