** this really happened last winter/spring
We were living in Madrid. Madrid is beautiful, but being a city, and me being a country spirit, well it was time to move on. We loaded our bicycles. A process that took days, or months really. Jota built a trolley, or a few...I can't remember now how many. We tested the trolleys out in the parks, taking turns driving each other around. The final trolley, the one we thought was the best, didn't make it through the first trial run. The wheel went flying off along with other parts that we never recovered. We were supposed to be leaving in a few days. My city limit had been far exceeeded for quite some time and Jota had a work prospect in the North. Trolley or no, we had to get moving.
(*to Jota's credit, he built the trolleys completely with scrap material, and the trolleys would probably have worked great with much less of a load.)
To our luck, we found a cheap bike trolley at the local sports outlet. Now- it was only designed to carry a few groceries from the store to home. Our travel that followed proved it was fit for carrying much, much more.
So we loaded up the trolley, attached it to Jota's bike and then loaded my bike with boxes and saddlebags. We got the boxes from the fruit shop next door. Anything that didn't fit we either hung off the sides with bungee cords, or shoved in the closet at our friends house. We were carrying our camping gear and things for the bicycle journey, food, and then a very large portion of our belongings. Clothes, boots, shoes, books, art, art supplies, etc, etc. Pretty much our life in Spain we managed to fit on the bikes, or bid it adieu.
We had prepared everything in our fifth floor apartment and then carried it all down the five flights of stairs (no elevator). Our roommate saw us off at the door. His look was somewhere between bewildered and wondering if we were legally insane. Jota got on his bike and began to ride. I got on mine, went to move and immediately fell. My trusty roommate softened the fall. Maybe this wasn't going to work. Stop. Reload. Try again. We finally set off.
An hour later stopped on a bridge that goes over the highway. My wheel was wobbling. I had forgotten to close the pin that locks my front wheel onto the bike. Woops. Fixed that and continued.
Arrived at Jota's parents house to drop off a few more things. Jota's Dad I think questioned whether or not he was related to us upon seeing our cargo load and interesting bicycle outfits. "Pero hijo, que estas haciendo? Toma treinte euros y compras billetes de tren" (But son (emphatically), what are you doing? (and half- pleadingly,) Take thirty euros and just buy some train tickets.) And although later on we questioned whether or not we should have just chosen the train route, we continued on the bicycles. Jota's parents waiving us off.
Finally decided another trolley was a necessity. Just as we crossed over the line out of Madrid we decided to go back for another trolley. Fast track another day of finding a trolley, re-loading and bicycling against 30 mph winds and it finally felt like our bicycle journey really had begun.
There is a barrier of mountains just outside the province of Madrid. They make a very pretty view, but as we got closer it felt more like impending doom than anything else. The night before we crossed the mountain range we camped in the valley, nestled right underneath the foot of the snow-capped mountains. We put the tent under a stand of locust trees - which turned out to be a bit of a perilous idea seeing as how these trees have some fairly serious thorns. But amazingly nothing was punctured. The next morning we set off early with naive ideas of how cool this would be to cross over mountains with a bike and trolley in tow.
A few hours later and a few conversations of wondering if we had any common sense at all and I had gotten off my bike, my heels firmly planted to the asphalt with no thoughts of pedaling even an inch more. Why had we not trained at all for this before? Or rather, why had I thought bicycling around the hilly city of Madrid would be sufficient practice? My muscles were on fire, my hands cramped from white-knuckling the handle bars every time one of those crazy truck drivers went squealing by my elbow. And well it was the afternoon and we still weren't even half way. My ounce of hope was in thinking we might still be able to salvage our trip by hitchhiking our way over the hard part. But then how in the world would we get someone to stop and pick us up? Our bikes, the trolleys, the things hanging off, Jota's crazy hair and my wacky pink socks. ..
We continued up any, many thanks to Jota's good sense of humour. We had a rain cloud behind us and some other storm in front of us. We reached the top and it was snowing/raining and the wind was ripping through. There were many abandoned buildings at the top, remnants of an old ski top village. We took a quick picture and got ourselves out of there.
I started down first. Thrilled to not be pushing the bike up a mountain anymore. I started to fly. And then I hear Jota behind me yell that he is going 55km/hour. I thought it felt I was going fast. Maybe two fast for all the curves and switchbacks. I start hearing a sharp squealing noise from behind. Jota's bike? His trolley? I yell back, he says he's fine. Hmmm. Ok. Continue flying. He passes me. And then, hmm, that's funny, the noise is still behind me! Wait a minute! That must mean the squeal is from my trolley!! We slow down, pull over and the first chance we can and check all the bolts. Continue
On the way down we looked for a place to camp along the way. The sun was setting and that rain/snow cloud was following us. The first stop turned out to have cows grazing in the forest. Not sure we wanted to share our tent space with cows we continued. Next choice had another creature living in it. Turned out we were riding through a donkey refuge. Very strange, but nice too. We kept going. We rode through a village and even thought about pitching the tent in the little bus waiting vestibule. But on second thought we saw the rowdy bar next door and thought better of it. Continue. Finally we find a nice level pine grove at the bottom of the mountain. Set up the tent start to cook, the sprinkling starts and then we see a man walking through the woods towards us. Darn it. He''ll probably tell us we can't camp here. Nope, instead he informs us that there is a serious storm coming. We said, we know, we just rode through it. He told us there would be a wind storm and that camping in the pine forest is really dangerous. He offered us his phone number and told us we could camp in his barn if we like a few km on. He left, we thought about it and decided to go for it. Pulled out the phone to call and get directions and well, the phone died. Such luck. Neither of us really had the energy or wherewithal to take down the tent, repack and get on a cold wet bike to pedal another few kilometers anyway. We slept well, didn't get crunched by falling trees and woke up in a beautiful, yet soaked pine forest.
