You Either Get It or You Don't. Y punto.
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Ruminations
Another cycling job; another boss who doesn't ride. What the hell is up with this?

I don't expect that people who work for large accounting firms are able to calculate their grocery bills without using calculators; but the number of people who work in cycling who don't actually ride bikes continually surprises me. Shocks me, actually.

I'm in the same situation again; another job, hired by someone who superficially claims to be interested in developing cycling; but, in the end, just wants to keep her business afloat. Not that there's anything wrong with that; but why would you spend weeks griping about throwing good money after bad for a project that has to develop, for something that wouldn't make money until at least six months after you start it ... if not a year....

Let's not kid ourselves: if you don't ride, if you don't actively take part in the community of people who genuinely like bikes, you aren't gonna get it. If you don't take part in community groups that work on cycling as an issue, and work to develop cycling in the city, you're not going to get it. The contract runs until November 23rd and I don't think I'm going to renew it - not because I don't want to be part of a project that is a big risk (that's exciting any way you cut it) but I don't want to be part of a money grab for a company which, frankly, would have been better helped by spending the money on a marketing coordinator who could have pinpointed the mistakes being made in the marketing plan. Or even developing something that resembles a marketing plan. (One particularly telling example: everybody knows about this establishment - it IS the oldest bike shop in Madrid - but if you ask Madrid people to tell you exactly where the store is located, more often than not you get a blank stare. That should tell a store owner something.

) The vast majority of people get into physical activities because it gives them something deeper than a trip to the mall does. Cycling is about more than money, and if you don't ever get on your bike - and in a store that employs eight people, only two of us ride. That's not a good sign. More fool me: I didn’t pick up on that before I started working there, but I’m really noticing it now. Almost no one in the store rides, talks to other cyclists in a non-commercial environment, nad couldn't tell you what cyclists are thinking; perhaps they know what they want to buy, but again, they just don't Get It.

So I'm back to Square One again, and the song which is on my MP3 right now is "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who. And that's exactly how I feel now: I tip my helmet to the new revolution, but in spite of being as big a gear freak as they come, I’m not exactly in this to propogate a consumerist point of view (though if you can make money at it honestly without screwing people around, more power to you.)

Back in the swing of things
Mood:  bright
Topic: Planning!
First day back: Not so bad. G-Man and I are still in contact - actually, I'm going out to his place for dinner on Thursday, which is the first time I've been to a Spanish guy's house and the guy wasn't a friend of a friend. Meet the parents, kind of.

New plans for May 15th long weekend:
- the Ciudad Encantada in Cuenca.
- bumming around Segovia.
- camping around that funny sticky-out bit in the west end of the Comunidad de Madrid.
- heading out for a three-day excursion with the Pedalibre people.

So many options. So little time....

First the vacation, then the rumination
Mood:  blue
Topic: Ruminations
So we're back. We've been back for a couple of days now, having taken the overnight bus from Cadiz on Friday night. A case of relationship overdose on both fronts.

I hate this period of time. Not because I wish I were back on the bike and travelling more - I mean, THAT's a given - but because there's always a dead time after you go on holidays with people when you don't talk to each other (after having overdosed on your travelling companions) but you still want human companionship - hard when everyone is still on holidays.

And I feel kind of dumb because I let myself fall into temptation by having a flingette with G-Man, who, as they say on "Sex and the City", just isn't that into me. I know that we agreed to just make it a holiday thing, that it was going to end the minute we got on the bus, and if it were that easy I wouldn't be checking my e-mail every five minutes, waiting to get the reason why he's just sent me two audio files with no text attached. (As Dr. Phil says, "Every question is a statement you already know." So if I ask him, "Are you mad at me?", I probably already know he is.)

I wish I had the talent for cruelty that would allow me to walk away from difficult situations. I wish that I could just chalk up a fling to being a fling, but the fact that it happened with someone I've been infatuated with for a long time but I can't. What's worse is that this is someone I bike with, someone who I do stuff with. And I know that anything further is not going to happen.

