bicicletaloca

Thursday, July 9th 2015. Sintra to Cascais. 25 km.

The shoe stuck. The road was well-paved and easy, through a pretty forest, with hardly any traffic. The weather was lovely. What is this, a vacation? There was one long uphill climb but we’re conditioned for it now. Gabriel kept saying “We are animals!” I thought he was saying “Where are the animals?” which was a good question cos there haven’t been very many this year. As we were climbing, a pick-up truck pulled over and motioned to us. I said: “What does he want?” 1) To tell us we’re not supposed to be on this road or 2) to offer us a ride for money. Nope. Neither. It was just to offer us a ride up the hill because he was nice (or planning to kill us. I can’t be absolutely sure because we didn’t take the ride). In less than 2 hours we were in Cascais at our hotel which was truly on the beach and beautiful. Like stunning.Gabriel, you win the hotel award this year. And–bonus–it has a balcony to hang clothes on because the truth is we’ve left every hotel room reeking like we killed something in it. (Well, the last one we left reeking of glue). Its not us exactly, we take showers every day. Its just so hard to keep up with the clothes. Never take laundry for granted! Something I’ve learned. Other things I’ve learned: 1) Never feel guilty about stealing from the breakfast buffet 2) You can fix anything with zip-ties and super-glue; 3) Ask directions. People like to help; 4) Make peace with the fact that you’re gonna fall on your ass. (Publicly and more than once).

Friday, July 10th and Saturday July 11th 2015. Cascais to Lisbon 42 km

Friday was another easy ride, except when Gabriel wiped out on his bike. But he’s fine, especially after being sweetly attended to by the pretty lady at the pharmacy in Lisbon who cleaned up the cut on his arm herself. Our last ride was mostly all along the ocean. It was flat! We got here in 2 hours. Lisbon is fun and bustling. Dennis Singletary flew in from Spain and met us for dinner at a restaurant called Fartas Brutas. (Brutal Farts). Now THAT’S a friend! And such a fun end to our trip. Oh, another thing I’ve learned. When the restaurant owner offers you that second complimentary glass of port after the meal: you CAN politely decline.And you should. You really probably should. This morning (Gabriel’s birthday), after several rousing cups of coffee, Gabriel got up and disassembled our bikes in preparation for our flight back to Barcelona tomorrow. Had to do it out on the street in the plaza cos there was no room in the hotel. That was yet another attraction for tourists to photograph apparently. Then we

walked around Lisbon, and met Dennis for lunch. More great company. More delicious food. No more delicious port, thanks. My flip-flop broke again on the way back from lunch today. But we’ve got the super-duper glue which should hold me over until I get back to the world of more footwear options. Gabriel is covered in cuts and my legs are covered in bruises from bumping the bike against them a few too many times but otherwise we are intact.  Tomorrow we’ll be back under the care and feeding of Dona Carmen for a day, then home.

Galicia to Lisbon, done. 🙂

Will double up tomorrow.

Last day of riding. Lisbon here we come!

Our morning ride out of Ericeira was easy and pretty, wearing our freshly clean bike clothes. The beginning of the ride was right over the ocean, then cut into rural roads with small farms. Saw two German Shepherds and one guy singing while gardening in his underwear. As we got into Sintra, things got more complicated as they always do. Its a beautiful city with lots of monuments, so hello tourists. You know you’re approaching a touristy city when they start using english words in the restaurant and bar names, i.e. The Happy Grill” and “The Chill Out Zone”. Tensions got high as we started to navigate small winding roads in Sintra. The sidewalks were crowded with tourists and the streets were tour bus after tour bus. Neither a good option for us on bikes. For some reason, we had invested our trust in the GPS to get us to our hotel. Bad idea. She was all wrong as usual and sent us an extra 10 km on a wild cobblestoned goose chase. In the middle of all that, as I was finessing a precarious and bumpy street to sidewalk transition on my bike, I twisted my right bike shoe to disconnect it from the pedal, and well, this is hard to explain. My foot and my shoe came with me, but the sole of the shoe stayed locked into the pedal. Basically the shoe just peeled off its sole. So that was a problem. I rode on (awkwardly) until we had asked enough people directions to hit the mathematical probability of actually finding our hotel. Gabriel was highly frustrated by the time we got there, in part because of getting lost again, and in part because of my violent shoe tragedy. I was just very happy to not have gotten hit by one of the tour buses stacked up and driving 3 miles an hour, cos that’s would be an inelegant way to go.

