The Claire went over the mountain

The Claire went over the mountain,
The Claire went over the mountain,
The Claire went over the moun-tain,
To see what she could see.



And got really tired. And thirsty. And hungry.

That morning Our Fair Heroine had woken up at 5:20 in order to have plenty of time to get dressed and drink tons of coffee. Minutes before leaving the house she had grabbed her handy-dandy pump with pressure gauge and psyched herself up to not deflate the tires completely before figuring out exactly how to attach the damn thing to the valve. When she started wheeling the bike out of its home under the front window she noticed that the computer was a little crooked. This was nothing new. It seemed like after every time the cleaning lady came the little plastic mount was a little off-kilter in its zip ties. But this time, the mount and everything were snugly in their place. 'What the...?' she thought as she examined the little machine (which has no release lever, and therefore is a permanent fixture on her handlebars), as it came off in her hand. Two of the three little hooks that secure the computer in place were broken clear off. *tick, tick* they went as the little pieces of plastic fell off the back of the apparatus and onto the floor. Claire hates cleaning ladies. This comes from a deep-seated trauma from when she was little and had to clean up for the cleaners and her little 9-year-old mind seized onto the irony of the situation. But this cleaning lady is special. She comes in like a hurricane, eats the food in the fridge, takes a shower, watches TV turns the radio up loud and starts singing and dancing, and cleans the house like a natural disaster. A few weeks ago, somehow, this Lysol diva managed to tear the oven door completely off, where it stayed until Wednesday when we had to call in the technicians. The girlfriend fled to the kitchen to look busy while Claire launched a tirade about, "I don't care that you feel bad, I don't care how long she's been cleaning this house, I don't want that woman in this house anymore! This is a 175 euro piece of equipment!" I mean, what the HELL does she do to fuck the thing up so much? How do you break off a bike computer if you're not the rider of said bicycle? It didn't make sense. Claire did the best she could with superglue and walked out the door. The day was off to a good start.

The thought crossed her mind to give up this stupid cycling business. It's too hard. She kept dropping off the back, for she had gone out with a different group who seem to have motors in the backs of their Orbeas and Cervellos and Treks. She wanted to play the girl card, but there was a girl with a fatter ass than the Claire's way up there in the front of the group keeping up with the boys and chatting.

With the Tour de France starting in 1 week, all the talk was about that. Here are some oppinions (names invented because I don't know anyone's name):
Claire: Since they're busting everyone for drugs, there won't be anyone to do the Tour. Maybe I should sign up.
Pepe: It's all the Americans' fault. If it weren't for them, cycling wouldn't be getting such a bad wrap.
Manolo: It's not fair, how come cycling's getting all the bad publicity? Why don't they test people in soccer or tennis. What do you think Rafael Nadal's taking? Nothing but a traditional Mediterranean diet?
Miguel: Indurine was all juiced up too. Why do you think he retired? He knew he would get cought so rather than do his last tour clean and suck he dropped out.
Pedro: And let's not pretend that Armstrong was just genetically gifted!

She also found out that a guy that she called Patrick in a previous post is actually named Dave. He isn't even from Ireland as she thought. Coming back into Barcelona there's this one chunk where you come into a 6-lane free-for-all where you have to change lanes a bunch of times in the middle of tons of traffic. She turned to David Not Patrick and said, "Can I ask you a favor?" "Sure." "I hate this part, don't leave me." And David, not Patrick sat behind her and signaled to the cars and didn't leave her behind on the last little bumps. And she didn't die, at least not yet.

She arrived home after 125km (which was supposed to be 10 more), 2,500 calories, and a full gallon of water. She wanted to curl up in the corner and whimper. You know how when a little kid gets really tired they just start crying for no reason at all? She felt like that.

Road rage

Rush hour: nobody likes it, but if you're fortunate enough not to work a 9-5 job usually you can avoid it, right? Depending on your city, rush hour starts roughly at 8 until 9:30, then picks up again somewhere around 5:15 until 6 or 7. The key term being depending on your city. For the life of me, I can't find that mid-day lull in Barcelona. Yes, okay, I understand that I live in a major metropolis with 16,000 people per square km and all those people have to go somewhere sometimes. But since my schedule has opened up with the end of the school year I've been trying to get out more on my bike, but as far as I can tell, there's no break in rush hour (except maybe for 5 minutes some time between 11:02 and 11:07 in the morning). Why? This crazy siesta idea that they have. See, the standard 9-5 work schedule is actually from 9-7 here with 2 hours from 2-4 to go home for lunch. That's the idea. But there are variations on the theme: some people go to work at 8 and have lunch from 1-3, others go to work at 10 and have lunch from 3-5, some work intensive schedules and finish work at 5, or 6, or 3 o'clock. That extra time in the morning when things are more quiet is when the trucks do their morning deliveries - just stopping and putting on their flashers when and wherever they feel like it. With all these extra mini-rush hours I can't find a time when the streets aren't crammed with commuter traffic, kamakaze mopeds, homicidal taxis, drunken truck drivers, and hundreds of busses. And then there's the construction.

So yesterday, against my better judgement (do I have better judgement?), I decided to take my bike out at 5:15 in the afternoon. I had to go more than 5 inches, so there was no way to avoid some sort of central artery traffic. I climbed up my usual hill without any major incidents other than having to out-sprint a tourist bus. At the top I decided to ride down to the other side for a little extra work. I don't usually do this, but it wouldn't be the the first time.

Do you remember how I hate descending?

Damn, that hill was steeper then I thought, and since it was technically OUT of Barcelona, the streets were paved a lot worse. And there was no shoulder. You know the kind of road where the white line on the outside of the road sometimes disappears because there's not cement to paint it on anymore? It was like that. So, as usual I came to the conclusion that I was going to die. I didn't though, until this car came up behind me. I was going 47kmph, 3kmph under the speed limit, which shouldn't be a problem, especially on such a windy road. But still there was this car growling up my butt for most of the way down which made me much more nervous and I panicked a couple of times coming around corners. Panic, that's exactly what you're NOT supposed to do. And here began the "I should have stayed home" inner monologue. What were you thinking? Do you know how many accidents there are on this road every year? You shouldn't be doing this until you get your brakes fixed. Relax and slow the fuck down, who do you think you are?! Why won't this car frigging PASS me? Leave me alone! Aaaaah! On top of that there were mopeds buzzing by me with that urgent agressive noise of acceleration with a crappy muffler and cars were swinging around bends coming in the other direction dangerously close the the middle line. I came down the final straightaway clocking 60kmph and turned around to do it again.

And here we go again, 7k's back up to the top with sweat dripping out of my helmit and my front wheel swerving sometimes dangerously close to the soft shoulder. And here I started thinking about the run that awaited me when I got back to the bottom. I did not feel like running, not that my legs were trashed, but I couldn't think of a rout that wouldn't bring me through a million traffic lights and past thousands of tourists with their necks craned looking anywhere but where they were going. I hate running. I am not a runner.

Over the top and coming back down I was back on familiar turf. I knew this descent and it didn't scare me much. But now there were more cars driven commuters who work over the hill coming home. Beware of commuters, they are tired, hungry, and since they drive the same rout twice daily they think that it can do them no harm, even if they go 30 above the speed limit. I came to the biggest bend in the road, a place where they built a divider a couple of years ago because of all the accidents that were happening there, and started to drift off the shoulder to get a good line (it's a right-hand turn so I was on the inside), and a car started to pass me. This silver VW Golf moved right up next to me just as the turn began and forced me back onto the shoulder. In anger, frustration, and a bit of fear I yelled out loud (in English) "DON'T FUCKING PASS ME HERE!!!" Coming out I turned to give a dirty look at the driver and found myself face to face with a 3-year-old staring at me with fistfulls of some kind of gooey candy. Behind him was a very calm-looking soccer mom type with all kinds of sparkley jewlery all over the place. I shot her daggers with my eyes as she kept driving without even so much as looking at me. Bitch.

Then, farther down the punks on mopeds started to pass me. Their MO is to fly past at about a billion miles an hour on the wrong side of the road with their motors screaming, their skinny little 14-year-old elbows sticking out from oversized t-shirts which are flapping in the wind and some hoochy with tacky, shiny clothing hanging on to their hip gurtle with big hoop earings sticking out the front of her helmit. These kids get out of school at 3 o'clock and they go up to one of the vista points to drink beer all afternoon and blast house music into the mountain air. Every once in awhile I get the pleasure of seeing one of these kids pulled over by the cops and under that flash helmit is usually hidden an attrocious mullet.

