Friday, August 7, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Bordeaux! Dordogne! Wine! Cheese!
8/03. We camped outisde Port Ste Foy la Frande along the road at the back of a yard alongside a building with a sign reading, "La Maison Piegee." In our dictionary we found "piege" and one definition "voiture piegee" which means car bomb. So we reasoned this house might be a bomb shelter. There were crucifixes all around the facade of the house to support our supposition, but on the other hand, it was a two story house rather than an underground shelter as one might expect from a bomb shelter. We ate inside the tent without cooking (a welcome simplification to our evening routine and subsequent morning pack-up) and drank the bottle of wine we had been given by our new friends, the Rosans. Daniel Rosan is a tall, thin, thoughtful looking man who is a vinticulturist. He runs a fairly sizeable wine cooperative called the Cave Cooperative. We met him at a picnic area where we were having lunch and he and his visiting friends were doing some bouldering. We joined them for some climbing, got to talking, and Daniel wound up inviting us back for some wine. Even though it involved a small bit of backtracking (something we just don't do), we agreed. And were not disappointed. They brought us back into their backyard area where they had a table set out and we drank and talked for an hour or so. They were all old friends of thirty and more years getting together for a few weeks. This was to be their last day together after travelling through Spain canyoneering and hanging out onthe vineyard. Funny that they should choose to spend their last day together inviting some cycling foreigners who barely spoke the language to come hang out. But they seemed perfectly happy to bumble through simple sentences with us, offered that we could hang out for the night and pitch our tent in their yard, and refused payment for the bottle of wine we took with us. Which was delicious. One of the best I've had.
An interaction like that quickly restores one's faith in humanity as a whole. Often I feel seasick from the pendulum swing of my worldview that can be largely based on individual personal interactions like that one that get followed up the very next day by another Framagerian in need of an attitude adjustment. It was the morning we woke up in Langon. We headed into town and found they were having an outdoor market. The first thing we saw was a tiny pigmy goat in a cage, evidentally someone's pet goat. Liza saw the the fromagerie and enthusiastically told me she could get the cheese for herself. She wanted brie and told the stern faced framagerian so. Just like in the pyrenees shack, he gave her the choice of two amounts. She told him she wanted the smaller amount. He showed it to her and she said she'd like a little less. He obnoxiously indicated a tiny sliver and liza said a little more. And like an ass, he put the cheese away and told her to leave - to go get her cheese elsewhere. What a dick. Maybe the french get their reputation for being rude and arrogant solely from the attitude of their cheese shop owners?
We're now in the fairly large city of Bergerac on the Dordogne. It's a very old city with a lot of history including a recently uncovered hydro-electric plant from the 19th century. They were tearing down an old building and found the plant inside - somehow no one had known about it. (Possibly a testament to the hippy, stoner vibe of this town). It had served a large part of the city and now is preserved as a historical monument. The city is very touristy as compared to the other towns we have spun through. Lots of people speak english here. It's somewhat disappointing to me when I begin a conversation in french and hte reply comes back in english. We had yet another fromagerie experience just now where the owner begrudgingly served us the cheese we asked for but when I mispronounced the cheese, he corrected me. I said, "D'accord" or "Okay" but he would not let the interaction proceed until I repeated the correct pronunciation. Last night we had our first unbelievable french meal at "Le Chat Man," or "The cat man." We came in a little late, they consulted the chef, and agreed to serve us. We had a bottle of 2006 Bordeaux, Liza had a fixed meal of salad, pasta with cream sauce and salmon, followed up with a chocolate mousse. I had mussels in a cream sauce with fries on the side. It was absolutely divine. A party of 10 was inside getting rowdy with bottle upon bottle of wine and a guy came by and played some Hendrix on an acoustic guitar with the lyrics translated into French.
Liza and I recently drew ourselves a calendar and realized we have more time than we thought! Our plan is to spend the next week in France, train to Holland, and ride some of their bike paths, and then to Lyon to visit my cousin for a day or two. Then it's back to the Plana to unload our bikes and lounge around beach side with claras and empanadias for a few days before spending two days in Barcelona awaiting our flight to NYC. At this point, I think we're both feeling we could live this way forever and are talking seriously about future trips.
I love this life so much i've been thinking a lot about all the "doing" we do when we're "home" and in our daily routine. I'v been thinking a lot about all the people out there who wake up every day and "do." And I've been wondering what it all adds up to. What are we doing? Sometimes it's as easy to me as we're just doing our own thing and sometimes it seems like we're doing because we don't know what else to do and all this doing is going to be our undoing. Because everything we do has its cost. This is probably coming up for me because Spain had so many wide open space and was so much less populated than what we've seen so far in France and there are so many more cars here and more people have the air of having somewhere to be and last night we camped along a logging road in an area maybe 80 miles long and 10-20 miles wide where France's equivalent to the BLM clearcuts and then replants pine forest over and over and the soil is all dirty sand and the forest has been domesticated into neat rows of trees at the same height and all along the road are stacks of cut trees 25' high by 8' lengths, or maybe I've been unreasonably this way and I have no idea what I'm talking about when I imagine a glorified past that never existed. But whyever these thoughts are swirling around in my head I hope that the "doing" of my life will have some impact on the undoing of our undoing. Oh, and the bread is really good in France too.
An interaction like that quickly restores one's faith in humanity as a whole. Often I feel seasick from the pendulum swing of my worldview that can be largely based on individual personal interactions like that one that get followed up the very next day by another Framagerian in need of an attitude adjustment. It was the morning we woke up in Langon. We headed into town and found they were having an outdoor market. The first thing we saw was a tiny pigmy goat in a cage, evidentally someone's pet goat. Liza saw the the fromagerie and enthusiastically told me she could get the cheese for herself. She wanted brie and told the stern faced framagerian so. Just like in the pyrenees shack, he gave her the choice of two amounts. She told him she wanted the smaller amount. He showed it to her and she said she'd like a little less. He obnoxiously indicated a tiny sliver and liza said a little more. And like an ass, he put the cheese away and told her to leave - to go get her cheese elsewhere. What a dick. Maybe the french get their reputation for being rude and arrogant solely from the attitude of their cheese shop owners?
