Bikemum

My friend Louise, aka. Weezie, and I leave on Saturday to bicycle nearly the length of Cuba, from just west of Havana, east to Santiago de Cuba, or beyond. Over 1,000 miles, over 25 days. I am in that fluttery-feeling time when I am split between a burning excitement about the my next adventure and the stomach churning anxiety about leaving home. The yin and the yang.

Luckily, I have become familiar with this feeling and understand its patterns. I am even grateful for it. Now is the time that I look the most soulfully into my dog’s eyes, hold my granddaughter a little longer and linger over all the options found in my refrigerator. These are things that I know I will miss terribly. Cornily, I feel like I am oozing love for everything around me. It also makes me feel still, and I am happy to sit inside this morning and watch the snow swirling down from a leaden sky without feeling the need to charge out into it quite yet. Instead, I spend my time learning a bit about where this adventure might take me from the comfort of my couch.

True to form, I know shockingly little about where I am going, so I try to cram some Cuban history and cultural awareness in on the days leading up to the trip. I am shocked by what I find.

I learn that 88 % of all Cubans are living in extreme poverty and that due to the food shortages, tourists are asked not to shop in supermarkets, but rather to buy prepared food in eateries or peoples homes. We will pack 40 energy bars and the same number of instant coffee packs, just in case.

I learn that we need to bring enough cash for the duration of our stay. There are no ATM’s and people often can’t make change. That is going to be quite wad of bills tucked in here and there in our travel kits.

I learn that it is currently, illegal to kill your cow, in fact you can get several years jail time because they are trying to preserve the dairy industry. Eggs are also in short supply due to lack of feed for the chickens.

I learn that one shouldn’t drink the water without boiling or filtering it first. We will bring Noom electrolyte tablets to offset the taste and give us some oomph on the big hills.

There are frequent power outages. The national energy grid has gone down five times in the last year and Wifi is spotty or often nonexistent.

I also learned that it is considered very rude to blow your nose in public.

All of that sounds challenging, but 74% of the nations revenue comes from the service industry and they need tourists there more than ever. Besides, I also read a lot about the people, how kindness and warmth are part of the national heritage, as well as, music, art and humor. And, I read that Cuba is incredibly diverse; biologically culturally, and geologically, and that they are working hard to preserve that.

I look forward to traveling to Cuba in this time of political uncertainty in the United States. Not just to take a break from the barrage of craziness that is being spouted by this administration, but also to share a little kindness and connection, one-on-one.

Soon, my nerves will ratchet up again, because they always do, I will probably even cry a little. But for now the visions of Cuba, the richness of the life described there and the lure of the colorful landscape and people fill me with warmth, despite the blustery day outside. Three more days.

“You really want to do this?” I ask my friend Louise as she stands before me in the shop, razor blade in hand, staring down the handlebar grips on her bike. “Once you take those off, there is no going back.”

”I do, I need to be able to put on climbing bars, so I can really pull up when we pedal over the mountains.” We are boxing up our bikes for our upcoming month-long, bike tour in Cuba, and what I had imagined would be a two hour task is quickly become a six hour one. But I have nothing better to do today and am happy to putz around and fuss with our bikes, getting to know them and Louise all the better.

”Alright, let’s do it.” I say and she begins slicing her old grips off to make room for her new handlebar set up. That proves to be the easy part, then we try installing the new ones. They are tight and none of the tricks to slide them on more easily, like using hairspray or the air compressor work. They don’t budge.

Louise and I quickly realize that it is going to take both of us, and all our strength to make this work. We tag team the bike, like a pair of WWF wrestlers, one of us holding the handlebars steady while the other twists and pushes the grips with all our might, groaning and growling and forcing them on millimeter by millimeter. We switch when our forearms and palms begin cramping, back and forth and back again. Every once in a while our strength lapses as we burst into giggles at the absurdity of how hard this is. By and by we get them on and cheer for ourselves. Our first of what I hope our many successes.

We also change out our tires to some made of Kevlar and are hopefully more puncture resistant for Cuba’s notoriously poor roads. We attach racks, install pedal cages and collect tools and tubes for the trip and wrap the bikes in all manner of styrofoam and bubble wrap like we are setting broken bones, before we stuff them in their respective boxes.

By late afternoon, we are tired, but satisfied. Louise chastises me for getting bike grease on my sweater while we munch on grapefruit wedges and apple slices that she had packed for our lunch. I feel surge of warmth towards her.
This is what it is all about, working hard, figuring it out, and trying new things and now I get to do that as a team, with someone who cares about my sweater, feeds me snacks and laughs.