Anyway, back to me risking life and limb trying to get back home. I was in the last and steepest kilometer before coming back into the city when I came around a bend and had to grab my brakes as hard as I could. There, feet in front of me was a line of cars that stretched as far as the eye could see. Damn. I hunkered back into the shoulder and started dodging rearview mirrors. I came around another bend and there, in MY space on the side of the road was a pair of moped punks blocking my path. I made sure to heave a big sigh of disapproval as I clipped out and maneuvered past them. A little farther up where the shoulder was particularly narrow homeboy's little friends were waiting for him, in MY SPACE again! As I started my sigh song and dance again and began to pass the first, he pulled away. That dick! I had to stop and clip out so he could pass. Then, as I was coming up on the other trying to find my clip, he did the same thing. She's coming up on my back wheel and... NOW! Vrooooom! Ass hole. 'Have fun pumping gas for the rest of your life,' I thought. 'I hope your hoochy girlfriend gives you siphalis.' Then I felt a bit better.

By the time I got home I was so over being out in the street. I was supposed to run for an hour, but come on, who am I kidding? I hate to run. I hate it. I have no talent for it, I go slow, my butt sticks out and won't stick back in no matter what I do with my abs, and people stare at me. Fuck that and fuck them. Fuck everyone who has ever gotten in my way. So when I got home I gave a dirty look to my running stuff that was sitting there innocently. I walked right by the whole set up, walked into the kitchen and made myself a nutella sandwich. As I was chowing down thought about how I should probably never get a car or a moped in this city. I think maybe I have a little problem with road rage.

Nudity is a privelage, not a right!

I don't usually swim on weekends. Weekends are for long efforts and rest. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at the geriatrics hour is my usual pool time. But today, uncharicteristically, Silvia and I went to the pool.

I wasn't really feeling a tough workout, so I planned to do a workout that my college swim coach taught us, called roulette. If you're in the kind of mood I was in today, it's more like Russian roulette. Here's how it goes, first you write the numbers 0-9 on a piece of paper, then you put a different set next to each number like this:
0. 300 25fast/25easy/50f/50e/75f/75e
1. 3x200 descending
2. 6x25 sprint
3. 3x100 IM
4. 300 catch-up
5. 100 kick
6. 400 pull
7. 300 25 right arm/25 left arm/50 swim
8. 1000 straight
9. 200 IM with fins (dolphin kick on breast)
Then you take your handy-dandy stopwatch and start then stop it. The number that's in the 100ths of a second spot (the one that there's no way that you can rig it) is the set that you do above. For example, if you stop after 2.48 seconds, you do #8, 1000 straight. It's a fun way to mix up a bunch of different kinds of workouts. Anyway, my workout is beside the point...

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in late June I was expecting to see a different crowd than the granny soup that I usually swim around in. We tried to go around lunch time to avoid the families with CHILDREN so I could at least pretend that the pool wasn't filled with pee. No such luck though. There were kids everywhere, doing belly flops off the blocks, whacking eachother with noodles, and hanging off lane lines. "Pedro!" a little girl kept yelling as she hucked a kickboard at her brother's head.

The Sunday afternoon crowd had different screwballs than I was used to. One woman in the lane next to me was doing yoga at the bottom of the pool. When she got out a man took her place who was SO hairy I wondered if since bathing caps are mandatory in this pool, it was okay to make him wear a wetsuit.

There were also several women in bikinis that I couldn't tell if they were 4 months pregnant or just too fat to be wearing a bikini. There were several men in speedos with the same problem.

... And of course there were the sun bathers, inanimate people laid out on lounge chairs cooking in the sun like so many rows of kebabs on the grill...

As we were staking out a spot to leave our stuff we had to step over a particularly attractive girl lying face-up wearing nothing but a itty bitty, teeny weeny bikini bottom. She didn't have that bad a rack. "Are you allowed to do that?" I said to Silvia. "I mean, I understand on the beach - sorta - but here?" And then, there, on the other side of the pool, was a veritable panorama of horrible, naked tits! Several of the (possibly?) expectant mothers had their shapeless boobs flouncing to each side, falling where they may as the women did their best impressions of chalk outlines. And then, at the far end of the group, the Queen Beastly Breast of the bunch, a woman in her mid-sixties with enormous tits hanging close to her hip bones, wearing only what looked like a men's speedo bottom, crouching and squtting in the corner with her ass to her audience searching for something in her bag.

What is it about European women? The second they see water and a place to lie down, OFF goes the top. And the older or more overweight they are, the less they can control themselves. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of pride in one's body and all that, but come on!!! There are children about! It's not about shame, it's about modesty. If you've got it, flaunt it. But if you ain't got it, please don't get revenge by flaunting it anyway. Thank you.

A shoutout to Javi

Everyone, say hello to Javier Albo! He's a student of mine who, in the last minutes of his last lesson, admitted that he's been stalking me on the internet since February. He told me one day that his name, Javier Albo, doesn't come up when he does a google search. So, Javier Albo, this one's for you, now you're on the internet!

By the way, Javi is going to be coming to Wisconsin for a month and living with a family there. Any suggestions for him? Any of you midwesterners want to give him any love?

"Up, up, up to the top of Mt. Crumpet"

This weekend I did the "3 Nacions" (3 guesses on what that means) bike race in the Pyrenees. The race gets its name because you start in Spain (Puigcerda), go through Andorra, and finally come through France before crossing back into Spain for the finish. But there's one catch, the frigging Pyrenees! Actually, the race is pretty easy except one climb in the middle: to the summit of Port d'Envalira, the highest mountain in the Pyrenees, about 1,700m (5,577 ft) of altitude gain over 30k (18.6 mi).


Most of the course is downhill, meaning that the first 70ks went by like a breeze, and the final 40k's you were able to hang on... just barely. They did a good job on the web site of warning you of what you're getting yourself into, but really, little blue spikes on my screen don't mean that much to me...


Left: full course profile

Bottom: profile of the main climb (green = <4%, blue =" 4-8%," yellow =" 9+%)" style="text-align: center;">

Let's just remember that I've been really quite inconsistent with my training this spring, so even though this was marked as a B+ priority race in my book I was really unprepared. This is not to make excuses, merely to explain background information. This past week was exam week for all my kids, so I've been working double on top of that. Let's just say I was "well rested". So I came into this looking only to survive, which is fine because I still have a lot of that adolescent "I can do anything, who says I can't?" arrogance about me. But then 2 weeks ago I heard one from the club talking about it. A goofy guy named Josep Maria (a different Josep Maria from the one you'll hear about later) who's a strong cyclist and always has a smile on his face said, "Dude, you're climbing that thing forever, and I thought it was never going to end. So when I got to the top there and the people are yelling Allez, allez cuz you're almost in France at that point, you know? I have to admit, man, I started to cry. It was just so emotional to have gone through that and it was finally over..." And I'm thinking, oh shit! I decided to approach the thing remembering that it was an important race and that I'd finish at all costs, exhausted, ripping it if I could, so I'd have nothing left at the finish. Oh, if I only knew...

The first 70 km, in fact, the first half (distance-wise) was a breeze, we were averaging something like 40kmph and rolling down through the mountains
like it ain't no thang and my biggest concern was that somehow we'd wound up in a group of about 30 people. Bikes were flying all over the place, into my personal space and within inches in front of me. That makes me really nervous, especially when I don't know the guys. I really enjoy taking off on the downhills, I don't know why others don't do the same. Zoom! Zoom! I went down the downhills. At one point David (my Jimminy Cricket) cought me and said, "Why is it that when you're with the club you hang back, but when there are others around you take off?" It was kind of accusatory and I wanted to be defensive, but I watched myself for awhile. I think I'm just really scared of groups, and if I can get away, I will!

Coming in about half an hour from the border with Andorra it started to rain, then it started to pour. When we passed through customs at the border David said jokingly, "Do you have anything to declare?" "Yeah," I said, "I'd like to declare that my chemie is soaked!" Squelch, squelch went my crotch, squelch, squelch responded my shoes.

We stopped at an aid station where they had nothing but melon, chicken, and ham sandwiches. I was already getting cold, and decided to go on without the boys. At least it had stopped raining. And the road went Up, Up, Up. And up. Fuck. I thought this was just going to be slow and steady, but I was on my double small chainring and I had to stop at a gas station to catch my breath. Miguel Angel stopped with me. "Listen," I said, "it'll be better to leave me alone cuz I'm gunna be pretty bitchy from here on up." Why wouldn't anyone listen to some sound advice like that? "I like to see you bitchy, women are more attractive when they're bitchy," he said. I think Miguel Angel gets a kick out of seeing me react to some things. But if there's one thing I hate almost as much as being in a big group, it's climbing with someone in front of me talking to me and cheering me on. I don't want to know how well I'm doing, I don't want you telling me what gear to be in, I don't want you telling me to slow down, and I DEFINITELY don't want you there getting in my way either to the side or in front. It's irritating and it distracts me from my inner monologue. I feel much stronger sitting there repeating "You'll-get-there-even-tu-a-lly" with every petal stroke than someone going, "only 3k to go!", especially when there's only 1 or more than 5k to go. Leave me the fuck alone and I'll get there eventually! If you're so bent on waiting for me, just go to the top and take my picture when I get there! No, no, but David and Miguel Angel had to leap frog babysitting me. At one point David was there and said, "You see that white building? That's where we're going." "I don't want to fucking know! I don't want to know anything. Go away!" I said. Later, I stopped at the side of the road to rest. Miguel Angel stopped with me. "I can give you a little push now and then," he said. "I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear you and I don't want you touching me or my bike! Leave me alone! I want to do this alone." I think David got a little butt-hurt because he did eventually go on, but Miguel Angel stayed pretty close (but not within striking distance) and I didn't even so much as look at him in the last 5k. Here you can see a picture of me climbing alone, what you can't see is that in my head my mantra has changed to "go-to-hell-go-to-hell!" I mean, look at the incline in some of these pictures, then imagine 2 and a half hours of that!



