CEBToD: Day 1

Hoo boy. What a day. I think I speak for my entire body (and nerves) when I say: biking is haaaaaaaaaard.

We started out in the morning with a delicious breakfast of lots of jamon. Dear god, the Spaniards love their jamon!!! Both Dan and I woke up in the middle of the night and had a hard time sleeping after that, so we got like an effective 6 hrs of sleep. So we were a little exhausted, but excited to get going. We ended up leaving our bike boxes, the handlebar bag I´d bought, and a bunch of random crap in the room, in an effort to lighten our loads. Poor hotel staff... and poor Dan´s credit card for the charges they´ll likely slap him. ehhehehe.

We loaded up the bikes with the panniers and trunk bag... OMG were they awkward to ride. There´s so much weight on the back (30 lbs or more) that the front wobbles like crazy when you´re going less than 10 mph. eeeep. But we got moving, and once we were moving you didn´t really notice the weight.

We got out of Barcelona pretty easily (though not without some false turns into dead-ends or randome construction sites), and then rode on the shoulder of a coastal highway for about 30 miles. That part was great... it was pretty, the cars were great about not hitting us, some guy´s engine exploded in front of us at one point, and we kept hydrated and fed. Then we turned inland, headed for our day´s destination at Ginoa.

So. The entire day was 65 miles. That´s a metric century, and ties for the longest ride I´ve ever done. The first 30 miles were fine, and I could have re-done that part pretty easily. Except that´s not what we did... instead we got to do rolling hills for the next 10-15 miles. I have a hard time climbing hills, esp when I´m not trained up for them, and generally not well'rested, and am carrying an additional 35 lbs around my bike. Oh, and it was all along a highway where the speed limit was 100 kph. And there was construction at points, which ate the shoulder. I won´t belabor the point, but let´s just say I was really worn out, cranky, and just generally nervous that the wind or my weakening body would cause me to swerve into the highway and be killed by some random Peugeot. That didnt´happen, thankfully, but I´m really hoping that sort of road won´t be the standard for the rest of the trip.

¿Did I mention Dan and I named our bikes? (haha spanish question marks!) His is named Puig, which is a word all over Catalunya tho we have no idea what it means. Mine´s named Brett Favre (pronounced Fav-ruh, like the French would). Brett´s been treating me real well... he´s a good ride.

So anyways, we finally got to Ginoa around 4ish. Once I can upload my pics and video, I´ll paste one in here explaining my special move when we got here. Let´s just say I did end up injuring myself, in a totally idiotic way.