Cue the harps, pack the panniers and ....HELLO FREEDOM!!!
Mood:  flirty
Topic: Ruminations
So I'm sitting at home this morning, doing some proposal letters and generally mucking around on Messenger, and it hits me. Doesn't hit me like a ton of bricks... it was more like a Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial, with shining lights and harp music...

Hot diggedy double damn!!

I'm totally free!!!

I just got paid....

There is no man hanging around to explain or justify things to....let alone one who would want to come along....

There's no job to report back to...

I could very well jump on my bike and go straight back to Tarifa, if I damn well felt like it!

And for once, that freedom is not daunting...it just feels VERY VERY COOL. To realize that you're free of the normal constraints which keep you from riding is great. It's not likely that I'm going to take off at any point in the next day or two; but knowing that I could do it (the rent is paid, the invoices have been sent, the deadlines have been met for this month....), the temptation to take off next week is enormous. After all, what am I going to do here? Sit here and moan that I'm unemployed and that the G-Man doesn't love me? Yeah, right.

Truth is, the weather has, for the most part, been freakishly good this fall. Daytime temperatures have averaged around 20?C, even in Madrid, and with the exception of last week, with the rain, it's been very dry.

So, where to go? The Camino de Santiago beckons, to be honest. I would really like to do the bit I haven't tried, going between Logro?o and Leon...even over a week, that would work. Almeria would be great, but there are no regional trains going down there and I don't feel like fighting the ALSA bus company to put the bike on the bus (though if I travelled Tuesday at 10AM I would be HIGHLY surprised that anyone would care.)

Oh, the siren call of the open road...if I didn't have to go back to Canada at Christmas, I would love to take the time to go to all around Spain, and really do it by myself this time. And do it RIGHT.

Better alone than badly accompanied (I think)
Mood:  crushed out
Topic: Ruminations
So it's final. I wrote the G-Man today and said that I needed some space. I un-invited him to my birthday party (the first time in my life that I have had to do that to someone and it felt AWFUL). I told him that I didn't want to see him for at least a month. And right now I have SO much respect for smokers who try to quit smoking because frankly, even though he wasn't my boyfriend, it's like this craving to be in touch with him.

G-Man, do you read this blog? Do you know how much fun it was to go biking with you, that you were the perfect travel companion because you're the same height as me, you kept me calm? Do you know what it means to know that I will definitely be biking by myself next summer if the A-Team don't come along?

Maybe you won't read this and it's all right to confess here that I thought we would grow old together, ride our bikes together not necessarily forever, but that you would come with me to Vietnam in 2008 and that riding with you would be a maybe-forever thing.

I thought that that was my advantage. That your ex didn't ride and I couldn't ride enough.

But the truth is that I know now that all the bike rides in the world, all the sunsets seen from the saddle don't make for love. If you do read this, I want you to know that riding with you was good. And I'm sorry for whatever reason it was why you couldn't love me. I tried. And now I have to go riding into the sunset alone.

Better by yourself?
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Ruminations
I think I have decided to do the Transiberico by myself.

The Transiberico is the bike trip that was supposed to be the big trip for G-Man and I, but after last night (more personal, inter-cultural relationship crapola, nothing that's suitable for this blog because it's neither Spain-specific or has to do with biking) I think I've decided that I want to do this by myself. I don't want to have to spend a month with someone who doesn't love me, living in a tent and biking 100 km a day; I don't want that failure of the relationship rubbed in my face.

Besides, I know what's going to happen. He'll get all involved in some big project or some class or something and even though he'll have known about the dates for a year before, six weeks before we're due to leave, it'll come to pass that oh, he can't go. And I would like to leave this relationship with more than the memories of how I was disappointed.

Priego Tourism Conference....after
Mood:  cool
Topic: Ruminations
One of the Match guys I was seeing, (or, more accurately, I saw once and never saw again) said that he didn’t want to move back from Cordoba, where he was from, because he said that Cordoba ages people prematurely. After this morning’s trip from Priego de Cordoba back into the train station in Cordoba, I believe it.

David, the driver in charge of taking us around, didn’t realize that he was supposed to be taking me back to the city this morning and when Cati, the conference organizer, asked him to do so, he asked if it would be all right to double up on a trip that someone else had booked, an older woman who needed to be taken to the Reina Sofia Medical Centre in the city. And I was like, cool, I don’t have a problem with that...and the nice part was that I got a tour of some of the smaller hamlets in the subbetica, like Zagrilla and places like that which I know that I’ve always thought about travelling through by bike but never did. (Just as well: up until now I sincerely doubt that I would have been able to handle that much hill riding.)