After we showered, first order of business was finding a place to buy a new pair of bike shoes. The hotel called a taxi to take us to the outskirts where they have a sports mega-store called Decathlon. Sounded promising. So our perfect english speaking cab driver (learned it watching American movies he told us) drove us out and waited as we ran into Decathlon and found the bike section. Decathlon had everything, bike shoes included, just not for women. Men’s only. Huh, really? No comment. So then we thought, glue. We’ll repair the shoe with super strong glue. So our taxi driver zipped us over to another mega-store just down the freeway called Leroy Merlin. Its the Portuguese Home Depot. And it is exactly Home Depot except they’re all lime green instead of orange. So we ran in there (meter still running) and found the super duper glue. Then ran to the checkstand lines. Couldn’t tell which was gonna be shorter so we each got in one. Gabriel had the glue in hand, but my cashier got free first, so in a burst of adrenaline he throws me the glue. But I don’t know he’s going to do that, and I’m turning my body at the same time, so I get pegged in the face / shoulder with the glue in its big plastic packaging, to the concern of everyone around us. People who don’t understand that in America its normal for husbands to throw things at their wives’ face I guess. Anyway, got the glue, then got lunch restaurant recommendations from our cab driver who was very much growing on us, cos now we’re all feeling like we’re on a scavenger hunt together.

Ricardo (cab driver) takes us to his favorite restaurant, to be served by his friend and favorite waiter, Renan. Renan, upon our arrival, opens the cab door for us and ushers us in, basically orders for us. And we know we’re being (charmingly) hustled a little bit, be we submit cos why not. I had the grilled seabass and it was I think the best fish I’ve ever had so no complaints at all. After that, we walked over to the Quinta de Regaleira, which is one of the major sites here, a castle in the gothic style if not technically of the gothic era. The fun part is there are all these gardens and caves that lead up to towers. The caves are these long dark drippy passages that are rather arbitrarily lit. So some of them you literally step into absolute complete blackness and have to feel your way through. Its all wet and stony and uneven. I’m thinking, how can they not light this? Don’t people fall down and sue them? I don’t get it. Plus its super creepy. Gabriel pulled out his phone and turned the light on so we could make our way through one of them, and as we came upon a woman coming from the other direction the light hit her face and the look of terror she had trying to get through that passage made us almost pee in our pants laughing.

Back at the hotel, we glued the sole back onto the shoe and stuck it under the desk leg for pressure. The fumes were a little much so we had to leave the door and window open for a while. At least no one is sick or sunburned today. Tomorrow we’ll see if the glue actually holds my shoe together. It only has to make it through 2 more days of riding so I’m hopeful. Cross your fingers.

Remember that scene in The Blair Witch Project when they lost the map and they tried to find their way out for hours before having the horrifying realization that they were back in the exact same spot where they started? That was a little bit of what was happening today trying to find our way from the train stop in Mafra to Ericeira, our destination.

We left Alcobaca around 9am and biked to the train station. No bike clothes, just bike shoes and helmets, a quick ride. Gabriel is doing much better today as it turns out. We should be back on track tomorrow. So we had about a half hour ride out of town to get to the Alcobaca train station. Its kind of one of one of those middle of nowhere train stops, at least I thought so, but this morning it was hopping with a whole class of kindergartners in little green hats, and a few old men. To pass the time, I took some pictures of the sunflowers there as the old men watched. I figured they were thinking “what is this crazy foreigner doing taking pictures of the sunflowers next to the bathroom at the train station?” But after a few minutes they got really into it and walked over and started pointing out shots I should take. When the train came, we had to get down to the last car. That’s where you’re supposed to be if you have bikes. And they give you like seconds to get your stuff and yourself on the train before they close the doors. So the doors opened and Gabriel ran down to the end with one of the bikes (cos of course we were on the wrong side) while I grabbed 2 of the panniers. Then I ran back and grabbed the other 2 panniers and one of the old men grabbed the other bike and ran it down to the end with me so we could get everything on the train in time. We just barely made it.

We went a few stops then had to change trains. The second train was late, the ride was long, blah blah blah. Mostly I stared out the window and daydreamed about finding a laundromat. When we finally got to our stop, Mafra, we were like hobos in some old movie where you have to throw your stuff off first then jump off. No steps, just jump it. We figured we had a 15km or so ride to Ericeira, and it would have probably been that if we could find the place, but we couldn’t. And everyone we stopped told us something different.

