Day one
Monday, July 9th, 2012
Figueres, Spain to Besalu, Spain
6AM
We drove east into a flaming orange sunrise from Gabriel’s mother’s apartment in Salou. It was a 2 hour drive to Figueres to drop off our rental car and start the bike route which actually ended up taking 3 hours after Gabriel left his ATM card at a gas station. (After some debate we decided to go back for it rather than go through the hassle of canceling it, etc). He tends to lose his card at least once per international trip so I decided to be grateful that we were getting it over with early on.
It was blazing hot when we arrived at the dusty train station / Eurocar rental place in Figureres. We heaved our bikes out of the back of the rental car, locked the tightly packed lemon-yellow paneers (saddle bags) onto the sides of the bikes, and strapped our helmets to our heads. A beer-induced enthusiasm the night of Spain’s Eurocup win had inspired us to tie tall, plastic red and yellow Spanish flags to the back of our bikes and now they were snapping loudly in the hot, dry wind. Gabriel also suggested I don a safety-orange reflective vest over my lime-green bicycle shirt, and it being the first day and both of us a bit nervous about cars, etc., I conceded. Figueres is home to the biggest Salvador Dali museum in the world, which we had spent a whole day exploring last summer. This year, day-glo and flags a-flying, treacherously maneuvering through traffic in the congested city, we looked like an escaped exhibit. As I watched Gabriel swerve to miss hitting an old man who stepped out of a doorway, I thought: What in the hell are we doing?
Gabriel (the captain) had planned a relatively short ride for our first day. 23 kilometers from Figueres to Besalu, our destination, where I (hospitality coordinator) had booked a hotel for the night. The sun was relentless, but I was equipped with sunscreen (well, some had spilled out in my bag so in trying to conserve what was left I hadn’t actually applied it as liberally as I probably should). I also had a whistle on a string around my neck, pepper spray in my bike’s little fanny pack (cos you never know), and 2 bottles of water which were already heading towards lukewarm. I was good to go! Gabriel rode ahead of me, the GPS attached to his handlebars. My idea was I could alert him with the whistle if I were in any trouble because its impossible to hear a voice behind you when the wind and cars are rushing past. We quickly got out of the city and into the countryside– farmlands, mountains in the distance. It was pretty except for the times when a diesel truck would blow by and emit a cloud of exhaust in our faces. The ride itself (in terms of effort) was mostly flat and I certainly would have called it easy if it weren’t for the blazing heat, the wind constantly challenging my balance, and the weight of the paneers dragging me down. Still, it was exhilarating. Ahead of me, I could see by Gabriel’s body language that he was focused and serious, possibly asking himself as I was “Are we really doing this?” But we got to Besalu without a hitch. Its an absolutely beautiful village– narrow streets with medieval architecture, little tapas bars and patisseries. Totally charmed, we bumped over the cobblestone directly to our hotel (thanks to the coordinates typed into the GPS) and as we did I lost all feeling in my crotch for the rest of the day.
Our hotel was partly lovely and partly sucky. Its had the beautiful medieval architecture but its also had a medieval hot water situation. I let Gabriel take the first shower (what was I thinking?!) and then there was nothing but dribbling cold. The hotel’s “spa shower” advertised on the internet turned out to be a bunch of invisible holes in the the wall that shot out bursts of cold from all directions when you least expected it. Score: Semi-crappy hotel: 1, Ranjani as hospitality coordinator: 0. I opted for a sponge-bath in the sink (which oddly did offer hot water), and discovered I had missed my whole left calf when I had applied sunscreen that morning. Other than that I had to admit I was unscathed. Gabriel had been fighting we don’t know what (food-poisoning? stomach flu?) for a couple of days and now it had suddenly returned. So self-congratulation on our first successful day of riding was put on the back burner while we turned the AC on high and collapsed on the bed for a couple of hours.
We ventured out around 5pm, the sun still aggressively baring down. We sat at a cafe drinking glasses of icy water and just kind of stared out in front of us. A while later we recovered enough to take some pictures and eat a little bit. In the evening it cooled off enough to walk around and explore, although we were still in a bit of a stupor. We decided to make it an early night so we could get up at 7 and leave by 8 to avoid biking in the heat of the day. Gabriel warned me that the next day’s ride would be harder– 55 kilometers to Ripoll with “a big hill at the end.”
bicicletaloca 