We're now in the fairly large city of Bergerac on the Dordogne. It's a very old city with a lot of history including a recently uncovered hydro-electric plant from the 19th century. They were tearing down an old building and found the plant inside - somehow no one had known about it. (Possibly a testament to the hippy, stoner vibe of this town). It had served a large part of the city and now is preserved as a historical monument. The city is very touristy as compared to the other towns we have spun through. Lots of people speak english here. It's somewhat disappointing to me when I begin a conversation in french and hte reply comes back in english. We had yet another fromagerie experience just now where the owner begrudgingly served us the cheese we asked for but when I mispronounced the cheese, he corrected me. I said, "D'accord" or "Okay" but he would not let the interaction proceed until I repeated the correct pronunciation. Last night we had our first unbelievable french meal at "Le Chat Man," or "The cat man." We came in a little late, they consulted the chef, and agreed to serve us. We had a bottle of 2006 Bordeaux, Liza had a fixed meal of salad, pasta with cream sauce and salmon, followed up with a chocolate mousse. I had mussels in a cream sauce with fries on the side. It was absolutely divine. A party of 10 was inside getting rowdy with bottle upon bottle of wine and a guy came by and played some Hendrix on an acoustic guitar with the lyrics translated into French.
Liza and I recently drew ourselves a calendar and realized we have more time than we thought! Our plan is to spend the next week in France, train to Holland, and ride some of their bike paths, and then to Lyon to visit my cousin for a day or two. Then it's back to the Plana to unload our bikes and lounge around beach side with claras and empanadias for a few days before spending two days in Barcelona awaiting our flight to NYC. At this point, I think we're both feeling we could live this way forever and are talking seriously about future trips.
I love this life so much i've been thinking a lot about all the "doing" we do when we're "home" and in our daily routine. I'v been thinking a lot about all the people out there who wake up every day and "do." And I've been wondering what it all adds up to. What are we doing? Sometimes it's as easy to me as we're just doing our own thing and sometimes it seems like we're doing because we don't know what else to do and all this doing is going to be our undoing. Because everything we do has its cost. This is probably coming up for me because Spain had so many wide open space and was so much less populated than what we've seen so far in France and there are so many more cars here and more people have the air of having somewhere to be and last night we camped along a logging road in an area maybe 80 miles long and 10-20 miles wide where France's equivalent to the BLM clearcuts and then replants pine forest over and over and the soil is all dirty sand and the forest has been domesticated into neat rows of trees at the same height and all along the road are stacks of cut trees 25' high by 8' lengths, or maybe I've been unreasonably this way and I have no idea what I'm talking about when I imagine a glorified past that never existed. But whyever these thoughts are swirling around in my head I hope that the "doing" of my life will have some impact on the undoing of our undoing. Oh, and the bread is really good in France too.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
August First
And so it goes. So say the Tralfamadorians of the planet Tralfamadore in the book Slaughterhouse Five when they see a corpse. The Tralfamadorians see in four dimensions (to our three) and view each moment in time as just one more of so many moments in time. The corpse is in a bad way in that moment of time, but in another moment, that being might be enjoying an amazing bike tour around Spain and France.
And so it goes.
As I read Vonnegut's words at the beginning of the 5th week of our 7 week tour, I pray for the vision of a Tralfamadorian (or else that liza and i experience some sort of bicycle ship wreck a la Gilligan's Island and wind up stuck on the island of France to have one hilarious misadventure after another until the end of time - whichever comes first). We made a good run but we run too slow - time well spent is starting to overtake us.
We crossed the Pyreneen frontier into france at the exact three week midpoint of our projected timeline (we have since decided to extend our tour time at the sacrifice of beach time) with little pomp, circumstance, or indication of our feat. There was no sign welcoming us to france or entreating us to return to spain sometime soon. We reached the summit Le Col de La Pierre St. Martin at 1802 m and from then on signs unceremoniously switched to french, the people we passed as we started our descent were speaking french, and as far as we could see everything was lush, lush, lush and more lush shades of green. The air was more humid and the surrounding hills were spotted with white dots that could only be flocks of sheep. As a cyclist crossing the pyrenees from spain into france you immediately feel an immense sense of relief coupled with a tinge of fear as you begin to feel just how much steeper the french side of the pyrenees is as compared to spain's more gradual and relatively lackadaisacal slopes. this is, incidentally, indicative of the main cultural difference betzeen the two countries. In spain if a storeowner feels like having one more cigarette before opening or is too hungover to open at all, so be it. in france, everything is faster and more punctualized, as sharp and abrupt as the switchbacks carved into the near-vertical slopes of its side of the mountains. Mind you, nothing compared to the U.S. (even berkeley), but next to spain, the distinction is blinding.
Liza and i reasoned that france's side is so much greener and cooler than that of spain because the pyrenees form a barrier at that point, trapping the wetter weather systems of the atlantic. and so far we have gotten our fair share of that wetter weather. i wrote these words from a motel room we treated ourselves to as we waited out a particularly lasting and blustery storm.
Our first attempt with the french language came quickly when liza stopped at a side-of-the-road fromagerie for cheese about ten ,inutes into our descent. All the sheep zere being herded back home alongside goats and a few pigs. There was a small wooden hut on the property and as we approached, a girl of about 17 stopped helping her handicapped sister with her knitting and asked in french
"Do you want some cheese?"
while a woman who could only be their mother made no attempt at discretion zith her quiet, piercing stare. (Come to think of it, though, pretty much everybody unabashedly stares at us wherever we go. I may even be getting used to it at this point.) when we got into the hut, liza immediately wished she had waited till later to sample france's cheese offerings. The spot was dirty and crude. I barely noticed since i was busy fearfully anticipating my first head-on collision with the french language and i was off dairy because of my stubbornly lingering putrid farts.
She spoke first.
I picked out something about "cow." Right. Cheese. Do you want cow cheese or do you want - there were sheep outside...that must be the other word.
"Liza, do you want sheep cheese?"
Liza's answer came back yes.
Okay. Great. Got it. But I forgot the word she had said second. And I forgot how to say "the second," so I just said "le deux," holding up two fingers. Le Deux means both.
At this point, the girl could see that liza and i were outmatched, gave us a look for a second, and reasoned that i had meant "the second."
Awesome. This is going really well. And then she spoke again.
Something about one amount or another. Hmmmmm. That's a puzzler. Metric system.
"Liza, do you want more or less?"
"Less."
Okay. "Ummmm.... plus moins, s'il vous plait" came back my reply. This means something like "more less, please."
She let out an exhasperated "Alors" and proceeded to where we maybe should have started - the pantomime. With her knife she indicated the larger and smaller amounts she could offer and with our trusty index fingers we indicated which one we wanted.
Success. Maybe we should have come in the store on all fours baaaaing like sheep with the dimension of cheese we wanted already cut out of paper.
I'm pleased to say that our communication skills have improved and we have raised our status to "excusably bad at speaking french." We've even made friends with some frenchies! oh, and the cheese wound up having maggots in it and only a little of it was eaten that night. not by us but by our first french friend, Thibaux, who ate around the maggots.
once again, i have so much more to say but i've reached the end of my patience with the french keyboard.....maybe i'll publish a bunch of posts at once when i get to a keyboard that isn't so entirely disorienting.
we hope everyone is having an amazing summer wherever you may be and we invite any and all of you to pack up your bikes and join us on the road
And so it goes.