So tomorrow it's back to work. It's back to fixing bikes, taking reservations, fighting with hotels, and dealing with the boss. I wish that I could rewind into last week. I wish I could relive the thrill of bombing down hills on a fully loaded bike, the great taste of an icy Diet Pepsi after four hours of straight riding, the thrill of a new man touching my back and running his hands through my hair, reaching the top of the hill and seeing the purple fields full of crownvetch sway in the wind; the way he grabbed my hand as I was putting sunscreen on his back and looked intensely into my eyes and didn't say a word. And now I have to let go of all of those things and internalize them and pretend, in a sense, that they didn't happen.

At least I can get the biking back.

Do I tell him....or not?
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Ruminations
It didn't start out as a lie. Ex Mex and I DID mean to go to Berlin for Easter Week, but we got so dicked around by the pricing policies of the budget airlines that we gave up pretty soon after we started. And after Ex Mex and I gave up on Berlin, I got together with G-Man, and then before we cooled things down I had invited him on one of my dream trips...and then I invited A-OK along because I didn't want to be alone with a guy who disappointed me...and at some point, I don't remember exactly when, I made the conscious decision NOT to tell the boss that I wasn't going to Berlin.

So now the poor boss is convinced that I'm going to Germany, and obviously when I come back to work on the 17th, it's gonna look a little strange when I come back with a tan, especially as a lot of Germany is currently up to its hind parts in water, what with the Danube and Elbe rivers flooding most of the south and east of the country. (And no, I don't wear a lot of makeup, so I can't blame it on Max Factor, either....)

So what's the problem? El Jefe is a nice guy, but he's so fixated on the idea of us being friends that he doesn't seem to realize that even being friends has its limits. And one of those limits is respecting my down time, when I'm usually doing something else (writing, riding, translating, working on my website, whatever...) More than once, I've had to lie about my whereabouts in my spare time because he thinks that, because I live five minutes from the office, he can call on me to do things whenever he wants. Had he realized that the Berlin plans fell through, I could see myself being subjected to all kinds of whining, pleading, etc., to stay in town and work. And I'm sorry, but I haven't had a holiday since last August. My back is aching, I'm way the hell out of shape (so much for riding every day) and I need a break.

We had a HUGE argument last Friday (so huge I thought for a moment that I'd get the sack) about limits on work. That sealed it for me: I didn't care if it meant having to hide under the bed for 168 hours straight - I was NOT working during Easter Week. I was not telling him that I would be on the Iberian peninsula for that time. I need my space when I'm not in his back pocket, and vice versa. It's like being married to someone you don't find attractive. So there had to be limits. And I came down on the situation and established some.

Our Collective Agreement states that we have 32 days of holidays. And I plan on using them all.

Now I just have to think of some excuse to cover for my sunburned nose, after supposedly returning from a country which is half-innundated....!

Sometimes I hate how backwards Spaniards are
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Rant!
Sometimes I really hate how backwards Spaniards are. I hate the way so many so-called middle-class people (who would be the ones supporting social change, if not promoting it, in other countries) are these faux, pretentious snobs. I hate the way we get those stupid bottle blondes in the office decked out in bootleg Burberry who make a virtue out of being dumb. How the hell can women in this day and age be proud of their inability to do things in this day and age?

How the hell can a woman be proud of the fact that she doesn't know how to ride a bike? How can a woman who rides a bike be proud of the fact that she doesn't know how to change a flat tire?

This is one of the things about feminism that scares me - the idea that we get to let ourselves off the hook for things we don't know.

I know that when we're down in the south we're going to get yelled at by BMW drivers who will try to tell us that we have no right to be on the road because we're basically on toys. I know that there are people who will laugh at the bikes and ask us if we're too poor to afford cars. (In fact, 33% of this crew owns cars.)