The rest of our trip was in the rain and riding into the wind. Days of hill after hill and others of flat planes. I wasn't sure which I preferred. The ease of the level, yet boring planes or the promise of the downhill after the up. My rain gear that I have had for 5 years decided to kick-the-bucket on this trip. Bought an interesting raincoat to get me through. I looked something like the offspring of David-the-Gnome meets the Smurfs meets the Jetsons. A few times we stayed in Pilgrim rest places so we could enjoy a shower. The rest of the time we found a place for the tent. One night we had planned to stay at a rest stop only to find it over-run, attached to a bar and my bedbug warning lights were flashing bright red. We were a bit desperate to find a place, cold, wet and tired. We stumbled upon a shepherd with his sheep. Started talking, because I love sheep. And well he suggested we sleep in the town's concert hall just at the end of the field. Really? It had a roof, a foundation and 3.5 walls. It was an unfinished building but the town still used it on weekends for concerts. The shepherd said we had his permission. SUPER excited to sleep somewhere out of the rain, we pitched the tent and slept really well, even with our noisy neighbors; the pigeons. Another night we slept in a town hall, on the floor of the meeting room. It didn't have a shower, but the mayor gave us the keys to go explore the ancient Roman fort in the village.And then there was the night we camped in the forest and were woken in the middle of the night by a wild pig. We had cooked bacon that night and this pig had not seemed too happy about that.
Jota's tire also blew out along the way, another delay because finding a replacement tire in the middle of nowhere is not an easy feat. Between that, carrying so much weight, and day after day of riding into the wind, we were running out of time. Jota's building project was going to start and we weren't going to make it the whole way on bikes. Once we got an hour drive from a friends house we called them up for a ride. We did finish the last 50km to the project site on bike.All in all we rode a little over 800kilometers.
And then our tent-steading experience began....more to follow.
We were living in Madrid. Madrid is beautiful, but being a city, and me being a country spirit, well it was time to move on. We loaded our bicycles. A process that took days, or months really. Jota built a trolley, or a few...I can't remember now how many. We tested the trolleys out in the parks, taking turns driving each other around. The final trolley, the one we thought was the best, didn't make it through the first trial run. The wheel went flying off along with other parts that we never recovered. We were supposed to be leaving in a few days. My city limit had been far exceeeded for quite some time and Jota had a work prospect in the North. Trolley or no, we had to get moving.
(*to Jota's credit, he built the trolleys completely with scrap material, and the trolleys would probably have worked great with much less of a load.)
To our luck, we found a cheap bike trolley at the local sports outlet. Now- it was only designed to carry a few groceries from the store to home. Our travel that followed proved it was fit for carrying much, much more.
So we loaded up the trolley, attached it to Jota's bike and then loaded my bike with boxes and saddlebags. We got the boxes from the fruit shop next door. Anything that didn't fit we either hung off the sides with bungee cords, or shoved in the closet at our friends house. We were carrying our camping gear and things for the bicycle journey, food, and then a very large portion of our belongings. Clothes, boots, shoes, books, art, art supplies, etc, etc. Pretty much our life in Spain we managed to fit on the bikes, or bid it adieu.
We had prepared everything in our fifth floor apartment and then carried it all down the five flights of stairs (no elevator). Our roommate saw us off at the door. His look was somewhere between bewildered and wondering if we were legally insane. Jota got on his bike and began to ride. I got on mine, went to move and immediately fell. My trusty roommate softened the fall. Maybe this wasn't going to work. Stop. Reload. Try again. We finally set off.
An hour later stopped on a bridge that goes over the highway. My wheel was wobbling. I had forgotten to close the pin that locks my front wheel onto the bike. Woops. Fixed that and continued.
Arrived at Jota's parents house to drop off a few more things. Jota's Dad I think questioned whether or not he was related to us upon seeing our cargo load and interesting bicycle outfits. "Pero hijo, que estas haciendo? Toma treinte euros y compras billetes de tren" (But son (emphatically), what are you doing? (and half- pleadingly,) Take thirty euros and just buy some train tickets.) And although later on we questioned whether or not we should have just chosen the train route, we continued on the bicycles. Jota's parents waiving us off.
Finally decided another trolley was a necessity. Just as we crossed over the line out of Madrid we decided to go back for another trolley. Fast track another day of finding a trolley, re-loading and bicycling against 30 mph winds and it finally felt like our bicycle journey really had begun.