I was cold. It was 8 degrees C (46 degrees F) at the top, and at some points I couldn't feel anything below the knees. I hadn't felt my feet since Spain. Being at the highest point for millions of billions of miles around, the wind was BRUTAL, it must have been 100 miles per hour because a couple of gusts came along and I felt like I was almost swept off my feet! Also, the wind carried tiny little particles of sand that stung my face, arms and legs. Moments before this picture was taken I was standing with my back to everyone to keep my face from being pummelled by a sand blaster. Look in the lower right-hand corner and you can see the camera's wrist strap flapping away in the wind. Can you see how miserable I am? I'm crouched over like that because I'm shivering. I stuck some newspapers under my shirt to cut the wind on the descent, but I was scared because of the wind and those crazy descents like you see in the Tour filled with dramatic hairpin turns. I couldn't feel my hands and I was shivering, and didn't feel so confident about my bike handling skills at that moment. Miguel Angel and I stepped into a gas station to warm up and David stayed outside to wait for the others. "Hey, we're still in Andorra!" said Miguel Angel. What does everyone buy in Andorra? Cigarettes! Andorra's one of those tiny little places whose economy is based on people from other areas coming in to buy items like cars, cigarettes, and booze that are cheaper in Andorra where they're not heavily taxed (same as Oregon or New Hampshire). The guy in the gas station looked at him like he was crazy as he stuffed the carton into the front of his jersey and tucked it into his pants.

Then we started down the hill. It was windier than all get-out. Wind is stronger in France than it is in Spain, I guess. I was hanging on to my brakes like my life depended on it, and the wind was blowing at me like it was time to go back to Spain and God was giving me a push. There was one point when I let go of my brakes and coasted past a sign that said 8% grade, I looked down at my speedometer and I was going 25 kilometers per hour (15.5 mph). But that’s not to say the wind was saving my life the whole way down. For every turn that the wind was to my face, I would go around a bend and it was pushing me along, sometimes straight into a curve. The most frightening part of all of it was that they didn’t have guard rails, just these stubby little stone nuggets about 8 inches tall next to giant thousand-foot drops to the green, lush valley below. The wind was grabbing me and carrying me off to certain death. Now I don’t like to be dramatic, but you know how it is when you’re totally terrified and you know that, although remote, the possibility that you might actually die is real? Panic is not good for descents.

My bakes were making funny noises, like maybe there wasn’t too much rubber left and just when I thought they weren’t slowing me down any more and that I’d never stop if need be, suddenly I came around a bend and there was a whole line of cars, all stopped. ‘What a strange place for a traffic jam,’ I thought as I squeezed my brakes like there was no tomorrow. We wove through all the cars until I saw the toll booth of a border crossing. For a minute we had to stop because there was a car pulling aside for inspection blocking our path. The cyclist that came across the traffic jam at the same time as us went through the border as soon as an space to pass through opened up. Miguel Angel (with his cigarettes hidden away in his jersey) and I (as an illegal immigrant) stopped with our guilty consciences. The French customs official smiled at us and waved us a friendly “come on through”. “Adios,” he yelled. Safely out of hearing distance Miguel Angel yelled, “Adios suckah! I had a pack of cigarettes in my shorts, chump!”

Suddenly, once we were in France it was finally warm again. The terrain flattened out and I could concentrate on what was important, like how tired I was. Maybe I hadn’t eaten enough, maybe I was out of shape, maybe a 30k climb is a really long frigging way, maybe I just wanted to go home, maybe it’s that my feet were still sopping wet. But for whatever the reason, the heat or the shoes, I sat there in France with the woe-is-me blues. Okay, that was lame, but I’m a big Dr. Seuss fan and one of my climbing mantras is “up, up, up to the top of Mt. Crumpet, the Grinch went to the tip-top to dump it” (or something like that). Anyway, I guess I’d left it all at the top of the mountain, and although nearly everything was downhill from here on out I was getting worried. I didn’t want to leave anything out there, but the last little bit of “leaving nothing out there” was a bit too much to bear at the moment. I clicked over to 120km on my odometer and I still hadn’t seen any sign that said Espagne and I was beginning to wonder if they’d done that thing that they do so many times that I’m suffering: mis-measure the 140k course. We got to 125 and I still hadn’t seen any sign of Spain, or even the name of the town where we were staying. Spain is really good about marking how far away France is, but the only thing that I could find were signs to Barcelone - really fucking far away. 130… 132… Why does it still say gare and not estacio? Why are they selling crepes and not bocatas? 138… And finally we crossed a little bridge, and after all the hoopla of crossing in and out of Andorra there was only a tiny little bridge over an even tinier little stream on a country road and the word España with a circle of stars around it. And here we come into Puigcerdà, but the fun wasn’t over yet. We still had this tiny, itty-bitty little minuscule climb to come up to the finish. It was a climb that I’d done in my small, but not mini chainring this morning when I wasn't warmed up. But still, it took my teeny-weeny chainring and my biggest gear to get to the top of the darned thing. Another guy was riding with Miguel Angel just ahead who asked, “What’s that in your jersey”. “Cigarettes” said Miguel Angel. “We boutght ‘em in Andorra, and that chick behind us got a liter of vodka and put it in her camelback.” “Really?” asked the guy and looked back. There I was weaving around trying to get up the hill. But I got there, and Miguel Angel and I had a fake sprint across the line. Really, he let me go, but we crossed in that order, Claire and Miguel Angel, boom boom! “What are your numbers?!” a race official yelled. “206 and 208”, how sweet that we remembered each other’s numbers and yelled it more or less at the same time!

Long ago Silvia had started calling, a sure sign that I was taking a long time (it wouldn’t be the first time she called the police to find out if I’d been hospitalized when I didn’t show up right at the time I said). I was fiddling with my phone a bit trying to call her, then I made my way to the food table. There was no food left (we’d taken that long) but Miguel Angel managed to score me a lemon Fanta and Lluis (who had finished an hour before) gave me a granola bar.

They were handing out finishing certificates fresh off the presses and Miguel Angel, who didn’t have a jealous girlfriend left alone in a hotel for 8 hours, had already gone to pick up his. “Hey, they’re giving you another trophy,” he said. “Yeah right.” But then there was this guy sticking a microphone in my face with a trophy in his hand, “And here’s Claire xxxxx, number 206, let’s all give her a round of applause!” Then he stuck the microphone in my face and handed me a trophy and gave me a kiss on each cheek. And what did I say in my moment of glory? “Estás en serio?! Are you serious?! What’s this for?” “You’re the youngest girl to finish. You’re almost the last one to get your trophy, except the guy, a 17-year-old kid”. Yeah, that makes me feel special, the last person to claim my booby prize that I won just for signing up.

Coming back down the hill towards the hotel I saw my arch Nemisis, Wonder Woman. I call her that because she's always wearing minimal clothing and she's got the same hair style as the comic book heroine. She's a triathlete and I see her at every event that I do (and usually beat her). What annoys me about her is that she's always surrounded by guys and strikes me as the kind of chick who does sports to get laid. She's got a big butt. I felt better knowing that I'd beat the tri slut by at least half an hour. Hmph!

So meanwhile, more phone calls were made. Josep Maria, David, and Xavi were still out there somewhere. We got back to the hotel where Silvia had been asleep the whole time (until I was well into France) and made some calls. Xavi, who had had a crash the week before, had had his two biggest cogs fail on him part way up the mountain. He’d gotten in the sweep car which followed the slowest guys around the course. We called up David, who was probably still waiting like a real sucker in the cold and the wind to tell him Xavi wasn't coming and to get a move on. No answer. I called Josep Maria, who no one had seen since the starting line (he's a weaker cyclist who doesn't usually come out with the club) it rang several times and then I got a recording Bonjour, blah blah blah blah (blah pronounced with a French accent). I hung up. "He's in France. He'll be here soon," I said.

Josep Maria, who had prepared himself to be out there for 8 hours and come across the finish line while they were tearing it down had an ambulance behind him for most of the climb and was sure he was in last place (they could have been trailing him because he has turrets and a guy twitching away on his bike is a bit disconcerting if you're not used to it). At one point he stopped to rest and the guys in the ambulance yelled, "You still got 45 minutes on the last guys, keep going!" That gave him the strength of ten men to finish. Meanwhile, Xavi had some tales from the sweep car. Apparently there was a fat old guy and not-so-fat, not-so-old guy back there throwing shit at each other like they were sparring for the podium. "Your ass is grass, my friend." "Eat my dust, fatso!" The guys in the sweep car were egging them on, "Attack! Attack!" And whaddaya know, the old fat guy attacked and managed to get away!

