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| Final day riding with dad in Barcelona |
Matt, Shruti and I started our day by waking up at about 4:30 and getting Shruti and her trusty btwin to the airport. As a bit of a fun fact, Shruti has the only bike that did both Scorches. The trip to the airport went super smooth, and we came back and put in a few more hours of sleep. We should have taken a farewell pic... but everyone was so tired, first priority was getting her safely to her flight and the next priority was getting back to bed :)
At 9:30, Matt, dad and I set off for our last jamon y queso and cafe con leche together. I think we picked the least Spanish cafe in Barcelona to have it. It was called "California bar" or something. Surfboards on the walls etc. We took a short walk to Probike, who were so nice to give me two bike boxes. We browsed the shop, Matt and I drooled over the Orbea’s and Trek bikes and I cried a little when i saw the prices. I think the cheapest was 2200 euro. 😵 We saw a lot of super cool looking mountain e-bikes with the most expensive being 10k euro!! It seems the trend is to now have a powred bike to get up the mountain and then you bang it down. Makes sense so that you can do more runs before you get tired.
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| final bfast - had to be ham and cafe con leche |
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| wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww |
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| Orbeas, Treks, Cannondales ... I love my Treks, but an Orbea wld be nice |
After dragging two humongous bike boxes about a mile back to the airbnb, Matty packed up his bike in a respectable 24mins( yes we timed it ) and dad and I got our bikes ready for one final trek through Barcelona.
Matty was the next to depart...
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| Shhhhh .. im securing my fork. #babysox |
You can check out the Strava posting here: https://www.strava.com/activities/1366504308 . The 18miles felt like a nice reprieve given we were averaging about 80 miles a day the last 10 days. Suprisingly we still put in about 2k ft of climbing. What was not surprising is that el flato experienced 2 new flats :)
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| 800 Spanish miles on this 1990 Classic |
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| artsy art museum shot |
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| Olympic park |
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| Add caption |
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| I spilled half this coffee on me :) |
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| Columbus monument |
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| gothic quarters |
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| the beach area was pretty nice |
We covered a good chunk of the city and saw the art museum, Olympic park, Montjuic castle, the beach, the Christopher Columbus monument, rode through the gothic quarter, saw la rambla[ and fixed a flat there ] :) , and then circled back to the hotel.
At night mr Eric found a location for some awesome [ and I mean awesome tapas ]. The way it worked was by counting up the sticks. I forget the pricing exactly, but one stick was 1 euro and another was like 1.5 euro. You would eat the tapas, put the stick in a glass and then the waiter would count em to give you your bill. We should have came here the night before as the final team meal. Next time :)
We finished the night with a trip to Decathalon to find some deals and souvenirs. It was a great last day.
Reflecting back after all of these months on the trips ups and downs. The cold, rain, mud, elevations, chains busting, flats, drains flooding, bikes breaking down and bodies breaking down were all a part of making the experience. It was a challenging adventure with so many learning moments that we will take with us to the next trip.[packing lighter!]
The trip was officially over, but if i could jump on a plane right now and do it all again exactly as is ... I would. :)
Now how do I break it to my wife and family that I wanted to go and if I had to, I would go it alone? Thankfully I didn't have to do that. I managed to convince my wife with some careful "dripping" of information, a bit of video showing here and there and then pestering her for a week if she would come with me, and I couldn't believe it - she said yes! 