As I read Vonnegut's words at the beginning of the 5th week of our 7 week tour, I pray for the vision of a Tralfamadorian (or else that liza and i experience some sort of bicycle ship wreck a la Gilligan's Island and wind up stuck on the island of France to have one hilarious misadventure after another until the end of time - whichever comes first). We made a good run but we run too slow - time well spent is starting to overtake us.
We crossed the Pyreneen frontier into france at the exact three week midpoint of our projected timeline (we have since decided to extend our tour time at the sacrifice of beach time) with little pomp, circumstance, or indication of our feat. There was no sign welcoming us to france or entreating us to return to spain sometime soon. We reached the summit Le Col de La Pierre St. Martin at 1802 m and from then on signs unceremoniously switched to french, the people we passed as we started our descent were speaking french, and as far as we could see everything was lush, lush, lush and more lush shades of green. The air was more humid and the surrounding hills were spotted with white dots that could only be flocks of sheep. As a cyclist crossing the pyrenees from spain into france you immediately feel an immense sense of relief coupled with a tinge of fear as you begin to feel just how much steeper the french side of the pyrenees is as compared to spain's more gradual and relatively lackadaisacal slopes. this is, incidentally, indicative of the main cultural difference betzeen the two countries. In spain if a storeowner feels like having one more cigarette before opening or is too hungover to open at all, so be it. in france, everything is faster and more punctualized, as sharp and abrupt as the switchbacks carved into the near-vertical slopes of its side of the mountains. Mind you, nothing compared to the U.S. (even berkeley), but next to spain, the distinction is blinding.
Liza and i reasoned that france's side is so much greener and cooler than that of spain because the pyrenees form a barrier at that point, trapping the wetter weather systems of the atlantic. and so far we have gotten our fair share of that wetter weather. i wrote these words from a motel room we treated ourselves to as we waited out a particularly lasting and blustery storm.
Our first attempt with the french language came quickly when liza stopped at a side-of-the-road fromagerie for cheese about ten ,inutes into our descent. All the sheep zere being herded back home alongside goats and a few pigs. There was a small wooden hut on the property and as we approached, a girl of about 17 stopped helping her handicapped sister with her knitting and asked in french
"Do you want some cheese?"
while a woman who could only be their mother made no attempt at discretion zith her quiet, piercing stare. (Come to think of it, though, pretty much everybody unabashedly stares at us wherever we go. I may even be getting used to it at this point.) when we got into the hut, liza immediately wished she had waited till later to sample france's cheese offerings. The spot was dirty and crude. I barely noticed since i was busy fearfully anticipating my first head-on collision with the french language and i was off dairy because of my stubbornly lingering putrid farts.
She spoke first.
I picked out something about "cow." Right. Cheese. Do you want cow cheese or do you want - there were sheep outside...that must be the other word.
"Liza, do you want sheep cheese?"
Liza's answer came back yes.
Okay. Great. Got it. But I forgot the word she had said second. And I forgot how to say "the second," so I just said "le deux," holding up two fingers. Le Deux means both.
At this point, the girl could see that liza and i were outmatched, gave us a look for a second, and reasoned that i had meant "the second."
Awesome. This is going really well. And then she spoke again.
Something about one amount or another. Hmmmmm. That's a puzzler. Metric system.
"Liza, do you want more or less?"
"Less."
Okay. "Ummmm.... plus moins, s'il vous plait" came back my reply. This means something like "more less, please."
She let out an exhasperated "Alors" and proceeded to where we maybe should have started - the pantomime. With her knife she indicated the larger and smaller amounts she could offer and with our trusty index fingers we indicated which one we wanted.
Success. Maybe we should have come in the store on all fours baaaaing like sheep with the dimension of cheese we wanted already cut out of paper.
I'm pleased to say that our communication skills have improved and we have raised our status to "excusably bad at speaking french." We've even made friends with some frenchies! oh, and the cheese wound up having maggots in it and only a little of it was eaten that night. not by us but by our first french friend, Thibaux, who ate around the maggots.
once again, i have so much more to say but i've reached the end of my patience with the french keyboard.....maybe i'll publish a bunch of posts at once when i get to a keyboard that isn't so entirely disorienting.
we hope everyone is having an amazing summer wherever you may be and we invite any and all of you to pack up your bikes and join us on the road
Pyrenees and immediately thereafter
The formatting of loading pictures onto blogspot eludes me......so the last picture is meant to be first.
The last pic is a view from midway up our summit of the Pyrenees with Liza in the foreground and the valley where we slept the night before out in the distance. Our climb was about two hours, not counting the steady climbing we had done for the week prior. We spent the night with a Basque family Liza befriended who were hilarious and generous and altogether unforgettable. If you don't know who the Basque are, look em up.
Next is a view from the top of the french side of the pyrenees with its winding shear drops and the dichotomy of the landscapes of Spain and France beginning to be clear to us.
Our descent from the pyrenees was in the thickest fog either liza or i had ever experienced. you couldn't see ten feet ahead of you and we were soaked through within a few minutes. All the same it was amazing and beautiful, even if i did have to change my front break pads the next day b/c they got entirely worn through in the descent. We spent the day and night inside the tent being ridiculous and having a fantastic time. hopefully i can load up a video of one of our broadcasts from the tent.
the next shot is from an indescribeable canyon we hiked through. indescribeable is probably the only word one can use to describe that.
and finally a small example of some flowers growing along the roads we've been rolling....
Saturday, July 25, 2009
-our longest downhill ride. it was down for 30 minutes with no cars, pristine park land, swam in the river at the bottom. unbelievable. after climbing for about three days
-case in point of climbing. that was our longest climb so far. you can see liza making her way up.
-Randee with his new Castilla de la Mancha sticker. Liza and I switch between being DOn Quixote and Tonto.
-Check out the sliver of moon
-Beautiful clear river outside of Cuenca.
