Wheat from the Chaff

Normally, any train ride that we have to take to get anywhere for a ride ends up being a humph-fest that can only be stopped with massive infusions of caffeine. Not today. Within ten minutes of getting on the train to Aranjuez, SuperLópez is on a rant about the Saturday morning gang. This surprises me. He's usually more discreet, but today, he lays into everyone and anyone - probably would lay into me, too, if I weren't the person he was talking to. I don't know if this is because of the early hour or the crap weather, with the sky threatening to open up and dump on us at any moment. It's like the dropping barometer has set everything loose at once.

Loose, indeed. Wind, grit, trucks (but no tumbleweeds, oddly enough.) We get out of Aranjuez (easier than I thought) and head over the Madrid-Castilla La Mancha border to a small town called Ciruelas. I try to keep to his back wheel; it's hard, considering how much taller and lighter he is - he doesn't have to fight against weight and wind as much as I do. It gets slightly better as we head over the plains by Yepes, but deep down into the bottoms of the gulleys, the wind gets channeled against us - not with enough force to push us backwards, simply blowing hard enough to fool us into thinking that we're going faster than we are. Which is disheartening after an hour.
My mind is suprisingly quiet today - a bit of Amy Winehouse, a bit of positive thinking - but it's easy to let your brain drain of thoughts when the wind keeps scraping against the Buff covering your ears.

Rain comes. Okay.

Rain starts to freeze. Okay.

Two big trucks blow past us, throwing our balance off just enough to push up the adrenaline. Okay.

It is what it is.

La Guardia. Three Guardia Civil trucks sit outside the Bar el Cono, where the bartender takes pity on us and slaps down half a tortilla each and only charges us €4 for a serving and a Coke each. We decide to cut it short and take the train back from El Romeral. Problem - train doesn't come for another three hours.

Screw it. Lunch in Tembleque.

Luckily, neither López nor I have anyone waiting for us at home, which makes it easier to grab lunch and mess about town, taking in all of the sights which I'd already seen on the Trans-Iberian. It is what it is.

Easy ride back to El Romeral, at about 3:15 (train comes at 4:20) and my brain starts going. Right, then: If these things are sent to try us, but we're in a position to get rid of some of them, then why do we tolerate them? Why maintain a friendship that is no longer friendly? Why belong to organizations which don't work to defend our interests? I went to Ikea on Friday to get stuff to reorganize my apartment; what's stopping me from doing the same thing from the shoulders up?

Every so often, we pass tractors disc-ing the fields, pulling up all kinds of gems from the earth. Small flocks of birds trail the tractors, seeing what food and treats the tractors have pulled up. Spring cleaning, spring changing, even with rain looming close by.