We talk about what we are most looking forward to about the trip and Louise says, “This,” she gestures to the day. “just two gals planning and doing an adventure together without always compromising our ideas.” We acknowledge that we both often feel like we give our partners power over decision making because we are pretty laid back and don’t really care all that much about particulars. They aren’t often worth the conflict.

I have gotten used to going on these adventures alone and gutting out the hard parts, feeling like the only way forward was to engage in a silent battle between me and whatever obstacle lies before me. Laughing through our struggles together today, helping each other, taking turns using our strengths and acknowledging the importance of our autonomy is hopefully a harbinger of things to come.

Next week we will embark on a thousand mile bicycle tour from Havana, Cuba to Santiago de Cuba, zig-zagging from the northern coast to the southern, as we make our way down the length of the country. There will be plenty of challenges for sure, mountains to climb, potential food, water and electricity shortages, language barriers and sore bums, but I believe we are off to a most excellent start.

I can’t stop laughing and although I try to keep my mouth closed, the snorts are erupting from my nose in uncontrollable trumpet-like blasts. My husband Twain is sleeping beside me, or trying to, and I am crawling around our darkened tent trying to find my cookies.

I had tried to go to bed down in our little “wild camp” campsite in the bottom of Granada’s Geoparque several hours ago, but after briefly flirting with the idea of sleep my stomach had hijacked me and was demanding food before it settled down for the night. So there I was, crawling over him as quietly as possible to rummage in the panniers by our feet and find a wee snack. 

Luckily, my hands felt crinkly cookie wrappers in my bag fairly easily and I stealthily extracted two dusty cookies. Dusty, not because they were dirty, dusty because they had the crumbly consistency of a sand castle. I pulled them out and placed them up by the head of my sleeping bag delighted with my work and crawled back to nibble away in peace.  

As I lay down and reached next to me to grab one, I slid my hand up and down the floor of the tent and realized with a start that they seemed to have vanished. Panic stepped in. Where were they? Two crumbly cookies lost in a dark tent or worse yet, in my sleeping bag, was unacceptable. I would be crawling with crumbs for days! I felt around everywhere, along the sides of my bag, in my sleeping bag, by my head, under my pillow, at first gingerly, but then with increasing frenzy, all premises of being sneaky going out the window. “What are you doing?”  moaned Twain from his semi-conscious state beside me.

“My cookies!” I whispered, “They are gone!” And that is when the hysterics came. 

If I had milk with those cookies it would have squirted out my nose. My body shook like I was trying to stifle my laughter in church. The more I reached for control, the less I had. I gasped, gulped and convulsed. Twain groaned. Finally, embarrassed with myself, I lay down to tried to take some deep breaths and collect myself when sure enough, I felt a sickening crunch as my back side found the cookies and emulsified them instantly, from one hip to the other and up and down my back, grinding them into the seams of my sleeping bag and up the crack of my bum.  Now I was a hopeless mess. I barked and guffawed, tears slipping down my cheeks.

On this bicycle tour, my husband and I are pedaling from Granada up over the snow capped Sierra Mountains and then descending 2,000 feet into the arid canyon of the Geoparque of Granada. We are riding along the bottom for a few  days and then up and out the other side on to the town of Huescar. 

The land here is comprised of carved red, white and green rock all shaped over eons by what now appears a trifling brook running through the canyon bottom providing the only water for endless groves of olive trees. The smell of olives permeates the air. They are ripe now, and the trees hang heavy with purple, bulging fruit. We pedal by processing plants that are separating leaves from fruit by the tractor trailer truck load. Both of us have tried to sample raw olives from along the side of the road and found that uncured olives are no delicacy. They taste like a combination of car tires, cat pee and bitter tannin and left a residue much like a chemical burn throughout our mouths and throats that lasted for hours.

We have have hidden our tent in one of these orchards tonight, with not a house in sight. Their are no campsites or towns near by, it is too remote and dry, just row upon row of olive, almond and pistachio trees trying to claw their way out of the rocky soil.

I am laughing at the crumbs in my sleeping bag, but also at the escape from all the responsibilities at home, the shear beauty that I am surrounded by and the delicious naughtiness that can only come from being just a little sneaky. Sleeping in this orchard and stealing cookies feels akin to pool hopping and raiding the refrigerator at midnight, something I haven’t done for a very long time.