Pyrenees pyrenees pyrenees (seriously this time)
We have made it to the Pyrenees! ANd let me tell you - holy shit. It is unbelievably gorgeous here. I think this is the first opportunity I have had in my life to use the word "resplendent." >But really there are no words. True to form, Liza and I are now talking about just hanging out in the Pyrenees for a couple days rather than our original plan of up and over and into Bordeaux. I´ve had my first crack at speaking French in the past days and let´s just say it has been pas pas mal. It´ll get better day by day and i can definitely get us around alright. Yesterday we took an off-the-bike day lounging around at a mountain hostal at the foot of the pyrenees. Why? Because I have contracted giardia. It seems that the convenience of the fuentes was definitely too-good-to-be-true. After five days of some of the most foul-smelling farts this boy has ever seen (I couldn´t stand being around myself anymore, felt like there was a little green devil inside of me, and kept thinking I was one fart away from asphyxiating myself in the open air), I called up my dad who is an infectious diseases doctor. We thought I might have developed a lactose intolerance from all the cheese and lattes we´ve had. My dad immediately thought upper intestine giardia. I started flagyl yesterday after going down HARD and began feeling better after 12 hours. And the farts disappeared! (Until reappearing briefly this morning and redisappearing after taking my morning Flagyl.) Sorry if that story was a bit much. I´m really just here to load pictures and keep moving. Thanks to everyone who has posted comments or sent emails - it´s nice to hear from folks back home. We´re nearing the halfway point of our journey! Kinda hard to believe. It´s great when you get to the point in a vacation where you think it´s going to last forever. Our love to you all. We miss you and think and dream of all of you in turn.
The pictures:
-View from above dropping down into river valley outside Cuenca
-My favorite fuente where I saw a fairy who may have given me giardia
-Benton Randall and Le Petite Bleu snuggling up while Liza and Geraldo get some spring water refreshment
-Canyon riding is amazing. We see huge birds and all you can hear is the wind and the water and the whooshing of your wheels
-One of our longer riding days through Castilla de la Mancha. Mostly we saw amber fields, red clay dirt, sunflowers, and huge fields of solar panels.
-
Monday, July 20, 2009
Pyrenees..Pyrenees...Pyrenees...
Last night Liza and I pulled into the nouveaux-riche town of Calatayud and caught our first glimpse of the country that lays before us. We´re about a day-and-a-half ride from the base of the Pyrenees and we´re already getting shivers in the 100 degree heat from the majesty of the open skies and 360 vistas, the falcons and the mountain goats and wild boar and butterflies, the clear cool mountain streams, the speed at which our surroundings change - from aromatic pine-forest cliffs to rosemary/sage/lavender/thyme high plains to river valleys and now the giants off in the distance all in a few days, sometimes all in one day and back again. We´re working out our route now, cleaning our nasty clothes, and preparing for the ascent. A lot has happened in the past days. Once again too much to speak of in this short hour of internet use.
We are definitely stronger (even if we feel a bit weaker at times.) We have been way out there for the past many days, sometimes with hours between tiny towns and sometimes hours between seeing a car. We´ve had some very difficult climbing, varying terrain, plains with head winds that made me so happy we didn´t do the U.S. crossing cause then we´d have the Dakotas and Kansas to suffer through, more fun with late-night wildlife, mechanical issues, more delicious Campmaster LJ meals, our first contact with English speakers (which was fantastic for me since I haven´t conversated with anyone but Liza for the past two weeks - not that Liza hasn´t been fantastic company the whole time, but it´s hard when all you can say to people is what you want and twisted comments about the weather and lots of smiles and nods, but soon we cross over into French-speaking land and it´s my turn to assume the roll of translator (uh-oh)), castles, more and more beautiful spring-fed fuentes, the biggest solar arrays we´ve ever seen directly across the road from the biggest sunflower fields we´ve ever seen, we got to see wind turbines up close and touch them, we randomly stayed with a Spanish family on a rainy night, we´ve eaten lots and lots of bread and cheese (for better or for worse), drank not enough wine (though we have gotten a free bottle), and seen more stars every night than we did the last.
In Spain, the mullet is cool. A lot of men rock the mullet. We really should be taking more pictures of these men. Some have even had the sides of their head completely shaved with a jerry curl mullet. Some have nasty dread locks hanging down their necks in the back and straight hair up front. Very Oakland, actually.
When you enter a town, there is a small white sign bordered in black that tells you the name of the town you are entering. When you get to the other side of town you will find the exact same sign but with a red diagonal crossing out the name of the town, as in, "Not Cuenca."
In many of the towns we´ve passed through the quiet streets have erupted with the sound of a man´s voice blaring out monotone announcements from a slow-moving van as in, "I have fruits and I have vegetables. I have very good deals of nectarines right now. My carrots are fresh. I have fruits and vegetables..." on and on and on
We met Pepe in Millares. Pepe is the former mayor of Millares, which is a small town nestled in the valley of Spain´s equivalent to the Grand Canyon. Pepe was excited to talk to us when he saw us coming out of the vegetable market and when he found out we were Americans, he started asking all kinds of questions about our social security system and health care and explaining to us how it works in SPain. Liza´s attention was pulled by someone else in the street and Pepe starting rapping with me. The show owner shouted down to Pepe that I didn´t understand what he was saying and Pepe said "oh. okay" and then kept right on talking to me as he had been.
When you ask for directions in Spain, the person will either tell you that it´s more that way or will physically take you ALL THE WAY to your destination.
We stopped at a winery and tried to buy a bottle. The guy there told us that he only sold wine by 4 litre amounts. Many old men had walked out with huge plastic bottle jugs of the stuff. We told him we couldn´t carry that much and a little about our journey and he started laughing and gave us a bottle.
We gotta run. The sun´s going down out there. Gonna load on a coupld pictures first.
We are definitely stronger (even if we feel a bit weaker at times.) We have been way out there for the past many days, sometimes with hours between tiny towns and sometimes hours between seeing a car. We´ve had some very difficult climbing, varying terrain, plains with head winds that made me so happy we didn´t do the U.S. crossing cause then we´d have the Dakotas and Kansas to suffer through, more fun with late-night wildlife, mechanical issues, more delicious Campmaster LJ meals, our first contact with English speakers (which was fantastic for me since I haven´t conversated with anyone but Liza for the past two weeks - not that Liza hasn´t been fantastic company the whole time, but it´s hard when all you can say to people is what you want and twisted comments about the weather and lots of smiles and nods, but soon we cross over into French-speaking land and it´s my turn to assume the roll of translator (uh-oh)), castles, more and more beautiful spring-fed fuentes, the biggest solar arrays we´ve ever seen directly across the road from the biggest sunflower fields we´ve ever seen, we got to see wind turbines up close and touch them, we randomly stayed with a Spanish family on a rainy night, we´ve eaten lots and lots of bread and cheese (for better or for worse), drank not enough wine (though we have gotten a free bottle), and seen more stars every night than we did the last.
In Spain, the mullet is cool. A lot of men rock the mullet. We really should be taking more pictures of these men. Some have even had the sides of their head completely shaved with a jerry curl mullet. Some have nasty dread locks hanging down their necks in the back and straight hair up front. Very Oakland, actually.
When you enter a town, there is a small white sign bordered in black that tells you the name of the town you are entering. When you get to the other side of town you will find the exact same sign but with a red diagonal crossing out the name of the town, as in, "Not Cuenca."