I was totally toasted. All I wanted to do was eat about 15 sandwiches and a 3 course meal after that and then take a nap. By the time everyone finally got their shit together, showered, walked to the center of town for some sandwiches (finding food at 5:00 was an ordeal in and of itself), worked out the money for everyone, paid for the room, and piled into cars it was 6:30. I'm not one to sleep in cars, but I slept almost the whole way home. Whether it was the cold, the effort, or the altitude I couldn't keep my eyes open and I've never had a more refreshing sleep in a car in my life.

We have a kitten!

We got it because the other cat, Neo, is the stupidest, fattest cat you've ever seen and Silvia wanted another animal so he'd have someone to play with during the day. Ever since I came home from Ireland in mid-May he took over my suitcase as a bed and hardly gets up all day long. Really, it's kind of strange how attached to the thing he is.

Silvia, who would live out the rest of her life collecting unimployment, watching daytime gossip shows, and never leaving an apartment filled with cats and junk food if she could, absolutely loves animals. Loves 'em. I have seen her pick up a stray cat on the street and hug it and tell it how much she loves it while the beast wriggles and squrms to get away from her and she's got the biggist childish grin on her face that you've ever seen on a 30-year-old woman.

So weeks ago Silvia started saying that she wanted another cat. Neo was lazy and never got up from the suitcase. He's fat and is only getting fatter. She loves animals, she wanted a kitten. I argued, but then finally conceded to letting her volunteer our house as a foster home for ferril kittens until someone wanted to adopt them. When they didn't call her right away with an orphan, she was frustrated. Then she started talking about getting a kitten of her own. Friday was her birthday, so a long time before I decided to give her a kitten for her birthday. But I couldn't hide a kitten in the house, so I bought a can of baby cat food to give to her.

Then comes Thursday, the day before her birthday and I get a call from Silvia: "I was looking lon loquo.com (like the craigslist for Barcelona) and I found a girl who's giving a cat up for adoption and we're getting together this afternoon and I've already taken the whole day off tomorrow to be with the kitten!" Shit! There goes my whole surprise, I thought. I wanted to see the look on her face when I gave her a kitten. "You can't have a kitten!" I said. "I don't want a kitten. Neo will shit a brick. This isn't the sort of thing that you just decide and then do it one day! We're going away this weekend, wait till Monday." "Oh, but I want one!" she said. "No," I said, and hung up because I didn't know what else to say. Then I sent her a message, "If I come home today and you've got a big smile on your face and a ball of fur in your hand I'm going to kill you". She called me again, "Come on, I get so excited about so few things, and I'm excited about this." No. "You're just like my mother." No, you can't just make a decision like this! "You're fucking up my excitement!"

Finally, when I got home at 6:30 I went into the bathroom where I'd hidden the cat food. It wasn't wrapped yet, so I draped it in a towel. "This should teach you to get yourself what you've been asking for for moths the day before your birthday," I said, handing her the towel. Her face lit up and she gingerly took the towel. She carefully pulled away the towel and found a can of cat food, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!" But then she got it, we went across town, got the cat from the shelter and brought her home. The other cat was pissed and the rest is history.

Anyway, we have a new cat and this time it was up to me to pick the name. I took one look and decided her name was Natasha. Not so much AFTER Natascha Badmann, but because Natascha reminds me how much I like that name. We're going away for a day this weekend and I told Silvia that if we come home and find a cat missing an eye, it's her job to clean the eye up off the floor.


Speaking of going away for the weekend, my next post will be more relevant. BIG biking weekend was had today.

Please, PLEASE bear with me on this one/ or/ Who wants to be the next Jesus Christ?

Looking for House reruns on Antena 3 (a non-cable network channel, cuz Spain's ghetto and hardly anyone has cable) I got sucked into a documentary that I'd seen commercials for yesterday during CSI (something really worth watching!!!). It's called "The Real Tomb of Jesus" or something tacky and sensational like that. It's one of those documentaries made for histrionic network TV where they find something really, really old somewhere in the middle of Jerusalem and say, "HEY! This MUST be Jesus's tomb"... or Jesus's brother's tomb, or Jesus's son's tomb or whatever and then you're sitting there thinking, 'well duh, it must be!' Or at least you're supposed to think that. They find the tomb's opening in some blind Israeli woman's back yard (no, really, blind - like lacking the sense of sight). She's had it closed up with concrete and steel because her nieces and nephews were playing in it and they were afraid they would get hurt. The whole thing ends with a giant question mark (which is as expected) as the Jerusalem Ancient Artifacts society makes them re-seal the tomb before they've finished. Really, unless you're sitting at home crossing yourself every five seconds, even a slug would have half a brain to see through the maybes and probably nots of the show. I keep hoping a Geraldo moment will fall on their heads, but that's not the point.

So I'm sitting there thinking about Jesus and how obsessed people are with him, even agnostics like me who don't spend too much time thinking about religion in general. I'm watching and they're explaining how sketchy 2,000 year old evidence is (if you want good evidence, you watch CSI), and I'm thinking "well, duh". I know about DNA and forensics because I've been educated by CSI and Court TV and a fair amount of Law & Order; I'm clearly not going to buy some forensic evidence without a plot twist at the end! But, I mean, it's Jesus! Who can look away? So then I got to thinking about Jesus; not the legend, but the dude. No one can disagree that there was a guy who lived a long time ago (2,000 years ago, give or take), who was a pretty cool guy and made a lot of people really happy, but then made a lot of people really mad. Then they killed him nailed up to two slabs of wood. These facts no one's going to argue with, right?

And this whole time I'm watching this reenactment where Nondescript Guy with Beard is playing Jesus and thinking about Jesus or Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, Quetzacuatl, or even Constantine, Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, Monteczuma... all these people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago who are still pretty important names today even though we barely have any direct evidence (contemporary writing or direct forensic evidence) of their lives. And still, how many people know their names? How many times have movies and books been written about them? How crazy is that to be famous 2,000 YEARS after you die? That everyone in the whole world knows your name?! Paris Hilton doesn't even have that and she's only been in jail for about a week!

...and here's where it all ties in...

So then I got to thinking about the giants of our sports: Mark Allen, Dave Scott, Paula Newby-Fraser, Michael Phelps, Ian Thorpe, Greg LeMonde, Lance Armstrong, Paula Radcliffe, Steve Prefontaine... and the others: Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Tiger Woods, Diego Maradona, Mia Hamm... These people are huge, they're people that we'll be talking about for generations to come, right? But who's going to know who they are in 200 years, let alone 2,000?

And then I'm watching and thinking about how this whole documentary, and CSI are all mostly based on evidence from dead people. Then you have to eventually get to the realization that we're all going to die someday and we're only going to have a legacy in how people remember us... and yes, now I'm waxing nostalgic, but stick with me here...

... On a long enough scale every one's going to forget us and we're all going to be reduced to dust and a few etchings on stones or something. Right? And even if I were to reach Lance Armstrong's fame and symbolism, on a long enough time line I can't even hope to reach Christ-like proportions, nor would I want to (it sounds like a sucky way to go). And here we come to the final conclusion:

If there's absolutely no way that I can reach the world class standards of Mark Allen, Dave Scott, Paula Newbie Frasier, Lance Armstrong, etc., and all those people will be forgotten in a few generations... then why am I getting so caught up in all this? Why worry about the fact that I can't live like a monk like Lance, or channel a shaman like Mark, or simply be a pioneer like Dave and Paula? Why am I getting so caught up in these virgin-again anxieties of starting up triathlons in a new (and more competitive) country and chickening out on C races? Why don't I just enjoy myself and come in dead last smiling a shit-eater's grin? Because, why be remembered like Jesus? Jesus's life kind of sucked for Jesus himself. So why don't I just chill out a bit and have some fun? Who cares if I'm not in the best shape ever at my next race, or if I come in dead last? I'm not trying to be the next Messiah here... I'm just trying to live my life right by me.

...and, hey, isn't that what Big Guy was trying to tell us all along?

A letter to people who share my working out spaces

Dear guy with the Hawaiian shorts,
Please quit crouching on the wall, underwater, watching me coming, and then pushing off when I'm in mid-flip. You know I'm going to pass you anyway, can't you wait 2 more seconds?

Dear guy with a pot belly that looks like you swallowed a watermellon,
When you're swimming the old-guy-froggy-breast-stroke and staring at me the whole length of the pool, I can see you. Don't you know it's rude to stare?

Dear guy who hangs onto the lane line mid-pool to chat to his buddy in the next lane,
Your fat ass makes your butt and whole lower body buoyant... which makes your feet float up behind you, which makes you block the whole lane, which makes me have to swim under you, which makes me mad. Do like the old ladies do and chat on the wall.