In the morning, I shake out my sleeping bag and our tent before packing them up and starting our long climb out. We drink nasty, cold instant Nescafé out of our bicycle bottles because we are addicts and didn’t bring a stove, before realizing that I had brought decaffeinated by mistake. Call it a language barrier.

I laugh some more although Twain doesn’t think it is quite so funny, and we make our way up and out—the promise of cafe con leche at the next town along the rim fueling our feet as we climb.

“Mo”

I glance back over my shoulder and see Norah bringing her fingertips together into two points and tapping her hands together, the universal sign motion for the word “more.” She is riding behind on a toddler bicycle seat attached to my rental bike with a bright blue helmet on and an even brighter smile. 

“Twain, she wants more!” I yell into the cool, misty air and, like a small miracle, at least to her, he pedals up beside her and holds out a clementine wedge. It is just the right size to be clasped in her tiny fist and sucked upon. 

My husband, my granddaughter Norah, and I are out biking the Sky Loop road in Clifden, Galway, Ireland. The road extends along cliffs and hills that overlook small farms and the sea for eight miles and then loops back down along the rocky coast. 

Norah is 1 and 1/2. She has never been on the back of a bicycle before, and this seemed like a perfect first experience. 

There is a wet mist that is almost rain, soaking the roads and pinking our cheeks, but the three of us are well prepared with slickers, rain pants, and boots, and the gray sky almost makes the green of the moors greener. 

“Mo!” She calls again as we crest another hill. Again Twain happily obliges.

Up and down we pedal, the lane bracketed by ancient stone walls that mostly hold livestock in their pastures. We pass shaggy, fattened cows and “Mo” turns into “Moo” from behind me. We pass donkeys, chickens, and horses and, of course, we pass sheep. 

The sheep here are not white. They are multicolored with swaths of brilliant blue, verdant green, and glowing pink across their backs. Some of this is to identify one flock from another, but much of it is from big colorful crayons that the rams wear on their collars that serve to mark their chosen ladies. Norah neighs and baas and the rainbow flocks scurry from one fence line to the next, sometimes breaking out onto the road and looking about worriedly at their freedom.  We pass a small castle in ruins struggling to rise up out of the mud that surrounds it. We pass white-washed homes sunk into the hillsides with smoky peat fires trailing from their chimneys. We watch the waves push up against the shoreline. 

Ireland makes me feel old because everything here seems like it is sinking into the land as it slowly sinks into time.

Sometimes, this can feel heavy, but today, as we stop on a vista to look out over a bog I gaze back at Norah and see her lightly misted rosy cheeks and realize that I am experiencing the very best gift that getting old can bring. On the back of my bike, I have the equivalent of a sprig of wild rosemary bursting through one of these weathered stone walls, their exquisite lavender flowers all the more beautiful for the crags that they are held in.

This is a different kind of bike touring; nothing too much, no searing heat or gusty storms, no endless hours in the saddle or anxiety about where we will bed down for the night. It is just wide open, fertile country that welcomes us and hopefully gives Norah her first inkling of how the world can open up around you on a bicycle.

She blusters into Lighthouse Bikes on a icy, raw day, wearing a pair of jeans that are held up by their multitude of colorful patches and a stiff, plaid rain hat that she tells me that has been in her family for generations. Her smile radiates from cheek to cheek and she bounces rather than trods across the shop on the balls of her feet. In her arms she carries a large atlas and a yellow legal pad. She whips out a pen and heads for the couch. She is named Louise, aka. Wheezie, and she is here for our Cuban summit.

Until now, I have always spoken proudly about my love of bicycle touring alone. I have loved the quiet, meditative days of pedaling, the lack of compromise and the rawness of it all, but there have been some things that I have miss out on because of going solo.

I become shy when I am alone. I shrink away from social situations, scared that it will be noticed and taken advantage of. I am always in my tent by eight o’clock and always avoid truly engaging with others because of my vulnerability. “No thank you, I am fine.” are often the first words out of my mouth when I am invited to a family’s house for dinner or offered a chance to experience a cultural event. Often before I can even register what they are asking. But now, when I think of Cuba, it is exactly these things that I am seeking. I want to engage with the people, not just myself.

Wheezie and I sit down and she spreads the atlas open on the coffee table. We start pointing out possible routes to each other, jockeying to control the enthusiasm that causes us to interrupt each other again and again, our words bubbling over one and others like a fountain. Every idea is a good one, so we decide to leave the route fairly open and go where it makes sense, averaging 60 or so miles a day.