In many of the towns we´ve passed through the quiet streets have erupted with the sound of a man´s voice blaring out monotone announcements from a slow-moving van as in, "I have fruits and I have vegetables. I have very good deals of nectarines right now. My carrots are fresh. I have fruits and vegetables..." on and on and on
We met Pepe in Millares. Pepe is the former mayor of Millares, which is a small town nestled in the valley of Spain´s equivalent to the Grand Canyon. Pepe was excited to talk to us when he saw us coming out of the vegetable market and when he found out we were Americans, he started asking all kinds of questions about our social security system and health care and explaining to us how it works in SPain. Liza´s attention was pulled by someone else in the street and Pepe starting rapping with me. The show owner shouted down to Pepe that I didn´t understand what he was saying and Pepe said "oh. okay" and then kept right on talking to me as he had been.
When you ask for directions in Spain, the person will either tell you that it´s more that way or will physically take you ALL THE WAY to your destination.
We stopped at a winery and tried to buy a bottle. The guy there told us that he only sold wine by 4 litre amounts. Many old men had walked out with huge plastic bottle jugs of the stuff. We told him we couldn´t carry that much and a little about our journey and he started laughing and gave us a bottle.
We gotta run. The sun´s going down out there. Gonna load on a coupld pictures first.
Monday, July 13, 2009
A couple pictures
1. Liza running down to dinner on the Plana
2. Randee cozying up next to a Spanish truck
3. Montgo. The mountain that bursts out of the ground on the Plana. Words nor pictures can express...
4. On our way out!
5. Fueling up for the big ride
¿Where to begin?
Liza and I have been on the road for eight days now and even though we still have five weeks to go, I already want to do this again. I am already planning the next bicycle tour - to Montana to visit Benton? New Zealand? Canada? Japan?
So much has happened that I¨m not sure how to get into it. I feel like it will all come out garbledygook. Liza informs me that 9 out of 10 people don´t read these things anyways - they skim them. I guess I´m the 1 in 10 then, but I´ll try to do a bulletpoint for the rest of you.
DAY ONE
We leave the Plana, Ravi, Sandy, Kaimana, Ravi´s folks, and the comforts of home and head down the hill to Denia with our bikes fully loaded. We plan on leaving at noon but wind up leaving 5PM - a tendency for delay and slow movement that we have kept to well, I´d say. We made it down the hill to Denia (about 15 minutes) before taking our first break. For Horchata. You can´t start a journey from Denia without getting an Horchata road soda. On the first day we got lots of thumbs up and smiles from passersby, lots of ay-yay-yays when we told them where we were headed. Having little idea where we were going we found ourselves on a bike road lined with fruiting orange and lemon trees! We camped outside of the town of Pego on a hillside that is in the midst of debeautification in the form of huge housing complexes that look like prisons when set against that landscape and the more traditional housing of the area. That night, perched up on our hill above the valley, we were approached by a fox who wanted our dinner and wouldn´t go away. (More on that story below if you care to hear it).
DAY TWO
We ride through Pego, stopping to pick up a map of the Valencia provence and filling up our water at the town fountain (fuente). At this point we did not understand how civilized Spain would prove to be. In every town, no matter how remote, there are public fountains that are either supplied by the municipality or from underground springs. Any bar or restaurant is more than happy to have you use their bathroom, even if you aren´t there to eat or drink. Our morning ride was slow up gentle hills inside of a river valley whose river had packed up and left years ago. It has not rained here in half a year. At all. Until this day. In Beniramma, we followed a steep hill down to their fuente to refill water. It was spectacular. Spring fed with a large 2 foot deep pool area for washing clothes. These towns have changed very little over the last few hundred years. Everyone you see is old or very young because all the young folks have packed up and left for the city. The Spanish government is experimenting with paying young couples to stay in these towns to keep them populated. And they give them housing as well. Outside of Beniramma it began to sprinkle a little - completely unexpected for us - we had packed our rain stuff at the bottoms of our packs figuring we wouldn´t need them before Belgium. We lay under a Carab tree and I passed out for two hours. When I woke up, I wasn´t feeling well. We got back on the bikes and rode several more hours until the sun started to set and we pulled off the road and headed for a ruin at the top of the hill to the right of our road. We stashed our bike in a ruin lower on the hill to keep them safe from the rain (that never came) and lugged all our stuff to the top of the hill where we could catch a better breeze since it was still around 80 degrees at 9 PM. Campmaster LJ put together a meal in the time it took me to setup the tent and soon we were mouwing down on pasta with tuna. Liza has been an unbelievable backcountry cook. Fast and delicious is her specialty. We stashed our food stuffs on the roof of the ruin to avoid another fox run-in.
DAY THREE
I woke up sick. We made our way off our hill after a light breakfast and were spotted by the farmer whose land we had camped on without permission. He paid us little mind and continued planning the day with his friend after a sideways ¨buenos dias¨ casually tossed our way. We rode out and it was hot. We got to a reservoir that even Liza wouldn´t swim in. We ate lunch in an olive grove after narrowly avoiding getting mowed down by a tour bus coming around a curve in the road. And as we reached the end of our patience with the heat, we pulled into Castello de Rugat and stumbled upon the next surprise Spain had to offer - free municipal pools in almost every town. We were able to stash our bikes in the pool´s boiler room/storage for broken things and take full on showers in the locker room before jumping into the crystal pool water (which was even warm because it was that hot). Liza turned to me at a certain point and said that everyone around us was speaking Valenciano and she couldn´t understand a word of it. That was a trip to have ridden three days on a bike and made it to a part of Spain that spoke a completely different language. As we lef tthe pool and made it further into town, I spotted huge solar arrays on the roofs of the largest buildings in town. This town was really cool - an even blend of tradition and the future. The present was left out of the equation for the most part. We went to the market store for fruits and veggies. Here in Spain you don´t pick out your own produce. You wait in line and then get waited on by the store owner. You tell her what you would like and they pick it all out for you. Then we go to the bread store for bread and pastries. They were impressed by our journey and gave us a couple of free extras. That night we rode late and found ourselves in the difficult situation of not having a great place to stay and not having much light left to find a decent place to stay. We rolled into Beniganim after sunset when only the sun´s reflected light was left. As discreetly as is possiblt when you have 40 pounds of gear strapped to your bikes we made our way to the outskirts of this industrial blue collar town where we happened upon some olive groves. We snuck in, found a cutaway spot and camped their as quietly as we could.
Wait. What happened to the bulletpoint format? I´m running out of time so I´m just going to tell the fox story and save new stories for next time including how we wound up in the home of strangers and had pasta dinner with Erica, her mother, and her two sons Jonathan and Esteban, all about the city of Alarcon, and my favorite part so far - Spain´s equivalent to the Grand Canyon that we pretty much accidentally stumbled upon.