I don't understand how Spaniards can make it a source of pride to be so ignorant. When does ignorance become a source of power? When you've got money to cover how little you know. How do people know that you've got that little money? They don't.

Which will be one good reason why we'll be on rail trails and back roads. Fewer goofs. We hope...

To bike away the pain....
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Ruminations
On Friday night I went out on a great date with a great guy who's perfect in all senses. And being the fatalist that I am (I'm accepting that more as I get older), I have a really sneaking suspicion that any attraction that's there is totally one-sided on my behalf and that three weeks from now, I'm going to be looking for another guy who isn't afraid of (literally) riding off into the sunset.

I know that I'm going to know by Thursday night. I know that the call will go unreturned, that the e-mail is going to get deleted once he sees who it's from. I know that on Friday, when we head down to Jaen, I'm going to be thinking about him incessantly and that there'll be nothing I can do, 'cause I'm gonna be in the mountains in northern Spain, and he's going to be in the Pyrenees, and I shouldn't even bother bringing my phone 'cause I'm going to end up being with the two people I talk to most anyway.

Does anyone else ride to take away the pain? It's the one advantage I have that few of my friends ride as much as I do. More than once, I have gotten on the bike for an hour, two hours, three hours at a time to ride through the pain, to force myself into a kind of rhythm where I can sublimate the pain and loneliness, or push it out through the pedals. Maybe this is what anorexics feel they're doing when they purge.

And I don't want to think that this relationship - for what little it's been so far - is going to go south, but it's hard to keep my spirits up and hope that something will come of this when the track record so far has been so sucky. So I keep riding, for the same reason I keep writing. At the end of some days, it feels like words and the bike are the only things I can always count on, like it's all that I've got that gives me any consistency, and that I can control.

So if the message isn't returned, the number doesn't come back on my cell phone, I'll do what I what I always do. I'll go somewhere quiet and listen to Macy Gray and Cassandra Wilson and I'll mourn. I'll give myself the requisite hour to feel bad, which is all I permit myself anymore (otherwise it's just too much time in a day) and then I'll go and either write or ride. (Those words sound too much alike. Coincidence?) Because at the end of the day, I can count on the fact that those will make me feel better.

OK, back to packing for the trip.

We're gettin'HYPED for Semana Santa
Mood:  cheeky
Wanna know what the best...OK, maybe not the total best, but one of the Top 10 thing is about Living in Spain? Number Four: Everybody gets March break here. Except that March break is in April, and sometimes it's even in late April, when the weather starts to get good.

And I've got cabin fever to get out and to hit the road.

How much would you pay for someone to tell you where to go?
Mood:  caffeinated
I like my job. I really do. And I have to say that 70% of the time, I like the clients, too: The clients can be really cool people. But note the use of the word CAN.

Most touring companies offer two types of tours: guided and self-guided options. Guided tours are the ones where you basically do nothing but get on the bike and ride from A to B. You may have a chance to choose what you're having for lunch or dinner, and you may have the option of doing a bit more riding once the basic riding for the day is done. Essentially, though, you pay those big bucks because you don't want to have to make decisions; you're paying us to make the decisions for you. And most of the time, this is a system that works.

Where we seem to get the most trouble, however, is when clients confuse guided with self-guided; On a self-guided tour, you're more or less on your own. You pay us to give you the maps and the bikes, to do the hotel reservations and to make sure that the hotel gives you something resembling breakfast every morning. But we don't do much more than that.

This is why people choose the self-guided option: You are responsible for getting your butt from A to B. You buy your own lunches, you can choose which route you'd like to go, but we're not going to tell you that you definitively have to take the left fork if the right one looks more appealing and gets you to your hotel before sundown. If you want to take the bus one day rather than ride, that's your own business.