We discuss needed paperwork, finances and equipment, dividing tasks and timelines. There are food shortages in Cuba so we need to bring some emergency rations. Electricity can be spotty, batteries and headlamps are a must. We have also been told to only bring cash and to have it in small bills because the exchange rate is so variable and there are no ATM’s. We won’t camp because camping is not commonplace in Cuba, but rather we will stay in rooms for rent in people’s homes.

I feel a wash of relief as I realize that all these decisions and logistics will not fall on me and that Wheezie will be standing right beside me as I ask the locals to stay in their homes, and sitting right beside me as I am emboldened to practice my Spanish over breakfast. I get giddy by the thought of dancing the night away instead of sitting alone in a tent, or lingering over dinner while actually making conversation with Cuban people.

After an hour or so, I need to return to work and she to her home. She takes her old red, trusty Rockhopper bike with nobby mountain bike tires off a hook where it has been hanging in the shop and lays out a plan to ride it at least 10 miles a day on the road before we go to leather up her butt and strengthen her knee bones. It will be better exercise than a road bike. The very next morning, on a 20 degree day, she sends me a selfie of her pedaling along grinning like this is the best life ever lived.

This trip will be different because of Wheezie. I may miss my solitude at times, but I believe that it will richer, more vibrant, and more culturally engaging than any so far. This woman is going to open doors.

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In these uncertain times, there is only one thing to do. Have faith. Faith in the kindness of people, the beauty in the world and the strength in one’s self. So, for that reason alone, off I go, to Cuba this time.

I will spend about a month, circumnavigating the country, traveling alone on bicycle from town to town. I plan on stringing the routes together of other cyclists that have gone before me and I will stay in local hospedajes; rented rooms in various people’s homes. I will have to speak my terrible Spanish. I will exhaust myself. I have heard that the country is beautiful and the people are warm and welcoming and I will have an opportunity to be completely immersed it, taking a break from the political discord here. Perhaps I will be exposed to new perspectives. It all sounds perfect, most of the time.

Am I scared? Yes. Do I worry about traffic, loneliness, my strength and the unknown? Absolutely, especially at night, like now, when the wind rattles the last few remaining oak leaves that cling hopelessly to their skeletal branches, the rain spits and the dark seems to lap at the windows, daring me to feel brave.

“You think you will be safe out here?” It rasps, “You think you will be cared for, warmed and nourished if you leave the safety of your cozy home?”

At these time, I feel like a 3rd grader imagining a monster in my closet and I realize that the only thing to be done is to throw the door open and face these fears head on, lest I stay immobilized in my bed, sleepless and trembling.
And I don’t want to be immobilized—not ever.

Every time I go on one of these trips I relearn that the only monster is my fear. That people are kind, the world is beautiful and I am strong. I accept that there are risks associated with bicycle touring solo, but I just can’t peer out from under the blankets and feed my fears with fantastical stories of “What if?” not when there is so much good out there that I would miss.

So, now the fun. These trips give me a reason to train my body and brain. For the next 6 weeks I will cycle around and around, no matter what the weather, in an effort to get ready for the hills and headlands of Cuba. I will study Spanish more diligently, so that I can have a hope of communicating with the people there. I will study the country so I am versed in its history, customs and current structure. I will work on fine tuning my bike and I study maps. It is like being in school again, with a full course load. There is so much to learn.

I am in the half world between sleep and consciousness. It is sweet here. A gentle lull between the tidal pulls of dreamland and the motivation to start a new day. The sun is not yet up, but a pastel wash of color is beginning to seep into the sky, giving shape to the pile of laundry on my floor, the lump of cat by my feet and the still unreadable clock ticking on the wall. I hear my son, Oakley, downstairs, rummaging for his breakfast and the pull towards wakefulness builds. But today, I am not sure I am ready for what I may find when I greet the day. What I will soon hear on the radio or read on my phone. I have been told that I am pathologically optimistic, but today, I am afraid of what might be.

Throughout all my adventures, I have spouted off about the kindness that I have found. I have been welcomed, housed and helped by everyone along the way. From the inviting church ladies in Kentucky that offered their basements for Oakley and I to sleep in when we bicycled across the United States, to the girls in Morocco who grinned and cheered under their head scarves, as I biked my naked-legged self over high mountain passes and little towns, to the police in Uruguay that offered to change my flat tires. Everyone has returned a smile with a smile and often quite a bit more. This is the world that I have been privileged to live in—one in which people are good.