Dear sidestroke speedo guy,
Oh, if you knew what that scissor kick looked like from behind you wouldn't do that to me!

Dear lady who crosses 5 lanes mid-pool to get to the ladder,
Please, please look both ways before you cross a lane. "I didn't know you were coming" is a poor excuse. Do you see a lot of people change course in a lap lane?

Dear guy who hangs out spread eagle on the T on the wall,
Get the hell out of the way! One of these days I'm going to dolphin kick you where the sun don't shine and make like it was an accident.

Dear mullet guy with prison tattoos,
Please stop racing me. A) It's rude and annoying. B) You need some serious swim lessons, because the pool gets a foot shallower after you've been in it from all the splashing you do, and I'm sick of choking on your waves. C) It doesn't make you any more macho to get to the wall first after 25 yards if you have to chill there on the wall catching your breath while I swim 75 more.

Dear anorexic lady,
Eat something, please! You're scaring me.

Dear lady who brings a pillow to the gym with her to use on her recumbent bike,
Stop asking me how many calories I burned today. I don't know, but I find it a really rude question anyway. I'm not going to tell you when my last bowel movement was either.

Dear lifeguard,
Please, please, oh please don't move the backstroke flags WHILE I'm swimming the last 5m of back stroke. Do you know how disorientating that is? Do you know how much it hurts when you smack the wall with your arm or head?

Dear maintenance guy,
Can you please wait till I'm OFF the indoor trainer before coming around to mop up the puddle of sweat under me?

Dear lady who wears makeup to the gym,
Don't stand in the middle of the double doors, arms outspread holding each door open oblivious to the people trying to get by, and then give a dirty look to the people who push you out of the way. It kind of gives me the urge to smack you with a resistance band.

Dear sweaty old man,
Use a towel! No one wants to come up to a machine with your sweaty old man juice still dribbling down the seat.

Dear everyone,
When doing a lat pull the bar comes down IN FRONT OF your head. Also, do not bounce while stretching! It's painful to LOOK at you all!

Dear sweaty old men numbers 2 and 3,
Please do not lean on my bike trainer while chatting... especially not when I'm ON it.

Dear old ladies in the locker room,
I can shave any place I feel like!

Dear fat old lady who gets distracted when she's getting dressed and talking at the same time and spends half an hour gesticulating naked,
Let's stay on task, please.


Ok, I feel a bit better now.

This has nothing to do with triathlon...

... but it does have to do with being proud of myself. I made hot and sour soup! Me! And it tasted almost right!

What it took to get there:

1. A trip to the dictionary, wordreference.com, and an email to my friend in LA to figure out how to say "corn starch" in Spanish.
2. A trip to the kitchen to figure out that after all that we already had corn starch.
3. A trip to the Chinese supermarket across town to find "tree ears", rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, bamboo shoots and tofu.
4. So much effort looking at food labels in said supermarket and trying to figure out what everything was with the labels written in Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Catalan.
5. 17 euros.
   
6. A trip to 3 different supermarkets to find vegetable stock.
7. A trip to onlineconversions.com to figure out how to convert American measurements to metric.

But it turned out and even my Spanish girlfriend liked it! Oh, if you could see how far I've come since the day that I tried to make chocolate chip cookies and replaced every single ingredient. What a disaster!

Sometimes I get so homesick...

... that I fantasize about coming home. I know, I know, I'm stupid, right? But here are some of the things I miss:

~Whole Foods Market. Well, okay, this is an exaggeration since a Whole Foods didn't move into my neighborhood until after I'd left the Boston area, but since it opened I've been back to visit and I couldn't believe the salad bar, all the microwavable organic and vegetarian food, the Odwalla Juice (which I fell in love with before it was owned by Coca Cola and would love to be outraged by this buy-out, but it means I can find it nation-wide - that is, when I'm in the nation), the Annie's macaroni and Cheese, and all the other fast organic and vegetarian options they had to offer. Also, I love Trader Joe's for similar reasons.

~Cable television: which exists in Spain, of course, but is not so widespread that it is in every household yet. It is not in mine. I used to be of the school that TV was evil, until I quit drinking. Now I yearn for non-dubbed entertainment that is even mildly absorbing. I didn't watch TV for years, and then suddenly I was in a place where I couldn't have it. When your choices are between TV and reading Stephen King in Spanish, your oppinions about the boob tube start to change. When I go home I can be glued to TBS or UPN for hours at a time watching ER or House or CSI, but when they're only on once a week here and I have to strain to understand them, you get to appreciate TV in moderation. It sure is better than drinking.

~Cars. Yes, they have their downsides: they're expensive and you never have a place to park, but if it's going to take you an hour to get there anyway on public transportation, why not do it on your own terms? At least in a car you're guaranteed a seat. And when you have to go to the supermarket you miss that trunk! And I can't tell you how many races I've had to miss because the first morning bus doesn't get there in time.

~Things being open on Sundays. In Spain Sunday comes along like an uninvited bank holiday and everything closes its doors. There isn't even any good dubbed television. Last time I went home I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get everything done on Saturday since I was going to be busy on Monday. " Why don't you just go tomorrow?" said my mom. "But tomorrow's Sund... Oh yeah!"

~Vegetarian options on all menus, or at least saying the word "vegetarian" and having people understand what you mean. I'm sick of ordering a 15 buck plate and saying, "is there any meat? Is there any fish? Is there any chicken? Is there any pork? Is there any water buffalo?" And then they give it to me and I have a revolting experience because one of my noodles turned out to be a squid. "Oh, you didn't say anything about shell fish!" they say defensively. A squid doesn't have a f*&%ing shell!

~Less racism. This is not to say that there is no racism in the US, oh my no, I'm DEFINITELY not saying that, just to be able to call it by its name, and be able to call someone an asshole because they are a racist.

~An integration of different ideas. We may not be totally integrated, but it's not like we're totally ignorant of each other's cultures. Raise your hand if you know what a chicano is? Raise your hand if you know what a shirpa is. Raise your hand if you know what a small pox blanket is. Raise your hand if you've ever eatten Ethiopian food.

~Wide-open spaces: Spain is smaller than Texas. Texas is not small, but have you ever driven accross the US? Do you know the difference between Boston and LA? Mississippi and Washington state? Montana and Texas? Pennsylvania and Hawaii? Alaska and Arizona? Virginia and Oregon? Do you understand that California is bigger than Italy, Texas bigger than Spain, Portugal is only three times the size of Rhode Island but still only one third of the size of Massachusetts, Hawaii, or Connecticut? Do you realize that the lower 48 states are still bigger than all of Europe put together?

~American beer. Okay, I relapse more often than I care to admit, but that doesn't change the fact that Spanish beer is still on par with Budweiser... and that they use the King of Beers as a basis of comparison with American beers.

~Pizza Hut... So what? (and Denny's when appropriate, see last bullet point)

Things I can't stand:

~The only Sport out there being FOOTBALL (that's "soccer" to all you Americans).

~Being written off constantly in sport because I'm a chick, and menawhile not having any competitors. No, I don't want any chicks better than me, but I do wanted to be treated like a teammate, not a mascot. People talk to me about things like carbohydrates and training like they should be new concepts to me. I just want to be treated as an equal, dammit!

~Being treated like I'm stupid just because I have an accent. You wouldn't believe the shit I've had explained to me! People have tried to tell me what the Tour de France is, what triathlon is, what catalonia is, what a potato is, what a freeway is... all because I have an accent. What? Like I don't live in the world?!

~The RACISM. Just see my last post for ONE example. I promise you, he's not alone.

~I can't walk around in the street in my pajamas. You have to get dressed to walk downstairs to the bakery.

~Dubbed movies.

~Being an illegal immigrant and bashing my head against a brick wall every time I try to get a job that treats (and pays) me like a human being.

~Going to the library and having all the books be in Catalan, except Stephen King, which you can always find in Spanish. I hate Stephen King.

~The HEAT. For the next 3 months I have nothing but 90 degree temperatures with 100% humidity waiting for me. And I'm a sweater. Last summer the first thing I did after walking into the house every day was take off my shirt and hang it on the line so it would be dry for the next time I had to leave the house. And there are no fans in my gym. Sometimes the heat makes Claires vomit!

~Being stared and snickered at when people see my Nalgene bottle. Why do they automatically all assume it's whisky?! Then having no public bathrooms to go pee.

But I'm afraid to come home, not only because a close inspection of my passport upon returning to Spain could get me a free ticket to turn around and go back to where I came from, but because my family is on the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY TERRORIST WATCH LIST! My mom and dad flew from Boston down to Virginia a couple of weeks ago for a wedding. When my mom (who has a different last name than my dad, my brother and I) went to print up her boarding pass at the electronic check-in her ticket printed out just fine; not so with my dad's. Please See An Associate, the machine said. You're On the Terrorist Watch List, said associate informed my dad. Please Stand In Line Over There. So he does, he answers questions for half an hour and they let him go. What the heck? Our last name's Italian!

