So I had one week in Salou during which I managed to overcome jet-lag, eat obscenely, and sleep compulsively. I required of my legs no more exertion than getting up from the kitchen table to walk to the bed for a siesta, so lack of rest will be no excuse when we start riding. Gabriel and I stay every year with my mother-in-law, Carmen, the 3 of us stumbling over each other in her studio apartment on the beach like some telenovela reality show. Carmen is an energetic 85, speaks not a word of English, and breaks into tears at the drop of a hat. Every day we are there she counts the days we have left on her fingers, shakes her head sadly, and weeps: “Poco tiempo.” We hug her and tell her not to cry. “I cry every day,” she says, “my doctor says its good for me.” Every day she cooks a gigantic 3 course lunch and when I tell her I can’t eat any more she looks sadly, brokenly at Gabriel and says “Ella no le gusta el pescado.” “Si, me gusta, Madre. Esta muy bueno pero no puedo mas.” (This exchange has become a tradition between us). She nods, understanding, then after a few minutes: “Quieres un yogur?” “No gracias.” This generally goes back and forth as she lists literally every item in the refrigerator. “Quieres olivas? Quieres queso? Quieres un kiwi?” Until Gabriel slams his hand on the table and says “NO, MADRE!” Which breaks the tension and makes her giggle. Then we each take a popsicle and sit together on the couch in front of the fan watching the midday news until I get so food sleepy I crawl into bed for a warm, heavy nap.

In the evening when it cools down, Gabriel and I stroll on the beach, past the Senegalese men with their spreads of counterfeit Gucci bags and Ray Bans for sale, ready to sweep them up in a sheet and take off if the Guardia Civil show up. We have a glass of wine at our usual spot–Cafe Central with the tweaky French waiter– and watch the tourists (mostly Russian the last couple of years) transform as the week progresses from pasty white to bright pink as they smoke cigarettes and sip from giant blue tropical drinks. At 9 we go home and have Carmen’s gazpacho for dinner which is garlicky and tangy and delicious– and eventually all go to bed. (Us reading ourselves to sleep and Carmen whispering her nightly prayers on the other side of the partition). Right on schedule this year we had a few minor fiascos: the scratching up (to put it mildly) of the rental car necessitating a very spotty Skype call to Amex to make sure we’re covered); the losing of the apartment keys–with much dramatic back and forth between Carmen and Gabriel as to who had lost them, when, and how until they were found in a drawer (by me–hero for the day); Gabriel coming down with some kind of bug that made us very worried we wouldn’t be able to do the bike trip. Fortunately Carmen knows everyone in town so the pharmacist slipped us some antibiotics and he recovered. We visited my brother-in-law Javi and his family and this year he kept his clothes on. (My first year there he stripped naked and walked around the garden watering the plants). Another year he tricked me into eating pig’s blood. He loves to tease me and gets a kick out of my sassy come-backs (or more likely he’s just laughing at my broken and elementary Spanish). At the end of the week, on July 8th, we woke up at 4am to get to the Barcelona airport by 6. Carmen waved goodbye to us tearfully as we heaved our bikes into the back of the scratched and dented rental car…off now to put Easy Jet’s stated policies on bike carriage to the test– and hopefully to Geneva.