S2 : Day 0 - Barca Bound, Bike Assembly, Mishaps and so much more!

IT is go time!

Today is the day!

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.

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!

Hobo gypsies

I was the only one she prepared the Catalan toast for ... just sayin

sleepy baby

don't want to know ...

Matt dealing with a prod outage... just kidding he is waiting to get driven around town

sleepy baby 2

Mr Hyde waiting for his donut

who let Shruti near the bread?

me and my Olivia before I left posing with my Espana cycling cap

 

Matt's fancy bike bag and 2011's top Trek talent

 

Shruti's bike all packed and ready

 

I made it through! :)

 



My Olivia and Stefi's cards they made me before I left. <3

 

My fantastic ham and cheese sandwich

some Spanish grafitti

Yes ... I assembled mine and my dad's bikes on the street waiting for our airbnb to become available... yes it was awkward :)

S2 : Charity

If you are reading this blog you probably know that this past January 2017, 2 friends[ Shruti and Matt ] and I embarked on a bicycle trek down India’s south eastern coast from Puducherry to Kanyakumari. It was an amazing experience, and in the process we raised 157,000Rs for an Indian based charity called Bhumi which focuses on improving underprivileged children’s lives through education. https://letzchange.org/campaigns/cycling-for-children-steven-busiello

We have decided to kick off 2018 with another cycling adventure and have added two more members to our team. Another friend Eric and my dad. This trip, from January 6th to the 19th,will take us down the east coast of Spain from Barcelona to the tip of Spain [Parque Natural Del Estrecho]. We will be covering 780miles, 300 miles more than the trip in India in the same amount of days. As we did on the first trip, we want to give back to a charity that we believe in. After researching many organizations we decided to fund raise for World Bicycle Relief. World Bicycle Relief, is an organization providing access to independence and livelihood through The Power of Bicycles. The money raised through our fundraiser helps to provide specially designed, locally assembled bicycles to students, healthcare workers, and entrepreneurs in rural Africa; connecting them with education, healthcare, and economic opportunities.

You can watch this video to see how the donated bicycle made a difference in Lizzie's life.


Our trip is fully self funded and all of the money you donate will be towards putting bicycles in the hands of kids in Africa. Any amount of donation will go a long way and your help will be invaluable in touching these childrens' lives. For $147, we can provide a World Bicycle Relief bicycle to a student in need. Every donation helps towards our goal of donating 25 bicycles.

To know more about our campaign and to contribute to it please click here: http://fundraise.worldbicyclerelief.org/scorchers As we did on the first trip, we are going to document the trip on this blog so you can track where we are and we will post pictures and hopefully no embarrassing videos. Thank you for the support!!

What are you waiting for? Let's get rolling!

S2 : The Decision!

When the first trip was born, I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I had It all laid out in my mind. I had been to India 5 times previously and fell in love with the country, the people, the culture and the freedom you have there. If i want to drive on the wrong side of the street... ok... i will. :) It wasnt those freedoms I fell for, it was being able to disconnect from the rest of the world and pretty much get lost.

I didn't know what to expect in terms of results, but I pretty much knew how it would go. I learned a lot, the team learned a lot during the process of planning, looking at elevations, knowing to book hotel reservations in advance :) etc etc. It was a fantastic first trip, the only thing i would have changed was making it longer. 

So as we plan a second trip, it is quite different from planning the first one given the first experience and our expectations to do better, or at least as good. Lots of bits to explore. There were no real standouts in terms of places to go. I think we were all just looking at maps of the world seeing what looked interesting. Iceland kept coming up, Taiwan and a few others. So we decided to make our own top lists, fill out an overly complicated spreadsheet of road conditions, temperatures, sites to see, distance between us all and many other extremely nerdy dimensions. A few definite criteria were that it had to be in January and as warm as humanly possible.

Some questions and our thought process of how we were working them out:

Do we add more members? The first scorch, with just the 3 of us was quite comfortable, no arguing, all getting along, easy going, agreeable ... somewhat funny :) so it all worked. As you add people, you have to make sure they will fit and most importantly ... not murder you in your sleep. I swear this is a condition me and Shruti discussed multiple times when evaluating candidates. :P In addition you need to have people on the team who are going to add something, anything ... even if it is just another intelligent brain to help make decisions, or a person who can work and plan. Believe it or not we actually were up to 10 possible riders at one point. A block of 3 dropped out, then there was an injury induced drop out and then our final teammate dropped due to not enough training... and we are at 5. Up from 3 the previous scorch. 


Where can you go in January when half of the world is in the dead of winter and you want to try something new? There were so many factors we worked through. 10 years of historical temperatures, at least 12 countries, road quality, cost, scenery, distance between us all [ thank god i will not have to commute for 24hours worrying about my bike in the cargo hold of the plane :) ]

How do we pack and get our gear from place to place? In other countries getting drivers is not as easy as India. We were beyond lucky to have a guy like G. He was a lifesaver and I never saw a 120lb man eat a cauldron of rice faster. This time we are all becoming mules and lugging our own gear.

We want to go big - the location needs to deliver from sites, to being rideable to having enough miles for us to cover. 

So at the end of it all, we have decided on Spain!! The route starts us off in Barcelona down the eastern coast, passed Gibraltar and down to the tip of the country. Roughly about 780 miles. Super excited as there is about 1 month left and still lots to put the finishing touches on. Packing, bringing more cameras [ taking it to the next level with my GoPro Black 5], colder gear, more and more training before January [ hopefully losing more weight ] and of course trimming the routes and working in the sites vs daylight and cooler temperatures.

Viva Espana!!