THE FOX
We found our spot. It was up on a hill where we could catch more breeze just below a huge, ugly new housing development partially finished and possibly abandoned. There was one strip of paved road with cul de sacs on either end that we had to push our bikes to through orange fields along a rocky road. We pitched our tent, took all our stuff out, and started eating our dinner of leftovers as the sky suddenly turned a pinkish crimson. Honestly, we looked away for a moment and everything changed. Our view was deep and wide across a huge valley of orange, lemon, and olive fields to the mirror-mountains on the other side of ours. A mine stared blankly back at us from 8 km away. Just after nightfall as I was shovelling potatoes into my mouth, Liza said with headlight on, pointing a little ways down the darkening road, öh my god, Harold, what is that¨ First thing I saw was the flash of animal eyes in artificial light. Then slowly my eyes adjusted and more features became clear. It looked like a dog about 2 ft. off the ground with a long, slender body, a stout snout, and a long, bushy tail. And it was staring intently at us and step-by-step approaching us. We threw the first stone. The animal ran over to where the stone had fallen and sniffed around. Was it a fox? A coyote? Are there coyotes in Spain? CLearly it was used to people and VERY hungry. It turned from the stone and again approached. And again we threw a stone and again it ran over to smell out our offering. This animal, whatever it was, was not backing down, was not at all afraid of us, and had not gotten what it had come for. No more niceties. No more civilized attempts at negotiating the language gap between us. I picked up a nearby 2 x 4 and advanced on the animal quickly. It did not back down. I stopped. Fuck. Liza and I picked up rocks as fast as we could, throwing them at our intruder with the intention of hitting him in the darkness.All attempts to be discreet with our headlamp use to avoid being seen were gone now. It took a while to finally back him down and get him away to a safe distance. And then we were left with the question of what to do next. It was dark now and we had little idea of where we were. The descent on the rock road would be difficult. All of our stuff was already unpacked. Would he come back? Would he bring his friends with him? WHAT was it? FInally we decided to stay and were left with the remaining question of what to do with our food.We´ll keep it in the tent with us. But then if the pack of man-eating coyote/fox/chupacabras return, they´ll tear through the tent and through us to get to our stash of chocolate-filled croissants. And so it was decided that we would bury our food under rocks and the rest of our gear would be put under the watchful eyes of our trusty steeds - Le Petite Bleu and Benton Randall. The End.
So much has happened that I¨m not sure how to get into it. I feel like it will all come out garbledygook. Liza informs me that 9 out of 10 people don´t read these things anyways - they skim them. I guess I´m the 1 in 10 then, but I´ll try to do a bulletpoint for the rest of you.
DAY ONE
We leave the Plana, Ravi, Sandy, Kaimana, Ravi´s folks, and the comforts of home and head down the hill to Denia with our bikes fully loaded. We plan on leaving at noon but wind up leaving 5PM - a tendency for delay and slow movement that we have kept to well, I´d say. We made it down the hill to Denia (about 15 minutes) before taking our first break. For Horchata. You can´t start a journey from Denia without getting an Horchata road soda. On the first day we got lots of thumbs up and smiles from passersby, lots of ay-yay-yays when we told them where we were headed. Having little idea where we were going we found ourselves on a bike road lined with fruiting orange and lemon trees! We camped outside of the town of Pego on a hillside that is in the midst of debeautification in the form of huge housing complexes that look like prisons when set against that landscape and the more traditional housing of the area. That night, perched up on our hill above the valley, we were approached by a fox who wanted our dinner and wouldn´t go away. (More on that story below if you care to hear it).
DAY TWO
We ride through Pego, stopping to pick up a map of the Valencia provence and filling up our water at the town fountain (fuente). At this point we did not understand how civilized Spain would prove to be. In every town, no matter how remote, there are public fountains that are either supplied by the municipality or from underground springs. Any bar or restaurant is more than happy to have you use their bathroom, even if you aren´t there to eat or drink. Our morning ride was slow up gentle hills inside of a river valley whose river had packed up and left years ago. It has not rained here in half a year. At all. Until this day. In Beniramma, we followed a steep hill down to their fuente to refill water. It was spectacular. Spring fed with a large 2 foot deep pool area for washing clothes. These towns have changed very little over the last few hundred years. Everyone you see is old or very young because all the young folks have packed up and left for the city. The Spanish government is experimenting with paying young couples to stay in these towns to keep them populated. And they give them housing as well. Outside of Beniramma it began to sprinkle a little - completely unexpected for us - we had packed our rain stuff at the bottoms of our packs figuring we wouldn´t need them before Belgium. We lay under a Carab tree and I passed out for two hours. When I woke up, I wasn´t feeling well. We got back on the bikes and rode several more hours until the sun started to set and we pulled off the road and headed for a ruin at the top of the hill to the right of our road. We stashed our bike in a ruin lower on the hill to keep them safe from the rain (that never came) and lugged all our stuff to the top of the hill where we could catch a better breeze since it was still around 80 degrees at 9 PM. Campmaster LJ put together a meal in the time it took me to setup the tent and soon we were mouwing down on pasta with tuna. Liza has been an unbelievable backcountry cook. Fast and delicious is her specialty. We stashed our food stuffs on the roof of the ruin to avoid another fox run-in.
DAY THREE
I woke up sick. We made our way off our hill after a light breakfast and were spotted by the farmer whose land we had camped on without permission. He paid us little mind and continued planning the day with his friend after a sideways ¨buenos dias¨ casually tossed our way. We rode out and it was hot. We got to a reservoir that even Liza wouldn´t swim in. We ate lunch in an olive grove after narrowly avoiding getting mowed down by a tour bus coming around a curve in the road. And as we reached the end of our patience with the heat, we pulled into Castello de Rugat and stumbled upon the next surprise Spain had to offer - free municipal pools in almost every town. We were able to stash our bikes in the pool´s boiler room/storage for broken things and take full on showers in the locker room before jumping into the crystal pool water (which was even warm because it was that hot). Liza turned to me at a certain point and said that everyone around us was speaking Valenciano and she couldn´t understand a word of it. That was a trip to have ridden three days on a bike and made it to a part of Spain that spoke a completely different language. As we lef tthe pool and made it further into town, I spotted huge solar arrays on the roofs of the largest buildings in town. This town was really cool - an even blend of tradition and the future. The present was left out of the equation for the most part. We went to the market store for fruits and veggies. Here in Spain you don´t pick out your own produce. You wait in line and then get waited on by the store owner. You tell her what you would like and they pick it all out for you. Then we go to the bread store for bread and pastries. They were impressed by our journey and gave us a couple of free extras. That night we rode late and found ourselves in the difficult situation of not having a great place to stay and not having much light left to find a decent place to stay. We rolled into Beniganim after sunset when only the sun´s reflected light was left. As discreetly as is possiblt when you have 40 pounds of gear strapped to your bikes we made our way to the outskirts of this industrial blue collar town where we happened upon some olive groves. We snuck in, found a cutaway spot and camped their as quietly as we could.
