Steve Cycles The World: S2 : Day 6 - About 100 miles of downhill

guess who was enjoying this the most? :)

After a monumental elevation gain over 30miles, we now had about 100miles in front of us to plow through. I was optimistic about it ( as usual 😊) because the elevation over our google mapped route was the exact opposite of the previous day. It had on the agenda a constant downhill to the end, with some minor climbs here and there. My biggest concern was the wind, even if we have a downhill and there is wind, it will still be a bear to bang out 100mi after the elevation we did the day before. Today’s ride would just be the boys as Shruti planned to take a break with Eric in the car, take selfies and eat. 😊

The night before, Matt and I were sharing a room and there was an extremely creepy painting hanging next to his bed, pretty much looking right at him as he slept. He took it down, but then reconsidered and put it up because he knew I would put it back up anyway as he slept. So I did the only rational thing and made these weird oversized cut out eyes out of paper and electrical tape and made it look like it was a possessed picture. I was really hoping he would wake me up screaming in the middle of the night. I guess his stiff upper lip took over and that didnt happen, but he did tell me he woke up in the middle of the night and got a bit freaked and did a double take on the picture. LOL! Makes me laugh just thinking about it. :) .... ahhh the little things

Here are the stats!!

Ride Statistics
Date ....................... Thursday January 12th 2018
Strava Link ................ https://www.strava.com/activities/1353521430
Departure City/Town ........

red jackets ... UNITE!!!

Departure Time ............. 8:06AM CET*
Departure Temperature ...... TBD
Time in Motion ............ 7:54:49 / 73%
Time at Rest ............... 2:52:01 / 27%
Total Time ................. 10:46:50
Arrival City/Town .......... Los Alcazeres
Arrival Time ............... 8:49 PM CET
Arrival Temperature ........ TBD

Total Miles Cycled ......... 98.12 mi
Total Elevation ............ 3,237ft

Steve Avg Pace|Max Speed ... 12.4 mi/h | 36.5 mi/h
Matt Avg Pace|Max Speed .... 9.4 mi/h | 31.3 mi/h
* Central European Time

Tour Statistics
I decided to be extra nerdy and keep a cumulative running total of some key stats. :)
Total Miles Cycled ......... 412.7 mi
Total Elevation ............ 18,730 ft

The day started out frigid. We descended from our mountaintop airbnb nice and early as the sun was rising and by the time we made it to the bottom of that hill our fingers were blue and purple and we had to slap on gloves.

morning was chilly .. but secluded and scenic

Olive trees were everywhere

We got off the main paved road and followed googles instructions which took us on to some back road - what we referred to as farm roads. It seemed when google was working on their sattelite mapping of the streets/roads they didnt really check on the quality of the path. Who can blame them, i think that is probably an impossibility unless they have locals submit their take on the roads and use group analysis to provide a final categorization of the pieces of road. So in short, after the first day we were very wary, but we pressed on as it was downhill or flat and it hadnt rained ... what could go wrong? 😊

Thankfully- the paths were a bit bumpy and we did have to cut through a Spaniards olive farm to get to main roads, but that was about 15mins of the first portion before we hit probably the top breakfast spot we had had.

We stopped in the town of ... at ..... and i managed to use my Tarzan-esque Spanish to get out the best plate of food we had had so far. They had a hearth with a wood fire and were bbqing the meat in the place. It was about 9am and the place was packed. I could use a plate of that right now. 😊

I dream about these long paths to seemingly nowhere

As in other days' routes, Google thought that some farmers roads were ok to cycle on. We had a bit of a 15min detour trying to find our way out to a main road. The image below was taken right before we needed to make our way through some Spanish olive farmer's grove to the right street.

disconnected from everything

best breakfast of the trip .... yummmmmmmmmm

We had a fantastic 30 miles after breakfast rolling to our next gas station stop in Hondon de los Frailes.

We didnt take many selfies, but I did take a lot of go pro video.

I loved these gas station stops

We were at about the 48mile mark and as you can see from the elevation graph below, we were in for one of the top 3 downhills of the whole trip. Below are a few of the videos I took of us rolling through.

and our afternoon breaky-poo

best pastry I ate in Spain ... and I had a lot! ** burp **

dude selfie

This must be a thing in Spain. We saw at least 3 statue/monuments like this all along our route.

98 in the books ...

Maybe ... one day ....

Ummmm ... eyes are up here.

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

We made it to Los Alcazeres, contemplated riding around for another 2niles to get that century, but we decided we were better of just going to the airbnb. 😊 We bring up the bikes, do a quick cleanup and get moving to find some food. When we walked in to the restaurant we didnt know what we were in for. It just so happened that there was a flamenco school there putting on a show! The videos and pix say it all. It was a fantastic experience to see flamenco in Spain. I knew we would have paella at least once, but seeing flamenco for me was icing on the cake.

Before we went to sleep, Shruti and I decided to leave earlier than Matt and dad as a head start to try to make it to the next destination as early as possible. It was a great idea, and things were going well until we hit the wettest muddiest part of the whole trip!

Another 90miles was waiting for us!