Grumpy Old Men On Bikes

Much as I have enjoyed my little road trip, it occurs to me that what I have just done is the equivalent of picking up a van in Rome for a trip starting in London!  There were good reasons for doing it this way but another time it might be worth swallowing the extra cost of a 1-way rental. When it comes to organising cycling trips I am a perfectionist.  This doesn’t mean that the trips are perfect, just that I have to live with the daily frustration of knowing that they are not.  It is even worse when real human beings and real world situations come along and mess up my plans.  There is an old saying that “no plan survives 1 st  contact with the enemy” and my ‘enemy’ for this trip will be the riders (with all their human frailties), their bikes (which will break in ways that annoyingly won’t match the tools and spares I have brought) and the hotels (which based on my last trip here will be completely f*&%ing useless).    So, it was with...

I slept predictably badly, which meant I was back in the van and on the road at 4:30.  Most people might dread a 10 hour, 650 mile drive but I actually quite enjoy these road trips.  The van is comfy, quiet and powerful, I get my favourite tunes on the stereo and have a good old think about life.  The scenery varied between ok and very pretty and that also helped.  Despite being on the main I5 freeway, it snakes up into the hills in places and we topped out at about 4500 feet later in the trip.  Stopping for fuel provided a worryingly frequent break from the driving....she (for the van is a she) is doing 18mpg.  Even allowing for America's perverse decision to use gallons but make them 20% smaller than proper gallons, that's pretty poor. I am now in Roseberg Oregon, an unremarkable town expect for being home to Marty and Marisa, with whom I run 1 or 2 cycle trips each year.  Marisa is out of town but Marty shares my liking for a good beer...

British Airways once called itself the ‘World’s Favourite Airline’, a claim they justified by carrying more passengers than any other airline.  A bit like saying that rice is the world’s favourite food.  I’m pretty sure that many people sitting down to rice for the 3 rd  time that day would gladly swap it for a rib-eye followed by sticky toffee pudding!  BA’s fall from grace has been long and steady and they are now widely regarded as one of the worst of the long-haul carriers.  People like me fly with them because they hold about half the slots at Heathrow and so can offer a wider choice of destinations and departure times than the competition.  By every other metric they are now pretty shite.  My flight was in a tired old plane with a tired old seat, an IFE from the dark ages, a meal I wouldn’t feed to a dog and a crew that looked like they would be happiest if we all just pissed off and died.  I had splashed out on World Traveller Plus which bo...

For the last few years I have been involved with an organisation called Zwifters Against Parkinson’s (ZWAP).  This non-profit group was created to promote cycling as a highly beneficial therapy for Parkinson’s Disease; mostly via the online virtual cycling platform Zwift but also occasionally in the real world.  I have led a real world ride each year since 2023 but this year it is the big one...we are going to the US of A where we will ride to attend the World Parkinson’s Congress in Pheonix, Arizona.  Where better to start such a ride than 2100 miles away in Seattle?  We will ride the Pacific Coast Highway all the way to San Diego then turn left across the desert to Phoenix. We are an international group with riders from the UK, Ireland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US.  The ten with the largest testicles will ride the whole thing, with the remainder joining in San Francisco or LA.  We will roll into Pho...

The observant among you will have noted that there was no blog yesterday.  I can only imagine your disappointment as you sat waiting for the Facebook ping that alerts you that there is fresh bollocks to read.  The reason was simple....I didn't ride!  An intermittent back problem (which some have said is probably spinelessness) made itself known yesterday morning, and I know that the price of ignoring the 1 st  twinges can be high.  So while the boys did some hills I did some chills. Today the back was improved enough to get back on the bike and we decided to head back inland to Competa, but reversing our route from last time.  The forecast was poor but we felt we had to give it a go as it was our last day.  As we headed inland and uphill the temperature dropped and the sky got darker and 3 miles from Competa (and the top of a 10 mile hill) it started to rain....or rather we think it was raining there already and we just rode into it....

Our little 'locals' restaurant turned out to be full of gringos and doing a roaring trade.  Wherever we go we hear English spoken....sometimes by Brits but also by visitors from other countries who have to resort to God's own language to make themselves understood.  The Irish are well represented and yesterday they were out in force, easily identified by an impressive array of stupid green leprechaun hats and associated St Patrick's day paraphernalia (and a complete absence of suntan obviously).  The meal was simple but tasty and inexpensive and we are considering returning for a Paella before we leave.  This is a dish of such fiendish complexity that they require 12 hours notice to prepare it.  I have cooked a paella before and it IS a bit time consuming....but 12 hours? The promised overnight rain was nothing more than a couple of very light showers but the forecast insisted it wouldn't be properly over until noon, so we hunkered down...

Last night we saved our legs and dined at the apartment.  The spag boll made up for in size what it lacked in flavour and the others had the good sense to pretend it was delicious.   A couple of bottles of Lidl's finest vino tinto (€2.19 a piece) washed it down and it was a very chilled evening. As previously advertised, today was to be a rest day.  I suspect Plum was straining at the leash to get back in the hills but Nick and I have sore legs and needed a day doing nothing!  This was timely as I needed to do some work on my bike.  A series of unexplained punctures and a worrying bulge in the wall of the rear tyre indicated that some shopping was required.   Apart from buying and fitting the tyre and patching the blown tubes (a process that should have been simple but actually involved 2 more punctures and some very rude words) we did very little except have a coffee in the town centre then a leisurely lunch with couple of beers...

The blog has been mostly rant-free so far this trip...time to fix that.  We are in a country where you can buy a bottle of wine in supermarket for a little over a euro.  Three euros will buy something pretty decent.  The other night our Italian restaurant had nothing on the wine list for less than €20 and yesterday we passed a very ordinary bar which proudly announced that house wine was a mere €14!  The story with beer is similar....you can buy a litre in a supermarket for less then €1.5 but a large beer in a bar is usually €5 or more.  This is in marked contrast to our experience in arse-end-of-nowhere Spain last autumn; clearly there is a hefty 'tourist tax' on the Med coast.   Today we took the rental car so we could start a ride from along the coast.  Somehow, we achieved this without touching the cars either side of us, a manoeuvre involving much shunting a few millimetres forward then back with a dash of swearing for good me...

For most of my life I thought Flamenco was a type of dance for tall women in swooshy red frocks...then discovered that the term actually references the music they dance to.  The songs are delivered in an operatic style with dramatic overacting, lots of angst, wailing and clapping...a LOT of clapping  Since I am already widely known to be a bit of Philistine I may as well admit that I don't care for it.  The centrepiece of last night's village celebrations was what can best be described as 'rock flamenco'...in other words ordinary flamenco but delivered by a sort of Spanish Jon Bon Jovi in leather trousers.  Rock flamenco is just as shite as the regular stuff IMHO! This didn't seem to deter the locals who were 30 deep in front of the stage and doing an excellent impression of people having a great Friday night! Our Indian was very good, though we quickly realised that every single table was occupied by Brits and you can sort of see why the S...