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.