At this point you may be asking: Why not pull out the trusty old Garmin GPS? Cos she ain’t fuckin trusty, that’s why. Not in Portugal with their dozens of teeny tiny streets with 5-part names like Estra Da Fonte Boa Los Nabos or something like that. We were totally not prepared for a big deal ride. Hadn’t eaten, no water, no sunscreen on. There was not a soul at this train station, but we did see a cyclist riding around. We asked him how to get to Ericeira and he looked at us and kind of shook his head pityingly. The road goes “up up up” he said, and indicated it with his arm. So, preparing for that, we pulled over into the shade and each ate a banana that I had pilfered from the hotel breakfast spread that morning. We then began a 2 hour unplanned tour of Mafra and the surrounding towns as we asked for directions multiple times, lost each other once, almost got knocked on our asses by wind gusts, and circled the same roundabout like hamsters on a wheel. Eventually, following yet another person’s directions, we found ourselves at the bottom of a pretty good sized uphill climb. “I believe I’ll now have an energy goo”. I said. It was at least 3:00 by then and we had only eaten that banana since breakfast. We made it up the hill that eventually lead us into Ericeira. Its all blue and white and over the ocean, like Greece. Lots of American surfers here, and windy. Beautiful. Our room is not great for drying clothes but there is a little shared balcony on our floor and I figured–American surfers, they won’t care if I hang out my clothes. So I washed almost everything, finally. Cos we had to, trust me. I don’t care if anyone cared. I realized I sunburned my arms on our ride, but otherwise I’m unscathed and Gabriel is way better. Yeah! Tomorrow we go to Sintra.

This segment we had planned to take by train anyway so we’ve only missed one day of riding. We’ll see how Gabriel is doing tomorrow, but he hasn’t been able to eat much so riding may be off again.

The day was uneventful really. (What a boring fucking blog). We explored Coimbra on our bikes a little bit, but Gabriel couldn’t do much so we parked at a cafe until our train left at 1. The taking of trains is a bit of an effort. With the bikes. But I will say now that everyone we have come across has been exceedingly nice and helpful. And we have obtained some Imodium.

Please send Gabriel your love and healing wishes. I’m crossing my fingers we’ll be back on the bikes soon.

My dear loyal Blog Readers, I fear we may have come to a point in our story where the blog gets kinda boring. If you’re still with me that is. We did not lock foot onto pedal today. Gabriel is definitely down for the count. We think it may be some kind of cumulative heat exhaustion. The good news is, the train was easy to take here to Coimbra and our hotel is magnificent. Quinta Das Lagrimas. It was the estate of a 14th Century Prince Pedro who had a forbidden love affair. He was married off to a Spanish Princess but fell in love with one of her ladies-in-waiting and there are supposedly all of these secret passages where the lovers met. Its all very romantic up until the part where his father had her killed in the palace garden and then Pedro dug up her carcass, had her crowned queen anyway, and made everyone kiss her decomposing hand. But…the grounds are beautiful endless gardens. There are also plenty of woods surrounding it with hiking trails. Also a 9 hole golf course believe it or not. (Added later we’ll assume). I took a walk while Gabriel was napping and I still haven’t even covered it all. There is even the remains of an amphitheater. Then I sat in the restaurant by myself and when I asked for the check I could hear the waiter gently coaching the new young waitress on how to say “Here you are” in English. They thought I was out of earshot. He had her repeat it several times back to him. “Here you are.” Then when he thought she was ready, he sent her to me with the check. I actually heard her take a deep breath and walk over to me: “Here you is.” Is what it sounded like. It was very sweet. I can only imagine what I would sound like trying to say the same thing in Portuguese.

If Gabriel weren’t sick, this would be like a real vacation where you just lay around and enjoy a beautiful place. So that’s what we’re doing today.Tomorrow we have a planned train ride anyway, so another day of non-biking rest.