That, in a nutshell, is the way you save half the price on a cycle tour: You are not paying for me to tell you when you have to get up in the morning, not to tell you not to ride during the hottest hours of the day. You're not paying me to know the date when a certain altar was built, how many times Velazquez was married, what you're supposed to do when your tire goes flat halfway up O Cebreiro. That's the reason why you're paying half of what you would pay on a guided tour. You are paying for your own independence, instead of having me shepherd you around. Why? Because there are a lot of cyclists who only want the infrastructure, not the herding; for lack of a better way to put it, cyclists who don';t need to be told what to do.

The reason why I'm writing about this today is that we have two groups of clients who either haven't gotten the idea of why it';s self-guided (why they're paying ?950 a head, not ?1450) or haven't been bothered to read their e-mails. One is a pair of families coming over from San Francisco who want to go biking in Gerona in July. The other is a pair of families who are coming from San Francisco who are going to go biking in Andalusia in a couple of weeks.

It has gotten to the point that I'm hesitant to open Outlook every morning because I don';t know what kind of stupid-ass question I';m going to get hit with THIS time. If you choose the self-guided option, you choose what kind of wine you're having for lunch, how to wash the snot out of your cycling gloves. You know why your knees hurt - because no one has to tell you NOT to wear Air Jordans on a bike.

To be honest, I'd be thrilled to bits if we ended up doing away with the guided tours and only offered self-guided options; or even if we put together self-guided options for people a la carte. But there's a limit to the service economy, spoke folk, and you don't get something for nothing. Or for very little.

March 20th - Back in the saddle
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Ruminations
Runners who are especially dedicated to running talk about the "runner's high" - a Zen-like state which allows them to basically zone out and think of nothing but the task at hand when they're out running. It's what I need now, but the truth is, I've been parked in front of my laptop for six hours, working on the website and the blog.

I had a rough weekend. It got off on the wrong foot on Friday when my editor at the local paper had a (fully justified) go at me for being exceptionally late with an article... and then to top it off, I had words with my boss about whether e-mails should be written in bullet points or in full sentences. (What can I say? I'm a former ESL teacher. Bullet points are for wimps who can't handle their non-defining relative clauses.) First time out in three months on Friday night (watch dem gin&tonix); ran into an old boss; the guy I hit on hasn't called me; superhangover on Saturday; then another sarcastic e-mail from the editor this morning about the article. And it struck me yesterday that, for the little money I get writing for this particular paper, I might as well strike out on my own and do my own thing.

So here it is. I'm not saying that it's going to be the best blog you've ever read in your life, but I hope it proves to be informative and fun, that it inspires you to get back on your bike and to travel around - one of the greatest uses of bikes...and you don't have to pay some guy in Boston tons of money to set you up with a trip. Between the website and the blog, I hope to provide people who want to travel by bike with some practical information on how to get across Spain on two wheels. Obviously, those of you who are dedicated cycle tourists aren't going to sweat the small stuff; you're used to sleeping rough in forests, camping, fixing flats in the middle of nowhere.

And I'll give you the inside line on what it's like to have one of those terminally cool jobs - cycle touring guide. It is a cool job, but it's a hard one, what with having to manage personalities, a boss who's having his first go at being a boss (and has some days which are better than others) and all the other technical stuff which doesn't flip you out when you're on your own, but which takes an especially cool head when you've got a whiny housewife from Florida, two teenagers itching to take the bike apart, and a couple who got into a little too much vino tinto at lunch. It's fun, but I would be lying if I said it was all fun and games. Sometimes the funny stuff doesn't come through until six months later, when you hear from a colleague that they had to dig the dad out of a ditch in the Dordogne because he fell off the road while riding drunk....or the whiny housewife walked off a tour of Ireland because she didn't realize that, whoops, Ireland is hilly....just like the Camino de Santiago is.

At any rate, I promise to keep THIS blog current. I promise to include as much information on biking in Spain - road racing, mountain biking, commuting - as much as I can; and, through the website, I'll do my best to keep you up to date on the development on new routes, new laws and new tendencies on biking in Spain.