Yesterday morning, when I did climb out of bed and venture downstairs, and did indeed hear the news that I had dreaded, I felt like a fool. All of my naive belief in the power of basic human kindness, as a shared ideology, seemed turned on its head. People are caring for one another, right? Right? I struggled to believe that we, as a country, want this angry, vindictive, disrespectful, caustic, ignorant man to represent us to the world. “This cannot be!” I kept shouting in my head. “He is to full of hatred!” I spent the day going through stages of grief. Am I that out of touch? Have I misjudged the people of this country? Have I been living in a fantasy land?After a bike ride, a family dinner and a fire in the backyard with friends, I have come to a conclusion. I don’t think so.

I am not particularly smart, nor politically savvy. In fact, I have a fairly simplistic view of the world. But, I do know something about the importance of connection. And that with connection, comes compassion. And that with compassion, comes kindness. I have experienced this everyday.

So, maybe all I can do is fight this feeling of despair with more kindness, more acceptance, and more love, even for those that I can’t yet understand. There are probably one too many adages about this, but it is probably because it is true.

That is a fight I can get behind. That is where the hope will lie for me. That is the part of the country that I will represent when I bicycle around Cuba or wherever this February.

I will now get off my soap box and hopefully never return. I will go back to telling stories and hopefully they will speak for themselves.

There are enormous bulls, snorting fire, prancing in the streets. Harpys, taller than semi-trucks, march behind them. Dragons with woman’s breasts, spin and dance. All of them have fire streaming from their noses and horns, and are circled by human attendants helping them, as they blindly make their way through the crowds.
It is the last night of carnival and the street is alive with madness. Giant sparklers fill the dark with light, sending sparks flying and threatening to set the world on fire. They pop, whir and and burst making people shriek and duck for cover.
There is drumming too. Soulful, melodic drumming, from over one hundred drummers. It seems to awaken something in the people and everyone dances in a jolting, stomping manner, the old and the young together. Children climb to their parents shoulders and their parents spin. The celebration goes late into the night, and tonight, I stay awake.

I did it. Unabashedly, I did it. I rode 1,400 miles through Morocco, a little smidge of England, and Spain. I am proud. Is that wrong? It was hard and long and took determination and grit, and it allowed me to learn an incredible amount about this world and my place in it. 

I loved every part of it, even the parts that I hated. The steep mountains, the soul crushing wind, getting lost and feeling lonely. I missed my family terribly, and wondered if I would have my place back when I returned. I threatened never to do this again, but I lied. I can’t not.

This world, that I don’t understand, I love. I love the colors and the people, the variety and the intensity, and the struggle and the triumph. It is corny, I know, but it is the truth. Something in me wants to inhale it all, in the biggest breath I can manage, because I don’t want to miss a thing.

Tonight, I sit in Barcelona, having a private celebration. I am incredibly thankful that those trucks didn’t hit me, that I made it through the wind, and that I was allowed to experience this. I don’t know what to do with all of it, except to knit it into my being. There is no career in it, no lofty goal, no world betterment. It is just a feeling of fullness that feels like it matters.

I will be here for two days and then I will return home, to the people I love most in the world. I couldn’t have one without the other. My love for them allows me to feel like a kite, with a string that connects me to my anchor. A kite can’t fly without someone holding on.

Last night I slept on the beach with the aquamarine sea lapping just feet from where I slumbered. I awoke to the sound of the rolling surf (which I thought was thunder and leapt out of my sleeping bag and out of my tent in a hot panic, ready to run for cover, my heart beating a million miles a minute. Only to find that it was 4AM and the sky was perfectly clear.) and I lay awake listening and checking my phone. I see on my weather app, that although there is indeed no rain, the wind is forecasted to pick up and hover around 30 mph later today with gusts to of up to 80. There goes the hope of any sleep. I fitfully dither about what to do, and finally decide to get up the coast to Tarragon, the site of an old Roman Capital, as fast as I can, before the wind can find me. I set sights on a hostel I find there and make haste.

By noon I have made it and as I arrive, so does the wind, knocking down the sandwich board signs outside shops, threatening to tear awnings and hurling dust and litter into the air. I feel quite pleased with myself as I stow my gear on my bunk and head back out, bikeless and carefree to see what this town has to offer.

I am not disappointed. I find colosseums, Roman circuses, ancient city walls and of course the Tarragona Cathedral, the most prominent feature in this town.