Reason A why we might be on the WATCH LIST: Tim. My brother was studying abroad this year and spent one semester in Barcelona and another semester in London. He is an art history major and has done several courses in Islamic art. As most students studying abroad do, he has travelled a lot. He has visited 8 countries in the last year including, Morocco, Turkey and Malta.

Reason B why we might be on the WATCH LIST: Dad. Dad works in international business and also travels a lot. In the past few years he has visited Pakistan, Dubai, and Iran.

Reason C why we might be on the WATCH LIST: Me. Nearly a year ago I fell off the map: no car registered in my name, no cell phone in my name, no changes of residence, no W2 forms, no tax returns. I haven't existed since January of 2006 except a few international credit card transactions from Spain. Everyone knows that in Spain there are a lot of Muslims. Clearly, this must mean I'm on a jihaad. (Big Brother, if you're watching, I am NOT on a jihaad!)

Let's try this again:

Ok, folks, I don't know why Blogger messed up the text size in sections of my post, but I have been unable to fix it in the original. Here I'm re-posting the part at the end where everything went screwy. It picks up from next to the picture of the orangutan on the original post...

(Also, Warrior Woman, to answer your question: I'm sure your friend is an honest and loyal person and she has a very high level of Spanish. Some of the nonsense on my blog is not in fact Spanish, but the regional language of Catalan. It is spoken in an area barely twice the size of Los Angeles county. Nevertheless, if you talk to any of its speakers it is very, very, very, very, very, VERY important. Very important. In fact, it has 4 million speakers. That's over HALF the number of people living in the city of London. Sheesh, I can't believe you didn't know about it already!)

...Obviously I really don't like Jaume, not only for his oppinions, but also for how he rides. So many times he can't stand having a girl in front of him so he'll hang on to someone's wheel until they pass me and pull in front, then he'll stay to my left and box me in so I can't move up on the inside, nor move to the outside to pass. Then they slow down. I have to hang back and let them pass to pull up again. Let me also explain why I can't speak up against his behavior. Since immigration is fairly new to Spain, using racial slurs is all the same as using the politically correct terms and if you speak up everyone tells you to stop being so sensitive. Had I spoken up I would have been alone. There still is no forum here for anti-racism.

Later that day we were sitting in the patio (teraza) of a bar drinking beer. Jaume was there watching everyone go by. "Ugh! There are so many moores and niggers here, it's disgusting". Xavi said, "It's a workers' town. Someone has to work." "Well, let the whites work!" said Jaume. Xavi: "They work like dogs" (in Spanish "trabajan como negros", literally, "they work like niggers"). I couldn't stand it. Jaume kept going, talking about how horrible it was that they let so many rafts of west Africans land on the Catalan coast. His voice getting louder and louder. "They should do them all a favor and sink 'em all!" "Jaume, lower your voice," said several. "Who cares if they hear me?! Let 'em hear me, then let 'em go home if they don't like it!" he said with a grin. I could have killed him. I needed another beer. Jaume had just finished his. "Who wants another beer? Salva?" Salva shakes his head. "Miguel Angel?" Miguel Angel shakes his head. "One for me!" I said, "Nada de mariconadas," ("no faggotries here"). This was a private joke for me, making fun of them, playing ironically into their game and having them laugh at my burrs. I have this sense of humor where I like to make people say things that I might say behind their backs in a falsetto voice or with an exaggerated accent and make fun of them anyway, but it's much more satisfying to make them be assholes themselves, in their own voices. It didn't matter that no one got my joke, and they fell into my trap. It was my own private revenge, a girl indirectly calling them maricones in front of their friends. But when the phrase "Nada de mariconadas" came up every few hours I started to regret it anyway.

Jaume couldn't stop talking about this pueblo de mala muerte ("god-forsaken town", only stronger than that). There weren't enough bars, there wasn't enough shade anywhere because the streets were too wide and the trees too young, around every corner there was a construction site, and most of all it was full of FOREIGNERS: Arabics, Blacks, Eastern Europeans, everything but his precious Catalans. And he didn't make any secret of his opinions. For dinner Miguel Angel took us to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Now, I'm a vegetarian who's learned not to expect anything from Spain, but even I wasn't expecting this experience. We all walked to an enormous supermarket which looked much like a Costco (keep in mind that so many supermarkets here are barely larger than a 7-11) with people everywhere. Off to the right there was a change machine and a turnstyle. Next to the turnstyle there was a big, mean-looking man watching everyone that came in. Entrance to the buffet was 4 euros which you fed into the turnstyle (hence the change machine), or you put through a Bon Area credit card which automatically charged you the amount. Once inside you could choose from dozens of different kinds of meat: frozen and coldcuts. Then you stood in line for one of four grittles and cooked your meat yourself. There were also gazpacho, eggs and bread, which I took advantage of. People went up to the grittles with plates piled high with raw meat and cooked forever. "This is the only time in a week that a lot of people get to fill their stomach," explained Miguel Angel (who had paid for ALL of our 12 euro lunches earlier that day). It was somewhere between interesting and supremely depressing to see the whole families there enjoying the biggest meal of the week in this 4-euro buffet. "You have to go up there to salt your food," explained Miguel Angel, pointing to the end of the buffet with the oil and vinegar vats. "The salt shaker's chained to the counter because people steal anything that's not nailed down." The children acted the same as any group of children in a restaurant where the whole family goes out to eat, they filled their guts and then went off to run around the place to burn off the leftover energy from a special occasion. Apparently there was a talent involved with snagging a grittle and Salva didn't get it, so he took about 20 minutes to get a grittle. Meanwhile, Jaume sat there tearing off pieces of balogna with his teeth and throwing it on his plate with disgust. "I'm not hungry. This place is disgusting. These people are disgusting." I wanted to throttle him. Miguel Angel was right there, just having sat down after toasting bread for everyone and could hear all his comments. Walking home Jaume walked ahead of everyone with a giant storm cloud hovering over his head, not saying a word to anyone. "What's up?" said Miguel Angel. "You're never quiet". "I just don't feel like talking," said the world's biggest asshole. The whole incident gave me the urge to either kill him with my own bare hands or break down and cry. Here was Miguel Angel, a bit rough around the edges, but one of the nicest men I'd ever met. He even lent me his bike and drove it down to Barcelona so that Lorraine could ride it when she came out to visit me. He wasn't the richest man in the world, but he had opened his house and home to us so that we could all have this weekend of cycling and spending time with the club, and his wife and kid had gone to sleep with the neighbors to free up sleeping spaces. And then here was this ape condemning the whole situation. "Listen," I said. "You don't do anything but complain. Why don't you just fucking lighten up a bit?" My heart was racing from standing up against The President and he ignored me.

The next morning we all met for breakfast in a bakery downstairs and rode off into the sunrise. We clocked a record pace since nearly everything was downhill and after 2 hours we'd already covered over 60k. When we stopped for lunch I was starving after hardly eating more than bread and pasta after yesterday's adventures. I ate liberally from the bread basket before getting my half baguette with an omolette. When they served us coffee Jaume started again. "The only problem with the town is that there were so many niggers". He then launched into some speech that made me shake with anger, repeating his arguments about how white people should be the ones working, how the coast guard should just sink any rafts that turn up on the coast. I stood up with my coffee in hand and muttered something about having to make a phone call, not really trying to hide my anger. "Watch out," someone said as the coffee sloshed out of the cup onto the saucer. I didn't give a flying fuck. It made me so angry to have to sit there and listen to the whole bullshit conversation, knowing that Xavi had taken me aside yesterday and said, "Listen, it's just a thing that happens with old age. I'm sure he thinks that things were better in the dictatorship. Let it go."

On the way home everyone seemed to be flagging but me. Maybe it was the extra bread that I ate (the time I left the group behind and won a race I'd eatten about half a loaf of bread also), or maybe it was the disgust with the whole situation, but I was flying ahead of everyone and didn't care to hang back like the stronger guys were doing. Still, Jaume was caging me in worse than he ever had before, or maybe it was irritating me worse than it ever had before. Either way, I wished I could just pull away from the fucking club and go home already. We got to within 25k of Barcelona about an hour ahead of schedule. I could be home with my girlfriend around one, but the boys were LAGGING. The wind picked up, but I still felt strong and I picked up the pace, grabbing my drops and dropping my head. Who fucking cares about those 200 lb wind shields? But then there was a problem: I didn't know how the fuck to get home. I was going to have to turn somewhere, but I had no idea where. I had to stop and let them catch up. "Come on, ladies!" I said, "Let's get home and get some grub." "Calm down," said Miguel Angel. Salva's shoes were bothering him so we stopped. Angel went ahead, but, well, it was just as well to wait as to go ahead with Angel since we'd catch him anyway, so I waited. Then, after that, the ladies were dawdling, no two ways about it. I just wanted to go, but every intersection that looked like it might lead back to Barcelona, I waited, just in case. Finally, finally, FINALLY I knew where we were, but not necessarily how to get home. And who was next to me? Jaume. "Are you going to stop to have a beer with us, nena?" "Naw, I just want to get home already, but I don't know how to get back to Barcelona". We were already only one town away (back in Molins de Rei). "Chill out, nena, I'll tell you how to get there," he said. But then the light changed and I was off, and the next was green, and the next. When I stopped at the next red light he was gone. Who gives a rat's ass? All roads lead to Rome, right? And I did find Barcelona just fine, and was back with my girlfrend half an hour early and not a moment too soon.

