Today is the day!
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| Shruti in Holland |
2 members of the group have already left their home ports[ Shruti/India and Matty Bhai from HK ] and are making there way around the world to lovely [ and forecasting rainy ] Barcelona Spain.
Shruti has taken advantage of a stop over in Holland and ticked off a nice chilly cycle in Amsterdam. Hopefully the east coast of spain brings us some warmer weather. :)
The US contingent, will be outbound at approximately 7:20pm this evening. We had a bit of a snowmagedon yesterday, but today looks clear and cold with the flight status ontime! All 3 of us are online checked in. 2 of us with bikes, myself and my dad, and Eric playing a bit of bicycle roulette, where he will be going green and purchasing a recycled bicycle in Spain.
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| MAC Bike in Amsterdam |
It is always hard saying goodbye to the family for an extended trip. My Olivia and I posing with daddy's Espana cycling cap :) After spending some time with the kids, having them climb all over me with Stefi telling me to not have fun and dont go... they finally let me leave. My dad and I headed to Newark and managed to make it through baggage drop with two enormous bike boxes and security in about 40mins. I will take that economy service any day! One interesting thing was that I was checked for my prework out by security. I guess they thought I was an international lime green powder drug smuggler. :)
My dad and I met Eric, had a pretty good flight where I was able to at least keep my eyes shut for most of the flight which really helped in Barcelona, barely felt sleepy at all. Possibly the multiple lattes and Coke Zeros helped too.
We arrived in Barcelona at about 9:15am local, this was 15mins late, but all things considered it was great. We make it to the airbnb with our 2 giant boxes and Eric sets off to buy his bike. Little did we know that this would become an all day international incident. So I put my and my dad's bike together on the street. Yes it was awkward and yes every Spaniard, or Catalan, that passed by stared at me for a good 30secs, or until we were both uncomfortable. :) I guess they thought I was a hobo gypsy or something. =P
So it turns out it is 3 kings day and everything is closed and Eric has no bike. We contact our good buddy Ric who is from Spain by way of Argentina and he basically works a small miracle and delivers a gift to Eric in the form of a craigslist bike![ no 3kings pun in tended, but merry xmas Eric! ] So as that is all playing out and after Eric and my dad take a mini snoozy-pooze, we go out to see the sites a bit in Barca, Matt cant resist a street churro donut thingy [ it was good ] and we see the most famous church in all of Spain, La Sagrada Familia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia ... I have some more pics below, it was amazing!
We then ended the night with some tapas and some awkward pix which are below. In all of the excitement, running around, assembling bikes, finding bikes, looking at sites, drinking way too many lattes, Matt and I managed to work in a 4+mi ride to go pick up the airbnb key. The loaded bike is suuuuuuuper heavy and I felt like a novice I was going so slow. And of course I strava'd it... gotta make it count :) https://www.strava.com/activities/1343551818
Tomorrow is our first test! 80-ish miles, possible thunderstorms and quite a bit of elevations!! Yikes!! Barcelona to Tarragona and fully loaded. We are ready for it!
Let's go scorchers!! ¡Vamos!
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| Hobo gypsies |
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| I was the only one she prepared the Catalan toast for ... just sayin |
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| sleepy baby |
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| don't want to know ... |
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| Matt dealing with a prod outage... just kidding he is waiting to get driven around town |
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| sleepy baby 2 |
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| Mr Hyde waiting for his donut |
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| who let Shruti near the bread? |
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| me and my Olivia before I left posing with my Espana cycling cap |
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| Matt's fancy bike bag and 2011's top Trek talent |
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| Shruti's bike all packed and ready |
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| I made it through! :) |
It is always hard saying goodbye to the family for an extended trip. My Olivia and I posing with daddy's Espana cycling cap :) After spending some time with the kids, having them climb all over me with Stefi telling me to not have fun and dont go... they finally let me leave. My dad and I headed to Newark and managed to make it through baggage drop with two enormous bike boxes and security in about 40mins. I will take that economy service any day! One interesting thing was that I was checked for my prework out by security. I guess they thought I was an international lime green powder drug smuggler. :)
So it turns out it is 3 kings day and everything is closed and Eric has no bike. We contact our good buddy Ric who is from Spain by way of Argentina and he basically works a small miracle and delivers a gift to Eric in the form of a craigslist bike![ no 3kings pun in tended, but merry xmas Eric! ] So as that is all playing out and after Eric and my dad take a mini snoozy-pooze, we go out to see the sites a bit in Barca, Matt cant resist a street churro donut thingy [ it was good ] and we see the most famous church in all of Spain, La Sagrada Familia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia ... I have some more pics below, it was amazing!
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