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.