Bike Trip / Spain Journal #1

Last April (2008), I took three weeks off of work to go on vacation. First, I loaded up my mountain bike with gear and spent five days biking to and from the Oregon coast. I started in Portland, biked up Highway 30 to Astoria, then came back on Highway 26.
I then flew to Spain to spend two weeks with friends there, traveling briefly through Chicago, and Dublin, Ireland. This is the journal I kept during those three weeks:

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I believe I just learned what puncture repair kits are for.
--Wow. I have only just finished feasting on the eve of my first day on the road. Everything has tasted incredible. I am so incredibly beat. It’s barely past nine, and I’m ready for sleep. My head is thick and heavy and my limbs and back are sore. It’s been a long day. Twice, I was prepared to settle down and make camp, and twice, I had to continue for lack of a campsite. The second time was at the bottom of an incredible hill. A mountain. It looked like a great thing to tackle after a solid nights rest, so I ask around a bit, after a spot to camp.
“Hmmm…,” the girl in the deli says.
“Well, go up that big hill there.”
“Up that big hill,” I asked. It’s sure reasonable that my passionately desired nights rest lay at the top of the hill, and not the bottom. Surely.
“Yeah, it’s a big one, but you can do it. Bikers go up it all the time.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, and smiled.
She gave me directions to a park with camping that lay a short distance from the top of the hill.
“Oh, that’s not so bad,” I told her. I could easily get there before nightfall. I left the deli, and munched down some celery, and a bit of a sandwich. I knew I’d need the energy. The road climbed up from where I stood at a punishing grade and then curved out of site. I could feel my tent around, just around that curve. It looked worse than it would be, certainly. I started up the hill, and my bike crawled beneath my tensed legs. I reached the curve. I looked for my promised tent.
It wasn’t there.
The road continued to climb, with no decrease in the grade at all, up and up and up and around another curve that was at least as far from me as I was from the bottom.
I feel that people are often more capable than they think they are. It’s usually true. But what happens when things are not only as bad as they seem, but actually worse? Well, it turned out that that is why I’m sleeping in a tent at the top of that hill tonight. I wanted to find out. Which says I made it up. I had to stop three times to stop wheezing, stretch and refuel, and I had to walk my bike the last eighth of a mile, but I made it. It was really worth it. This trip has been much harder than I realized it would be, but I think it will be easier from here on out. This is reminding me that I am a capable person. Life’s been difficult recently, and I’ve been forgetting. Forgotten, is the feeling. This trip is the hard part, remembering who I am. When I’m done out here, I’ll go to Spain. I’m gonna be full of heart and steel. Something. Full of things. In Spain, I will relax myself, and drink some Garnacha. Hang out with the pretty girls, and whomever else I find. Stumble through Castillian. Drink sunshine. Come home. Good night.