There is a barrier of mountains just outside the province of Madrid. They make a very pretty view, but as we got closer it felt more like impending doom than anything else. The night before we crossed the mountain range we camped in the valley, nestled right underneath the foot of the snow-capped mountains. We put the tent under a stand of locust trees - which turned out to be a bit of a perilous idea seeing as how these trees have some fairly serious thorns. But amazingly nothing was punctured. The next morning we set off early with naive ideas of how cool this would be to cross over mountains with a bike and trolley in tow.
A few hours later and a few conversations of wondering if we had any common sense at all and I had gotten off my bike, my heels firmly planted to the asphalt with no thoughts of pedaling even an inch more. Why had we not trained at all for this before? Or rather, why had I thought bicycling around the hilly city of Madrid would be sufficient practice? My muscles were on fire, my hands cramped from white-knuckling the handle bars every time one of those crazy truck drivers went squealing by my elbow. And well it was the afternoon and we still weren't even half way. My ounce of hope was in thinking we might still be able to salvage our trip by hitchhiking our way over the hard part. But then how in the world would we get someone to stop and pick us up? Our bikes, the trolleys, the things hanging off, Jota's crazy hair and my wacky pink socks. ..
We continued up any, many thanks to Jota's good sense of humour. We had a rain cloud behind us and some other storm in front of us. We reached the top and it was snowing/raining and the wind was ripping through. There were many abandoned buildings at the top, remnants of an old ski top village. We took a quick picture and got ourselves out of there.
I started down first. Thrilled to not be pushing the bike up a mountain anymore. I started to fly. And then I hear Jota behind me yell that he is going 55km/hour. I thought it felt I was going fast. Maybe two fast for all the curves and switchbacks. I start hearing a sharp squealing noise from behind. Jota's bike? His trolley? I yell back, he says he's fine. Hmmm. Ok. Continue flying. He passes me. And then, hmm, that's funny, the noise is still behind me! Wait a minute! That must mean the squeal is from my trolley!! We slow down, pull over and the first chance we can and check all the bolts. Continue
On the way down we looked for a place to camp along the way. The sun was setting and that rain/snow cloud was following us. The first stop turned out to have cows grazing in the forest. Not sure we wanted to share our tent space with cows we continued. Next choice had another creature living in it. Turned out we were riding through a donkey refuge. Very strange, but nice too. We kept going. We rode through a village and even thought about pitching the tent in the little bus waiting vestibule. But on second thought we saw the rowdy bar next door and thought better of it. Continue. Finally we find a nice level pine grove at the bottom of the mountain. Set up the tent start to cook, the sprinkling starts and then we see a man walking through the woods towards us. Darn it. He''ll probably tell us we can't camp here. Nope, instead he informs us that there is a serious storm coming. We said, we know, we just rode through it. He told us there would be a wind storm and that camping in the pine forest is really dangerous. He offered us his phone number and told us we could camp in his barn if we like a few km on. He left, we thought about it and decided to go for it. Pulled out the phone to call and get directions and well, the phone died. Such luck. Neither of us really had the energy or wherewithal to take down the tent, repack and get on a cold wet bike to pedal another few kilometers anyway. We slept well, didn't get crunched by falling trees and woke up in a beautiful, yet soaked pine forest.
The rest of our trip was in the rain and riding into the wind. Days of hill after hill and others of flat planes. I wasn't sure which I preferred. The ease of the level, yet boring planes or the promise of the downhill after the up. My rain gear that I have had for 5 years decided to kick-the-bucket on this trip. Bought an interesting raincoat to get me through. I looked something like the offspring of David-the-Gnome meets the Smurfs meets the Jetsons. A few times we stayed in Pilgrim rest places so we could enjoy a shower. The rest of the time we found a place for the tent. One night we had planned to stay at a rest stop only to find it over-run, attached to a bar and my bedbug warning lights were flashing bright red. We were a bit desperate to find a place, cold, wet and tired. We stumbled upon a shepherd with his sheep. Started talking, because I love sheep. And well he suggested we sleep in the town's concert hall just at the end of the field. Really? It had a roof, a foundation and 3.5 walls. It was an unfinished building but the town still used it on weekends for concerts. The shepherd said we had his permission. SUPER excited to sleep somewhere out of the rain, we pitched the tent and slept really well, even with our noisy neighbors; the pigeons. Another night we slept in a town hall, on the floor of the meeting room. It didn't have a shower, but the mayor gave us the keys to go explore the ancient Roman fort in the village.And then there was the night we camped in the forest and were woken in the middle of the night by a wild pig. We had cooked bacon that night and this pig had not seemed too happy about that.
Jota's tire also blew out along the way, another delay because finding a replacement tire in the middle of nowhere is not an easy feat. Between that, carrying so much weight, and day after day of riding into the wind, we were running out of time. Jota's building project was going to start and we weren't going to make it the whole way on bikes. Once we got an hour drive from a friends house we called them up for a ride. We did finish the last 50km to the project site on bike.All in all we rode a little over 800kilometers.
And then our tent-steading experience began....more to follow.