Well it wasn’t the best day.
Porto was beautiful as we rode off in the morning, the clock tower striking 10am as we crossed the river and out of the city. I looked back and the sun was glistening over the water. Its definitely one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been. The weather was lovely, we had a nice ride for almost 20 km on a bike path next to the beach. I could see the waves crashing, and beach-goers nestled in among the giant black rocks along the coast. Our first calamity was Gabriel’s gears. A cable broke so we pulled over and took about a half hour trying to fix it. It still wasn’t quite right but we continued on until we ran into another cyclist who offered to escort us to a bike shop that was supposedly close. Its not that the guy was lying, he was really sweet, its just the whole ride was over cobblestones so it felt endless. And hot. On the way there we passed a black cat which became my totem for the day. We and our escort cycled by her along with a motorcycle all at the same time and all that noise and bigness panicked her so after running back and forth for a minute, she just spazzed out and jumped super vertically like six feet up onto a wall for safety. It was an amazing jump I have to say. Cats do take care of themselves.
The bike shop fixed our problem, we found our way back to the road, and then just when we were a little too far to go back, Gabriel got a flat. Calamity two. It was a slow leak and we had already lost so much time that he decided to keep going and just stop to pump air in as needed. He would change it tomorrow. The ride was long and flat through farmlands and villages. We passed alot of competing fruit stands directly across from each other (cherries cherries cherries!) I saw my daily German Shepherd. There were lots of lone animals on this ride–lone horses standing in fields, lone goats, lone sheep. It was hot, but for me not too bad. The breeze while we rode was cooling. It actually felt hotter when we stopped. Gabriel was feeling the heat more. Also he had to work harder with that slow leaky tire happening. He was dripping with sweat. Finally around 2:30 after we’d passed plenty of perfectly good looking restaurants, we decided that we’d better finally stop to eat something but now there was nothing around except the Only Place that there was. Lesson: don’t wait til there are no other options. It was a roadside joint featuring a noisy, rough looking crowd. Lots of heavy men smoking on the porch who would not step to the side to let you set your bike down. It was no cooler in the restaurant than outside. The waitress (an adorable teenage girl actually) gave us two choices for lunch in her broken english: Chicken something (“like barbecue” she said) or “chicken-rice-they-take-the-blood”. Um, yeah, I’ll have the first one. Gabriel for some reason ordered “chicken rice they take the blood”. Turns out he didn’t really hear that part–he heard chicken with rice–but I thought he was just being adventurous b/c he’s Spanish and he does sometimes eat things I wouldn’t. Anyway, his turned out to be a stew that we didn’t touch, but we shared a couple bites of my rotisserie chicken and french fries and got the hell out of there. Calamity three. We still had 2 hours ride ahead of us.
On the outskirts of Aveiro I looked up and saw these giant birds overhead. Cranes, I figured out. I guess I’ve never seen them flying — or maybe I’ve never seen them at all. All I know is they were GIGANTIC. They were flying low, right over us. Lots of them. And their nests were everywhere. Huge. Those cannot be birds’ nests, I thought. They were these massive tufts in the radio towers and on top of buildings. We pulled over to pump Gabriel’s tire and I pointed them out to him but he was way focused on pumping his tire and finishing this ride. But I was tripping out. They looked like something out of Dr. Seuss. 
Once again as we neared the city we found ourselves in freeway-ville, but we managed to navigate around and get to our nice but rather weirdly super-modernish hotel that’s on a canal with gondolas going up and back, which is neat. But the hotel style is out of place, as is the major shopping mall that sits down the canal a bit. They have an “indoor pool and spa” on the bottom level of the hotel so we thought, let’s jump in the pool and cool off. Well, it really is just one of those days when nothing works right. Calamity four. They sent me into the women’s locker room, swarming with Russian women. I couldn’t figure out how the locker worked, or how to then get into the pool area. The Russian women watched me as I walked in and out the door of the locker room several times trying to figure out how to get to the pool. Everyone has to wear this little swim caps that they give you. Pool was clustered with people and warm like bath water, and so we try the jacuzzi–which is the exact same temperature as the pool. So silly. Gabriel by this point could not be more over this day. As we left I saw a Russian lady hanging out in her spa robe with an unlit cigarette hanging out of her mouth. In the room, I couldn’t figure out the shower head and literally flooded the bathroom with water because the bath /shower is not fully enclosed. Couldn’t figure out how to turn off the TV which Gabriel had left on when he burst into the bathroom and said “Fuck it, I’ll be in the bar!” He obviously couldn’t figure out the TV either. Between the bike cable break, the flat tire, the heat…he was done. 
The good thing though, is from the bar we could look out these giant windows over the canal and they had set up for what looked like a giant Zumba dance party. And many people (i.e. women) had turned out, everyone wearing neon colors. They blasted music and danced their asses off. My favorite is to watch the ones in the back who don’t really know the dance but are trying hard. One fat guy in a gondola stood up on the end of the boat and started dancing along with them. I was waiting for him to fall off. Oh, that took the edge off the day.
We had a nice dinner on the canal, but you have to work a little bit to find the old, charming area and get out of the shopping mall range. We fell asleep early but woke up to Gabriel not feeling well at all. We decided we’d better take a break from biking today and find a train station.

No official blogging today. Just eating. This city is enchanting. More pics to come. Wifi here not strong enough for uploads.

Today rest. Tomorrow ride. Happy 4th everyone.