I pay to go inside. I am not religious, but I am still in awe whenever I go in one of these lavish Roman Catholic churches. The craftsmanship, the art and the effort it took to build something like this in the 12th century is baffling in scope. This cathedral is enormous with towering vaulted ceilings, many ornate apses and the biggest organ I have ever seen in my life. I walk slowly through, staring with bugged out eyes at all the history held here. 

It is quiet in the cathedral. There is no wind at all. After sometime, I find myself eyeing the pews and wondering what would happen if I just had a little lie down. It has been quite a week, actually quite a month! Nobody would know. There is nobody around. 

Suddenly, my legs feel like day-old molten lava. My eyes get all crinkly. The stone floor beneath my feet becomes impossibly hard. Maybe a little rest, I think. So, I lower myself down on to a bench seat for just a moment. If there is a god, I am sure they wouldn’t mind a bit.

As I sit blinking back sleepy tears, it occurs to me that I am not the first to be overcome with sleepiness in here. I am probably marching in line with centuries and centuries of visitors all exhausted from their daily toils who have found respite in these walls, (as well as boredom) and have been overcome, as am I. I think about how early my day started. I think about the wind and then I too become history.

Today was a difficult day, one of the hardest on this journey so far. I awoke in a light drizzle and thought I wouldn’t go far, just out to the local delta of L’ebre river. It is a large, wide delta covering many miles, comprised of endless rice fields, berms and wetland. It is a birder’s paradise and all manner of shore birds stop over there on their migratory route—even flamingos. Simply, the goal of the day was to see them, to sit on the shore and watch them flounce and clack, and to relax.

So, out I went, the wind at my back. It felt more like Holland than Spain as I cruised farther and farther out on to the delta. Not a tree, not a bush, not a rise, just wide open land all the way to the sea. After an hour or so, I turned the corner and there they were, the flamingos, in all their pink celebration. I stopped short, hopped off my bike and prematurely grinned over what I thought was going to be a delightful day. That is when I felt the wind. 

I had been pedaling with it and hadn’t noticed it’s growing ferocity, but now that I was still, I felt it whip round me in a most dispiriting way. Anxiety filled me, it was nearly 20 miles back to the mainland directly into it with nothing to break it’s power as in hurled itself out of the mountains. What had I done?

Suddenly, sad to say, the beauty of the flamingos was lost on me and I started to dither about getting back. 

I consulted the camping app on my phone and saw there was a camping spot 12 miles further on and they were open. If I made it there, I could spend the night and return across these flats tomorrow when perhaps the wind would abate. 

I hoped I would see more flamingos on the way, but decided I couldn’t take the time to linger and pedaled on. 

12 miles later, arriving at the campsite, I find it is closed. Now it is 32 miles back, directly into a wind that shook  me as I stood. I see an employee of the campground and begged. I sniveled, I made promises, but they didn’t budge. I was stuck. 

Into the wind I rode. Most of the time I took it on directly, barely moving forward. It felt like being on the highest setting of a stairstepper excercise machine. My front panniers would catch a gust and turn my front wheel this way and that so I was constantly correcting. I wore my rain jacket to protect myself from the abrasiveness of this wind and underneath I was soaked with sweat. 

Occasionally, I would turn and get the wind, full force on my side. This was almost worse as it threatened to send me careening off the road into one of the canals. More then once it took me off the side of the road and I had to save myself by quickly jumping off my bike.

To say I was exhausted is an understatement. I reached the end of my abilities, well nearly. I didn’t cry because there was no one to cry to, but I would have.

Hours and hours later, when I reached the mainland, I still had 13 miles to go to my campsite. I had pictured a flat coastal route, but much to my dismay, it was an undulating series of coastal headlands. Hills so steep that I had to walk several times. 

My mind became mushy, my body overly fatigued and that is when I saw them—the golden penises. As I deliriously pedaled through a small town and up another hill, I was met by a troop of 20 or so men, all wearing golden pants in the oompa-loompa style, each with an 18 inch penis sticking out at curved upward angles. They were laughing and cheering and wiggling their hips with bravado. It crossed my mind that I had finally lost it.

But no, it is carnival season here in Spain. A final celebration and period of acting out perhaps before the confines of lent arrive. They were actually a very welcome sight, a little joy.

When I finally arrived at my campsite, it too was closed. The sun was set and I found myself wandering the streets of L’ametila looking for a hotel. I was a sorry sack. 

I did find one—sans hot water—and listened to the wind beat against my window pane all night. I barely slept. 76 miles in all. Flamingos and golden penises, definitely sounds like a dream doesn’t it? Or maybe a nightmare.