An epic bike with the Dirty Old Men

**Any offensive language contained in this blog is not from my own toungue, it is merely translated directly from Spanish, and if I chose the more offensive translations of certain words, it is to convey the sense with which they were spoken by people other than myself. I hope you will share the outrage that I experienced upon hearing them.**

Believe it or not, I'd never done two long bike rides in a row before this weekend. And given, maybe for some of you my "long" bike rides would be considered medium distance, but any given Sunday (no copyright infringement intended, just Sunday happens to be Bike Club Day) whatever I do is pleanty enough for me. Here was the program for this weekend: bike to Guissona, and back the next day. Guissona is a little town in Lleida. Lleida is the province northeast of the provence of Barcelona. The Spanish Pyranees are found primarilly in Lleida. Guissone is in the foothills of the Pyranees. Between Barcelona and Guissone there are 113 kilometers/70 miles (see map here).

We met in the usual place at 7am, a metro stop called Clot. Yuck, huh? Who wants to be in a place called Clot at 7am on a Saturday with 9 dirty old men in purple bike shorts? (Not that it interests you, but Clot is also in a yucky part of town and it's the station where both the purple AND red lines come together... just like a real blood clot). We took several pictures with several cameras and straddled our bikes to leave when Xavi said, "Christ, I forgot my gloves!" So we waited 20 minutes for Xavi to go home and get his gloves while the club's president (who you will get to know later) sat there and grumbled about how we should leave him behind. Whole again, the club took off to the other extreme of Barcelona and off into the great, wide beyond.

As it turns out, the first twenty-five kilometers of the great wide beyond is through the nasty, windy industrial areas of Molins de Rei and Sant Andreu. Barely out of Barcelona we found a group from the Saturday crowd just getting on their bikes again after fixing a flat. We picked them up and further down the road found the rest of their clan. With our powers combined we quickly swallowed another of Barcelona's cycling clubs and took over the streets of the suburbs with a force of nearly fifty men (and women) and continued that way for more than twenty kilometers. Imagine my panic since I hate going in big groups! Our swarm was so big and powerful that we were above traffic lights. The colony would engulf a car stopped at a light and if it changed while we were still passing, the car was obliged to wait until we had all passed and follow in our wake. And if you had a green light to cross our path, tough luck, you could wait. One motorcyclist following the same rout as us wasn't too pleased with his side of the arrangement. At every light he had to stop while we breazed past him as if a red light were no more than a light bulb and a white line on the road, and then he would pass us screaming, "S'ha de parar en vermell!" ("You have to stop on red!") The well-mannered members of the other clubs politely ignored him, while my lilac companions yelled out things like, "Call the police, he's threattening us!" and, "If you don't like it, get a real bike!" The problem, of course, only escalated as he would pass us and then be cought again at every light. I was slightly relieved when he finally got away, and I wondered to whom he would tell the story of the asshole cyclists to when he got to his destination 20 seconds late. Who's in such a hurry at 8:00 in the morning on a Saturday anyway? Finally, the yellow club turned off onto another highway, the blue team stopped to regroup and I was alone again with the "smurfs" (a name coined by a friend when she saw the photo above).

Will someone please define a "roller" for me? When does it stop being "hilly" and become "rolling". Maybe it's because I've always trained in places that only have coastal flats or mountains, no in between, but I have no idea what this topographical phenomenon would look or feel like. I suppose that the next section until we stopped for lunch would be defined as "rollers", maybe? Maybe it would be defined as a "gradual uphill with several downhill sections to break it up". We were getting into the country now and the pueblos were farther and farther apart, and there was more and more farm land between them. We kept seeing these posters for Ralluy's Circus! I didn't think much of it, I see those posters around all the time, "Come to the Circo Americano" or "Martin's Amazing Circus", but I guess I thought that they were jokes that I didn't get or advertisements for a brand of whiskey I didn't recognize or something. But then there, on the side of the road was a frigging big-top tent and a caravan of what looked like mini boxcars. "El CIRco de los rrrrrrrrruMANos!" ("The RoMANian CIRcus!") yelled Salva, like a Master of Ceremonies. No one laughed, so he yelled it again, and again, and again... Did he think someone would laugh only after the fifth time? I was thinking about real, live carnies. What are they like? Surely they're not that different from the ex-cons that roam the US with merry-go-rounds and Sizzlers. Do you think they have a freak show? How must they treat the animals? After about 45 km I decided that the town where we were going to stop for food didn't exist. We were already almost half way to our destination, and I hadn't seen a single sign for it. By the time we finally got there after 66km, I was ready to eat off my own arm.

After Lunch Number One (I call it that because we would have a second lunch when we got to Guissona) we didn't hit a single traffic light for the rest of the ride, and hardly saw a car. Before long the road took a turn towards the heavens. "Look at that," said David, pointing to a road sign that said, "7% grade, next 10km". "Phew," I said, "good thing that's for the freeway and we're on the highway" (I use the California terms here to differentiate a 6-lane free-for-all and a quiet country highway with a lower speed limit). "Yeah, but we have to get to the top all the same," said David. And that we did: 10k straight up an incline that let me comfortably stay on my medium chainring but not without wishing it would all be over soon. On top of that there was a head/crosswind that threattened to throw me into the bent-over weeds at the side of the road. David stopped to show me a 1,000 year old building and Xavi (of the missing gloves) and Jaume (who wanted to leave him behind) eventually came by. "Go ahead," said David, "I'm going to stay here and take pictures of everyone as they come up". Before long I cought up to Jaume and Xavi and passed them easily. "Vamos, chicas!" ("Come on, girls!") I yelled as I passed them. "I'm not a chica!" yelled Jaume. "Well then why are you riding like one?" I asked as I left him behind to eat my dust. Before long along came David and Miguel Angel. David sat in with me (next to me to chat instead of blocking the wind for me, to my dismay), and Miguel Angel took off for the top. I survived the hill, my water did not. It took a good while for everyone to finally make it to the gas station at the top where we all drank a coke before coasting down the back side of the hill, which was not nearly as long as the uphill, by the way.

We stopped to regroup one more time before getting to Guissona, in a town called Cervera about 15k away from our destination. Imagine my surprise when I realized I'd been there before, three years ago with my then-girlfriend for an escargot festival.

To the left: me and my (evil) ex at the snail festival in May of 2004.

To the right: my college mascot, the UCSC Banana Slug. Striking resemblance, don't you think?







From the rotary where we stopped, you could see the Pyranees on the horizon. It brought me back to the summer that I drove cross-country on highway 81, and after days and days of the purgatory of endless wheat fields that is the midwest skyline I could finally see the Rockies. Well, this wasn't flat, but there was wheat (and tons of red poppies) and there in front of me - this huge mountain range. Most of the mountains were that charcoal grey-green color that far-away mountains have when there's no snow, but there in the middle was this huge white mass with its peak tucked away in the clouds. "Look, it's still snowing where we're going in 2 weeks," said David. "What the hell are you talking about?" "We're climbing that in the Tres Nacions in 2 weeks," he said. "You have GOT to be kidding me!"

When we got to Guissona people compared the calories they'd burned. "I burned over 5,000," said Angel. "I burned over 8,000", said Xavi, who's tall and must weigh well over 200 pounds. "My heartrate monitor stopped working after lunch," I said (which it had ever since I took it off because Angel was sitting next to me and his watch was beeping constantly because together we got to above 250 beats per minute; to keep the peace I took off mine).

from left to right: Jaume, Xavi, Miguel Angel, me, David, Angel

When we got to Miguel Angel's apartment everyone carried their bikes up the stairs and got in line for the shower. The boys ran for the beer in the fridge and I ran for the bananas on the table. It was the first time that most of us had met Miguel Angel's wife and son, Isaac (except, of course, Angel, Miguel's father). The boy was a cutie pie and ran and put on his bike helmit when we came in so that we could see that he had a bike too. He kept staring at me, but hid his face whenever I smiled at him. Finally, when he cought me alone in a room he taunted, "Tu ets una ne-na!" ("You're a gir-rul!") "That's right," I said. "I tu ets un ne-en!" ("And you're a bo-oy"). At lunch David and I were sitting at the end of the table. Unable to sit still for a long time, Isaac came to our end of the table and said to David, "What's a girl doing on your team?" "This girl goes really fast," said David. "She goes almost as fast as Dad and she even won a trophy." Isaac looked shy and ran away.