Wait. What happened to the bulletpoint format? I´m running out of time so I´m just going to tell the fox story and save new stories for next time including how we wound up in the home of strangers and had pasta dinner with Erica, her mother, and her two sons Jonathan and Esteban, all about the city of Alarcon, and my favorite part so far - Spain´s equivalent to the Grand Canyon that we pretty much accidentally stumbled upon.
THE FOX
We found our spot. It was up on a hill where we could catch more breeze just below a huge, ugly new housing development partially finished and possibly abandoned. There was one strip of paved road with cul de sacs on either end that we had to push our bikes to through orange fields along a rocky road. We pitched our tent, took all our stuff out, and started eating our dinner of leftovers as the sky suddenly turned a pinkish crimson. Honestly, we looked away for a moment and everything changed. Our view was deep and wide across a huge valley of orange, lemon, and olive fields to the mirror-mountains on the other side of ours. A mine stared blankly back at us from 8 km away. Just after nightfall as I was shovelling potatoes into my mouth, Liza said with headlight on, pointing a little ways down the darkening road, öh my god, Harold, what is that¨ First thing I saw was the flash of animal eyes in artificial light. Then slowly my eyes adjusted and more features became clear. It looked like a dog about 2 ft. off the ground with a long, slender body, a stout snout, and a long, bushy tail. And it was staring intently at us and step-by-step approaching us. We threw the first stone. The animal ran over to where the stone had fallen and sniffed around. Was it a fox? A coyote? Are there coyotes in Spain? CLearly it was used to people and VERY hungry. It turned from the stone and again approached. And again we threw a stone and again it ran over to smell out our offering. This animal, whatever it was, was not backing down, was not at all afraid of us, and had not gotten what it had come for. No more niceties. No more civilized attempts at negotiating the language gap between us. I picked up a nearby 2 x 4 and advanced on the animal quickly. It did not back down. I stopped. Fuck. Liza and I picked up rocks as fast as we could, throwing them at our intruder with the intention of hitting him in the darkness.All attempts to be discreet with our headlamp use to avoid being seen were gone now. It took a while to finally back him down and get him away to a safe distance. And then we were left with the question of what to do next. It was dark now and we had little idea of where we were. The descent on the rock road would be difficult. All of our stuff was already unpacked. Would he come back? Would he bring his friends with him? WHAT was it? FInally we decided to stay and were left with the remaining question of what to do with our food.We´ll keep it in the tent with us. But then if the pack of man-eating coyote/fox/chupacabras return, they´ll tear through the tent and through us to get to our stash of chocolate-filled croissants. And so it was decided that we would bury our food under rocks and the rest of our gear would be put under the watchful eyes of our trusty steeds - Le Petite Bleu and Benton Randall. The End.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Espagna!
We´re in la costa Blanca in the town of Denia / Javea where Liza was born and spent her first years. It is muy tranquillo here - really the only thing we have to do each day is get down to the beach and swim out to the yellow booies and back. Most of my headspace is taken with wondering how one spells ¨buoys¨ and other such pressing questions. The sun is scorching down on us from the moment we get up until around 10 pm - just the way I like it. Some of the most beautiful sunsets I´ve seen and how nice it is to take the time each day to watch the sun fall over claras (light beer with fanta). I´ll post pictures soon of the amazing house Liza´s dad built up above the sea on La Plana. We haven´t left on our bike trip yet since we´ve been enjoying ourselves so much and we´re here with great company. But every so often we talk about planning our route. Looks like we´re modifying our plan - heading first to the Basque country in northwestern Spain then across the pyrenees to Bordeaux then to brittany, paris, and belgium/nederlands. We´re thinking we´d rather enjoy ourselves and keep with our new-found tranquillo lifestyle rather than boogeying all the way so we can make it to norway. Being here is reawakening a desire deep inside of me to live in a foreign country and to learn another language and assume another lifestyle. I always want to do what I can to pack as many lives as I can into this one and expatriating seems like a perfect way to do that. People in spain move very slowly, are mostly concerned with where and what the next meal will be, taking plenty of naps, and only strating their evening after midnight. Music here doesn´t start until after 2! I just missed a burningman-esque fiesta in Javea, but Denia´s fiesta begins tonight with fire and music and all generations gathering to celebrate life and release old spirits. I´m hungry and so is the proprietor of this internet cafe, so I´m gonna keep moving. I´ll check back in soon, but for now let me leave you with my new mantra that has come in handy biking up the steep and treacherous port road with fully loaded panniers:
Y no barrando; porque no peudemos alto.
-something like "and we don´t stop cause we can´t stop."
Y no barrando; porque no peudemos alto.
-something like "and we don´t stop cause we can´t stop."
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The time has come
For me to go. So long everyone. Thanks to everyone who has helped to push me out the door. Special shout to Nina BeeDeeKay - my employer, friend, surrogate mother, and ride at 4:30 tomorrow morning to SFO. Big up. Above and beyond. Wait...are you SURE you want to do this? To Wheel Girl bicycle shop on San Pablo between Performance and REI for fantastic advice and an unbreakable aversion to taking my money. (?) Elizabeth pointed out a lot of possibilities for me and gave me a better sense of what to pay attention to on the bike. Plus I kept having to go back so I got a good fill of Stone House olive oil tasting as I blew around town taking care of every last minute thing. Jesse's parents for turning me on to warmshowers.org. I'm sure I'll be singing your praises from a stranger's bathtub someday soon. To everybody who has bought me drinks this week - it has been a well-lubricated send-off.
I will miss
All of you.
I won't miss
The rest of em.
I will miss
Burritos
I won't miss
The taste of smog in my mouth. How can the Bay Area that supposedly has one of the most "conscious," "progressive," "gullible" populations in the country have so many people driving everywhere? When you ride along in traffic and you're scraping the soot off yer tongue with yer teeth you really start to wonder when people are going to stop driving. It's already too late anyways I suppose. (And Priuses are cars.)
I will miss
All the crazies that brave the bullshit and ride cause they wouldn't have it any other way.
I will miss
The comforts of home. Watching a movie in bed before falling asleep - Thanks to Marty for telling me his Netflix password. Ghostbusters was awesome.
