Today was the opposite of yesterday. That’s one thing I love about these rides. You never know what each day is going to bring. We left around 10:45 cos we knew we had a short one today to Bayona (or Baiona)–alt spellings, I’m telling you. We found a beautiful coastal road, but that kept leading us down offshoot roads, so we kept getting lost. We asked directions 5 times and got 5 completely different answers, the last one resulting in a heated disagreement among the road workers we were talking to. I thought someone was gonna throw a punch. This constant direction-asking is going to be fun in Portugal, I’m thinking, where we technically don’t speak the language. So we ended up covering the same streets back and forth a few times.They were lovely streets though, just skimming the ocean.There were a few short but do-able climbs. And you know what, we’ve passed day 4 so physically its just a teeny weeny bit easier. Every year I’ve noticed that on day 4 my body just decides its getting in the game and we’re doing this. Or maybe certain pain receptors are shutting down with a plan to hand me a major bill in old age. Anyway, it was at one of our asking-for-directions moments that there were a couple of groups of people out on the street. And they’d informed us that we’d gone the wrong way so we had to turn around and go back up a pretty steep road. There was alot going on. I had to turn around and downshift. A car was trying to pull out. There wasn’t room for everything to happen at the same time. So guess what? Yes. I got flustered and fell off my bike. Some guy ran over to help me. I was fine. Then an old lady tried to offer me medicine for my cuts. I had no cuts. It was barely a fall honestly but it was a whole event. A whole neighborhood event. We finally got out of there and I howled laughing at myself doing that again. Gabriel has been laughing about it all day.

We finally got on the right road again. In the space of a couple hours I think we’d only gotten maybe 5 km from our starting point. We stopped at a bar to pee where they were playing Depeche Mode which was very homey and comforting. Then we checked out an old cathedral which was still sporting a plaque from the Franco (fascist) era, so that was not comforting. As we continued on, we got on what was basically a bike path by the sea: easy, simple, flat. The beach sand was the color of flan and the ocean was a stormy green. The sky was very pale blue with the sun just starting to insist its way through the clouds. It was a glorious ride. As we entered Bayona you could see a huge fortress on the cliff. A fortress which happens to be our hotel. The view is spectacular and you can walk all around the fortress wall and feel very Game of Thrones. The window in our room juts out over the ocean and I fell asleep to the sound of waves crashing.

Tomorrow will be tough. 80 km. Plus a ferry ride. Heading into PORTUGAL. (Also it might rain.)

Arrival time in Bayona: 1:15pm.

Footnote on Why:
A few people have emailed me and said Ranj–WHY do you do this? It sounds awful! And I guess that’s my fault because I complain so much in this blog. The blog is my outlet so you get to read every self-pitying detail. Sorry about that. But here’s an explanation.
1) Adventure. I love not knowing what each day will bring. I partly blame my parents for this because I had a somewhat unconventional upbringing. And we travelled alot. So its all their fault for setting my adventure bar pretty high.
2) The satisfaction of achieving a goal. Like: lets bike to Lisbon! And then actually doing it. There are so many goals I set during the year that kind of just fall to the wayside. If I can do this at least I’ve achieved one.
3) Its just a practice. Like some people meditate or hold a yoga pose. Its hard, but you do it so you can get better and stronger. I don’t do it for pleasure, although hopefully there is pleasure surrounding it. If you know me, you know I enjoy plenty of comfort and hedonism in the rest of my life. These yearly trips are not intended for that so don’t worry. The intention is simply to grow and to see details I would have otherwise missed. By the way, please feel free to quote me on all this tomorrow when I’m suffering again.