First Days in Girona

Hey there blogger people! Sorry for the recent hiatus, but it's been interesting around here. Where to begin?

After camping one more night (Thursday) at the base of the Tourmalet, Selena and I pointed the car back up the famous Col--the road being re-opened to traffic. The plan was to reach Spain via an alternate route; on the way up to France, we went up the east coast then shot west to Tarbes, Lourdes, etc. On the way back we climbed the Tourmalet, and the Col d'Aspin then caught a tunnel (10 minutes drive through a mountain) to Spain. The tunnel was amazing. The rain during the tour on the North side of the Pyrenees has been well documented. When we emerged from the tunnel in Spain, on the south side of the Pyrenees, it was like someone flicked a switch--blue skies, no clouds, and 25 degrees - 30 by the time we got back down to the base of the mountains. Surreal. That night we camped on the coast north of Barcelona in a virtual desert--stark contrast to the conditions in Bareges.

Saturday was spent scoping out the beach towns for Selena and Deanna, getting moved back into the apartment in Girona, doing laundry, and dumping the rented car back at the airport. Then...

At 6:30 two people showed up (Rod and Deanna) with two carry-ons...pass the beer nuts. No suitcases, no bike :((((( I won't spend too much time on the details here, but suffice it to say that it was NOT a happy time. Frequent phone calls to the airport, iffy service in English, unreliable payphones in the street, a stake-out vigil on the sidewalk lasting hours and spanning two days. Then our incredibly generous apartment neighbors graciously loaned us one of their cell phones so that we could give the airport an actual contact number (our apt doesn't have a phone) and eventually, at 2:30 today, some 48 hours after the arrival of the Rawdings, the successful delivery of the baggage/bike occurred.

The girls were already off to the beach, and Rod and I had his bike out of the box and built back up in no time. We set off on the cobbled streets of Girona for our first ride :))))))

Looking to spin the shit out of our legs (that hadn't been moving for a couple of days), we took off on Michael Barry's 1.5-2 hour Easy Ride. By the way, a lot (all or most) of our riding here over the next few days will be based on Michael Barry's article from the current issue of Canadian Cycling which you can find here . Michael is a pro rider, originally from Toronto, who rides with Team Sky who recently finished his first Tour de France and makes Girona his permanent home. This ride saw us over the Els Angels climb which the likes of Armstrong, Barry, Christian Vandevelde, Levi Leipheimer, and George Hincapie use for interval workouts. It was a great climb, ridiculously hot, but we were smiling all the way. The ride then looped back to Girona via a small ancient town called Madremanya. The only way to describe this small place would be to tell you that as we were riding about it's archways, tunnels, and small alleyways, I suggested to Rod that we could play a game of hide-n-seek on our bikes...very twisty, circuitous little passages built in the 14th and 15th century.

In the end we made it back to Girona coming in on the road that we parked the car on. As we were criding in on this road, we met the girls who were just coming home from their day at the beach. At this point, they didn't realize that the luggage had arrived, so we were able to share the news by riding by and saying hello from our bikes. Very fun!

The day was capped with a pitcher of Sangria, and a meal at Draps, a restaurant that specializes in meals to share - we ordered three meals and shared it all around with a great bottle of wine. Each meal is designed for 2 - you do the math. The requisite 2 boules of gelato finished off a great first day (with bikes) in Girona.

Thanks for reading and please comment freely :)

Seleno

Some other dude riding up the upper slopes of the Tourmalet while we drove.


This pic is still worth something

Check out the dusty campsite

View of the Onya River from our apartment in Girona

Fun at the beach

Ah, diddo!

Rod at the top of El Angels

Shane at the top of El Angels - some of my buddies might notice a new purchase in this pic - couldn't help myself

Riding into Madremanya


Pretty much says it all really

This is the street we live on, Carrer Ballesteries - the lighting at night is sureal


Fred and Barney

Betty and Wilma

Just so we're clear, I can eat 21 power gels, a deep fried turkey and my body weight in gelato without throwing up