I won't miss
Easy access to all my vices, which includes watching Ghostbusters for maybe the fourth time in my life when I'm definitely going to die someday.
I will miss
Being on stage.
It's now 12:30 am and I'm leaving the house at 4:30. Should I just stay up?
Check out my pack job and pics of my first loaded ride up onto Grizzly Peak...People kept assuming I was touring and asking me if I knew where I was going.
I will miss
All of you.
I won't miss
The rest of em.
I will miss
Burritos
I won't miss
The taste of smog in my mouth. How can the Bay Area that supposedly has one of the most "conscious," "progressive," "gullible" populations in the country have so many people driving everywhere? When you ride along in traffic and you're scraping the soot off yer tongue with yer teeth you really start to wonder when people are going to stop driving. It's already too late anyways I suppose. (And Priuses are cars.)
I will miss
All the crazies that brave the bullshit and ride cause they wouldn't have it any other way.
I will miss
The comforts of home. Watching a movie in bed before falling asleep - Thanks to Marty for telling me his Netflix password. Ghostbusters was awesome.
I won't miss
Easy access to all my vices, which includes watching Ghostbusters for maybe the fourth time in my life when I'm definitely going to die someday.
I will miss
Being on stage.
It's now 12:30 am and I'm leaving the house at 4:30. Should I just stay up?
Check out my pack job and pics of my first loaded ride up onto Grizzly Peak...People kept assuming I was touring and asking me if I knew where I was going.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
I never thought I'd be doing this
Creating a blog, that is. The bike tour around Europe - I've been ready and willing from the first time it was mentioned. Well, that's not really true. I had argued with Liza for many weeks that we should bike across our own damn country. And as far as "ready" goes - I didn't know the first thing about what fully-loaded bike touring would entail. And at this point, I probably still don't.
I'm less than a week from my flight to Spain and a little under two weeks from the first pedal pushes out the door of Liza's childhood home on the Plana in southeastern Spain alongside the Mediterranean. Our plan is an eight week trip from Spain to Norway - through the Pyrenees into France passing the Tour de France outside Barcelona, stopping at an eco village outside Limoges, riding along the coast of France then cutting back west to Paris where I was born 27 years ago and where my foreskin still resides in a flower pot in my godmother's window (or so I'm told), north-west into Belgium and the Netherlands where bicycles have their own roads completely apart from cars, Germany and Denmark (which we may wind up riding trains through), ferrying across to Sweden, wrapping around to Norway and then finding our way home to the Plana by a mix of bike and train, stopping to visit my cousin in Lyon on the way. Our route is undetermined outside that general course. We will be bush camping most of the way when there isn't someone to visit or a friendly stranger offering us a bed to sleep in.
Liza is already on the Plana relaxing in the sweltering sun, jumping off cliffs into the blue blue water of the Mediterranean, and spending time with her father and some really fantastic friends after a long school year. I can't wait to meet Liza of the Plana. And I am filling the rest of my state-side days getting gear together, preparing our house for the subletters who will be staying here and against the crackheads and 16 year old kids who have lived to fuck with us over the past year, tying up the loose ends of my real life, hoping (or not) that I get to go on as an understudy at Cal Shakes in this last weekend of Romeo and Juliet, working on my French, and learning as much as I can about roadside bike repair.
My hope for the trip - to fully feel the freedom of having everything I need strapped to my bike with my wits as my guide (for better or for worse), to make those special connections with people that happen when you know you'll never see each other again, to find places where there are no people and I can imagine that the world is new and all of humanity's mistakes and magic are yet to be made, to eat tons of food and drink lots of wine, that Liza and I will fall deeper into each other and face all of our challenges together with love, compassion, and wide eyes.
Not sure how much I'll be posting, but I'd like to get on once a week. I'll do my best to post pictures, though this is the first time I've owned a camera in my life. (Thanks, Hubert)
I've named this blog after my mantra for the trip, taken from a Basement Tapes song that to me is about being faceless and anonymous, new but with all of your wisdom, with nothing ahead but possibilities. And a measure of contempt for anyone or anything that ties you down. Might be hard to find that in the lyrics of the song - I think it's more how the song makes me feel when I listen to it.
"Lo and be-hold. Lo and be-hold.
Searching for my Lo and be-hold.
Get me outta here, my dear man!"
I'm less than a week from my flight to Spain and a little under two weeks from the first pedal pushes out the door of Liza's childhood home on the Plana in southeastern Spain alongside the Mediterranean. Our plan is an eight week trip from Spain to Norway - through the Pyrenees into France passing the Tour de France outside Barcelona, stopping at an eco village outside Limoges, riding along the coast of France then cutting back west to Paris where I was born 27 years ago and where my foreskin still resides in a flower pot in my godmother's window (or so I'm told), north-west into Belgium and the Netherlands where bicycles have their own roads completely apart from cars, Germany and Denmark (which we may wind up riding trains through), ferrying across to Sweden, wrapping around to Norway and then finding our way home to the Plana by a mix of bike and train, stopping to visit my cousin in Lyon on the way. Our route is undetermined outside that general course. We will be bush camping most of the way when there isn't someone to visit or a friendly stranger offering us a bed to sleep in.
Liza is already on the Plana relaxing in the sweltering sun, jumping off cliffs into the blue blue water of the Mediterranean, and spending time with her father and some really fantastic friends after a long school year. I can't wait to meet Liza of the Plana. And I am filling the rest of my state-side days getting gear together, preparing our house for the subletters who will be staying here and against the crackheads and 16 year old kids who have lived to fuck with us over the past year, tying up the loose ends of my real life, hoping (or not) that I get to go on as an understudy at Cal Shakes in this last weekend of Romeo and Juliet, working on my French, and learning as much as I can about roadside bike repair.
My hope for the trip - to fully feel the freedom of having everything I need strapped to my bike with my wits as my guide (for better or for worse), to make those special connections with people that happen when you know you'll never see each other again, to find places where there are no people and I can imagine that the world is new and all of humanity's mistakes and magic are yet to be made, to eat tons of food and drink lots of wine, that Liza and I will fall deeper into each other and face all of our challenges together with love, compassion, and wide eyes.
Not sure how much I'll be posting, but I'd like to get on once a week. I'll do my best to post pictures, though this is the first time I've owned a camera in my life. (Thanks, Hubert)
I've named this blog after my mantra for the trip, taken from a Basement Tapes song that to me is about being faceless and anonymous, new but with all of your wisdom, with nothing ahead but possibilities. And a measure of contempt for anyone or anything that ties you down. Might be hard to find that in the lyrics of the song - I think it's more how the song makes me feel when I listen to it.
"Lo and be-hold. Lo and be-hold.
Searching for my Lo and be-hold.
Get me outta here, my dear man!"
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