It turns out that Guissona isn't a quaint old pueblo with buildings that are hundreds of years old and narrow gothic streets like many of the little towns in Spain. Guissona is full of apartments that are 15 years old or less and wide, well-paved streets that leave little shelter from the sun. Why? Because the heart of Guissona is the Bon Area meat packing plant, which employs 3,000 people in a town of 5,000 inhabitants. No one in the town pays electric or water bills because everything is on the plant's power grid. After lunch I came out of the restaurant and Isaac and Jaume (the president) were the only ones out in the street. Both were leaning against a car. Up the street a black family walked by. "There are blacks all the way out here in this little pueblo," Jauma said to the kid. "How disgusting!"

Now let me introduce you officially to Jaume. He looks like Hoggle from the David Bowie/Jim Henson movie, Labyrinth, but has the half-coconut mouth of an orangutan. He's 70 years old and super-Catalan. Many Catalans, especially those from the previous generation, see immigration as a degradation of their culture, since there were no immigrants during the dictatorship lasting until the mid-70's. Jauma is of this school, complete with machismo and everything. He really gets his rocks off on being the president of the club and gets off on getting away with pissing off club members. He's often talking about who's a maricon (faggot), and accusing people of mariconadas (faggotries/faggot behavior). Obviously I really don't like Jaume, not only for his oppinions, but also for how he rides. So many times he can't stand having a girl in front of him so he'll hang on to someone's wheel until they pass me and pull in front, then he'll stay to my left and box me in so I can't move up on the inside, nor move to the outside to pass. Then they slow down. I have to hang back and let them pass to pull up again. Let me also explain why I can't speak up against his behavior. Since immigration is fairly new to Spain, using racial slurs is all the same as using the politically correct terms and if you speak up everyone tells you to stop being so sensitive. Had I spoken up I would have been alone. There still is no forum here for anti-racism.

Later that day we were sitting in the patio (teraza) of a bar drinking beer. Jaume was there watching everyone go by. "Ugh! There are so many moores and niggers here, it's disgusting". Xavi said, "It's a workers' town. Someone has to work." "Well, let the whites work!" said Jaume. Xavi: "They work like dogs" (in Spanish "trabajan como negros", literally, "they work like niggers"). I couldn't stand it. Jaume kept going, talking about how horrible it was that they let so many rafts of west Africans land on the Catalan coast. His voice getting louder and louder. "They should do them all a favor and sink 'em all!" "Jaume, lower your voice," said several. "Who cares if they hear me?! Let 'em hear me, then let 'em go home if they don't like it!" he said with a grin. I could have killed him. I needed another beer. Jaume had just finished his. "Who wants another beer? Salva?" Salva shakes his head. "Miguel Angel?" Miguel Angel shakes his head. "One for me!" I said, "Nada de mariconadas," ("no faggotries here"). This was a private joke for me, making fun of them, playing ironically into their game and having them laugh at my burrs. I have this sense of humor where I like to make people say things that I might say behind their backs in a falsetto voice or with an exaggerated accent and make fun of them anyway, but it's much more satisfying to make them be assholes themselves, in their own voices. It didn't matter that no one got my joke, and they fell into my trap. It was my own private revenge, a girl indirectly calling them maricones in front of their friends. But when the phrase "Nada de mariconadas" came up every few hours I started to regret it anyway.

Jaume couldn't stop talking about this pueblo de mala muerte ("god-forsaken town", only stronger than that). There weren't enough bars, there wasn't enough shade anywhere because the streets were too wide and the trees too young, around every corner there was a construction site, and most of all it was full of FOREIGNERS: Arabics, Blacks, Eastern Europeans, everything but his precious Catalans. And he didn't make any secret of his opinions. For dinner Miguel Angel took us to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Now, I'm a vegetarian who's learned not to expect anything from Spain, but even I wasn't expecting this experience. We all walked to an enormous supermarket which looked much like a Costco (keep in mind that so many supermarkets here are barely larger than a 7-11) with people everywhere. Off to the right there was a change machine and a turnstyle. Next to the turnstyle there was a big, mean-looking man watching everyone that came in. Entrance to the buffet was 4 euros which you fed into the turnstyle (hence the change machine), or you put through a Bon Area credit card which automatically charged you the amount. Once inside you could choose from dozens of different kinds of meat: frozen and coldcuts. Then you stood in line for one of four grittles and cooked your meat yourself. There were also gazpacho, eggs and bread, which I took advantage of. People went up to the grittles with plates piled high with raw meat and cooked forever. "This is the only time in a week that a lot of people get to fill their stomach," explained Miguel Angel (who had paid for ALL of our 12 euro lunches earlier that day). It was somewhere between interesting and supremely depressing to see the whole families there enjoying the biggest meal of the week in this 4-euro buffet. "You have to go up there to salt your food," explained Miguel Angel, pointing to the end of the buffet with the oil and vinegar vats. "The salt shaker's chained to the counter because people steal anything that's not nailed down." The children acted the same as any group of children in a restaurant where the whole family goes out to eat, they filled their guts and then went off to run around the place to burn off the leftover energy from a special occasion. Apparently there was a talent involved with snagging a grittle and Salva didn't get it, so he took about 20 minutes to get a grittle. Meanwhile, Jaume sat there tearing off pieces of balogna with his teeth and throwing it on his plate with disgust. "I'm not hungry. This place is disgusting. These people are disgusting." I wanted to throttle him. Miguel Angel was right there, just having sat down after toasting bread for everyone and could hear all his comments. Walking home Jaume walked ahead of everyone with a giant storm cloud hovering over his head, not saying a word to anyone. "What's up?" said Miguel Angel. "You're never quiet". "I just don't feel like talking," said the world's biggest asshole. The whole incident gave me the urge to either kill him with my own bare hands or break down and cry. Here was Miguel Angel, a bit rough around the edges, but one of the nicest men I'd ever met. He even lent me his bike and drove it down to Barcelona so that Lorraine could ride it when she came out to visit me. He wasn't the richest man in the world, but he had opened his house and home to us so that we could all have this weekend of cycling and spending time with the club, and his wife and kid had gone to sleep with the neighbors to free up sleeping spaces. And then here was this ape condemning the whole situation. "Listen," I said. "You don't do anything but complain. Why don't you just fucking lighten up a bit?" My heart was racing from standing up against The President and he ignored me.

The next morning we all met for breakfast in a bakery downstairs and rode off into the sunrise. We clocked a record pace since nearly everything was downhill and after 2 hours we'd already covered over 60k. When we stopped for lunch I was starving after hardly eating more than bread and pasta after yesterday's adventures. I ate liberally from the bread basket before getting my half baguette with an omolette. When they served us coffee Jaume started again. "The only problem with the town is that there were so many niggers". He then launched into some speech that made me shake with anger, repeating his arguments about how white people should be the ones working, how the coast guard should just sink any rafts that turn up on the coast. I stood up with my coffee in hand and muttered something about having to make a phone call, not really trying to hide my anger. "Watch out," someone said as the coffee sloshed out of the cup onto the saucer. I didn't give a flying fuck. It made me so angry to have to sit there and listen to the whole bullshit conversation, knowing that Xavi had taken me aside yesterday and said, "Listen, it's just a thing that happens with old age. I'm sure he thinks that things were better in the dictatorship. Let it go."

On the way home everyone seemed to be flagging but me. Maybe it was the extra bread that I ate (the time I left the group behind and won a race I'd eatten about half a loaf of bread also), or maybe it was the disgust with the whole situation, but I was flying ahead of everyone and didn't care to hang back like the stronger guys were doing. Still, Jaume was caging me in worse than he ever had before, or maybe it was irritating me worse than it ever had before. Either way, I wished I could just pull away from the fucking club and go home already. We got to within 25k of Barcelona about an hour ahead of schedule. I could be home with my girlfriend around one, but the boys were LAGGING. The wind picked up, but I still felt strong and I picked up the pace, grabbing my drops and dropping my head. Who fucking cares about those 200 lb wind shields? But then there was a problem: I didn't know how the fuck to get home. I was going to have to turn somewhere, but I had no idea where. I had to stop and let them catch up. "Come on, ladies!" I said, "Let's get home and get some grub." "Calm down," said Miguel Angel. Salva's shoes were bothering him so we stopped. Angel went ahead, but, well, it was just as well to wait as to go ahead with Angel since we'd catch him anyway, so I waited. Then, after that, the ladies were dawdling, no two ways about it. I just wanted to go, but every intersection that looked like it might lead back to Barcelona, I waited, just in case. Finally, finally, FINALLY I knew where we were, but not necessarily how to get home. And who was next to me? Jaume. "Are you going to stop to have a beer with us, nena?" "Naw, I just want to get home already, but I don't know how to get back to Barcelona". We were already only one town away (back in Molins de Rei). "Chill out, nena, I'll tell you how to get there," he said. But then the light changed and I was off, and the next was green, and the next. When I stopped at the next red light he was gone. Who gives a rat's ass? All roads lead to Rome, right? And I did find Barcelona just fine, and was back with my girlfrend half an hour early and not a moment too soon.