LOVE

This morning I’m lying in bed all peaceful in the Grey Gardens place when I hear Gabriel say from the other room “We got a problem.” Apparently the back brakes on my bike had gone kaput. So we scrambled to find a bike shop. Our hostess was somewhat helpful, although I’d like to submit here that Portuguese sounds nothing like Spanish. I mean, when you read signs you can see that quite a few words are the same or similar. But for me when its spoken, I’m out. I get nothing. Gabriel gets more of it, but not really. Often its just best to go with English cos the young ones especially speak pretty well. It wasn’t a good day to not have brakes because we had a 75 km ride ahead of us. But we found the bike shop, replaced my brakes, got on our way, then got in a big ole argument about a bridge. I mean yelling argument. We were in a big intersection in Viana. There was a bridge. We had to cross that bridge. But first we had to figure out how to get on that bridge. Lots of one-ways and overpasses and a railroad track all there. And all kinds of traffic swirling around us. Gabriel: “Follow me, I’m gonna ask someone.” He asks someone who points us down to the water but in the meantime I’m like. “Its right there. I can see the entrance right there. We have to get to the other side of this giant median.” Gabriel, taking off on his bike: “No no! The guy said! We have to go down here!” Me following him: “But I can see the entrance, look! Its over there!” Gabriel: “But the guy said!” Me: “I don’t care what the guy said in a language we don’t speak! The entrance is RIGHT THERE!” And finally Gabriel looks and sees what I’m pointing at. So I lead us on and over the bridge and I was riding all hard in my angry victory–being right for once–and I rode so hard that eventually I had to pull over and wait for him and as he caught up and passed me I cackled in his face. (He laughed too). You just can’t stay mad. There’s no extra energy for that.

We rode about 75 flat kilometers through mostly countryside and farms. Passed lots of fruit stands – spilling over with cherries and potatoes particularly. Sometimes you’ll just see a sack of potatoes sitting on the side of the road. I guess they have extra. Lots of fields of corn and sunflowers.The riding weather was perfect. Warm sun, cool breeze. Saw my daily German Shepard. Also passed 3 ecstatic puppies trying to wriggle out of their enclosure. My totems. They had found a loose spot and they were eventually going to break through, free to roam their yard, but also in possible danger of getting into the street. That was how I interpreted the situation in just the few seconds I had riding by. I stopped my bike to consider whether I should intervene somehow, but I knew if I got anywhere near those puppies, they would wriggle harder to get out and that might not be safe for them. So I rode on, thinking about how every being has a deep inner unstoppable urge for freedom.

We stopped for lunch around 2pm because we knew if we didn’t, we’d get into Porto and be starving at the wrong time. So we had fish at little roadside restaurant, then continued on. Another hour, and then something happened. As we neared Porto, without warning, our lovely road merged into a freeway. I mean, for real we were literally riding on the shoulder of a freeway. Oh…this is not OK, I thought. We gotta get off this. We did. We found the fucking exit ramp, but you know, none too soon. So then we’re on this feeder road, trying to figure out what to do because the feeder road is just kind of a dead end thing that ends in some cobblestone and weeds. I’m thinking: its Call Taxi Time cos we are screwed. Suddenly, 2 Spirit Guides arrived in the form of 2 teenage boys. They were maybe 15, one kinda buff like a wrestler, the other gangly with braces. They were taking a shortcut to their bus stop and would show us how to cut across the freeway and get to the side streets that would take us into Porto. But not before I went ahead and fell off my bike in front of them. All I can say for myself is I was still stressed out about being on that freeway. So if you can picture the hillsides of unkempt grass that lead up to freeway overpasses, that is what the 4 of us were traversing. Pushing the bikes, and then heaving them over guardrails. That alone is a two-man job. They were lifting and carrying and leading us. Then back down a steep hillside and over another guardrail. They were so sweet. I don’t know what we would have done without them. They got us safely across the freeway and then ran to catch their bus, which I saw them just miss by seconds because they had taken the time to help us.

We got into Porto and now not wasting any time to get to our hotel cos I’m ready for this day to be done. But we’ve got to find our way to the city center. Fortunately in these Catholic countries usually all you have to do is look up for the Cathedral and starting pedaling toward it. We easily found the Grand Hotel. Which is very Grand Hotel Budapest in a way if you want to picture it. The Dalai Lama stayed here! (They love to remind us). And Porto is a beautiful city. I mean the architecture is stunning and colorful. You walk down all these tiny stairs that weave down to the riverfront which is all restaurants and vendors and people swimming. We walked down there for dinner and I did have a moment of: I don’t think I can walk back up these stairs. But you don’t have to cos there’s another way. (There’s always another way!) We met a couple of American women in our hotel that told us that its all about the jewelry shops here.”I know you probably can’t carry souvenirs on your bikes, but you can carry jewelry.” Right you are, sister. We have a rest day here. A day off. I think its just in time. My legs feel like jello and I gotta do some online bill paying.

Arrival time in Porto: 4:30pm ish.