So we went through Carcabuey, which is where David is from, to pick up this woman and her nephew. Nephew is probably a couple of years older than I am, balding, kind of like the actor Javier Camara, but with a big ridge of bone missing from his skull about two inches above his brow line. According to David, the nephew used to be a fireman for the Mancomunidad until a car accidetn laid him low for a couple of months; now he spends most of his time caring for his dowager aunt, who is about seventy and has bone cancer. The aunt is not in good shape, and having to travel to Cordoba for radiotherapy every day for thirty-five days straight is not doing her any good – especially because she’s spent almost all her life in the pueblo and the lack of having moved anywhere by vehicular transit has made her unfortunately prone to car sickness. Which she was, several times in the car before we even hit the highway. But the two men were cool with it – I guess it’s a fairly common occurence – and they came prepared. (The truth of it is, I don’t actually know if she was being sick or not – she just kept making this sound like a frog croaking in a closed jam jar and I tried to think about it as little as possible.)

I love travelling through that area, but I can’t think of many other places, even within Andalucia, where the phrase “an area hobbled by poverty” is as apt. They’re not just poor; in a lot of places there, they don’t even want to give a face to how poor they are because just exposing themselves to outsiders would be a source of shame. It definitely fits the description of being “heartbreakingly beautiful”, and one interesting thing about it is that forest fires aren’t a problem in the area there’s no real one-upmanship to be gained by burning anything. (The area’s sparse population is also a benefit – if any suspicious behaviour took place there, half the residents would know who did it before the fire took hold. Like the old Canadian joke: “Could you identify the bank robber in a police lineup?” “Yeah! It were Joe Jones, from the fifth concession – I recognized him by the cigarette burns in his jacket!”)

The conference itself wasn’t a terribly formal affair – some 25 people, with the odd local senior citizen shuffling in and out, the organizers returning late after lunch, and I had to cut my presentation about ten minutes short. Which wasn’t such a big deal, though I do feel funny that they paid me €300 for 30 minutes of work. It’s almost not fair. But at the same time, it seems like the Mancomunidad has money to throw around: when I checked into the hotel and didn’t know if dinner was included in the deal, the Scottish receptionist said she’d check into it. I said that I didn’t want to rack up expenses for them more than I had to. She just kind of raised an eyebrow in a way that told me that that wasn’t that much of an issue.

I didn’t get to see Priego itself, which was a shame. I really would have liked to have taken a tour of the town, but that’s going to have to wait for next time, it seems...

So it's now 2:15 PM and I'm writing this on the AVE back to the capital. I'm gonna shut this down and write more when I get back to Madrid. I’m tired; I didn’t sleep well and I don’t know if it’s because of the combination of roast lamb for dinner and a gin and tonic in the bath after (note to self: G&Ts do NOT mix well with lamb), the onset of That Time of the Month or how quiet it was. But I woke up about four times during the night, just couldn’t get my eyes to stick as they say in Spanish, and I kept thinking, Damn, it’s sooooo quiet here.... I wonder if I could actually sleep or live happily in a place that’s THAT isolated. Nice biking, but what about the living in a place like that?

Herding Cats 101
Mood:  blue
Topic: Ruminations
Herding Cats 101

So the bike club had its first outing today. And the only thing I can think of is that it was like herding cats. Only half the people came on time. Two people (beginners) got themselves bogged down in half an inch of mud and managed to block their derailleurs. Pablo, who’s a pretty experienced cyclist, lost his cassette twenty miles from the starting point (and, since he’d just had his bike given the once-over the weekend before, never thought about bringing any kind of tools to fix it.) One of the newbies, who hadn’t been on a bike in twenty years, wore really heavy black clothes, roasted in the Indian summer heat...and almost passed out from a superbonk that was only surpassed by being forcefed Arrowroot cookies. Pablo’s wife, Susana, got a fruit fly in the eye and we ended up having to squirt a litre of water in her face before dislodging her contact lens (I don’t know if she ever managed to get the bug out), and my pump decided it had a particular craving for Presta valve tops and chewed up two inner tubes before decapitating a third, which blew six miles before the end. Thank God The Owner drives a Volvo station wagon, and thank God for cell phones because I don’t know how I would have gotten home. A success, all the way around. :-/

And I made an important but not particularly pleasant discovery today, one that at least makes me feel (slightly) more in control: I think that I was in love with G-Man, and might still be. Uck. I cannot think of any other reason why things would still be pissing me off this far down the road. Feelings for a guy who’s just a fling does not hang around you like the smell of camphor, like old sweat on a drunken bum.

You don’t find yourself getting irritated by the small stuff, like when he tells you that he can’t go shopping and then calls your from the sports superstore the very next day, asking you if you need anything. (If you didn’t have time to go, then why are you there??)

You don’t wake up in the morning, touching the pillow and realizing that you remember the constellation of moles on his shoulder, how he grabbed your hand and kissed you on the beach as you were putting sunscreen on his back, how lovely his hands looked on your stomach after lovemaking... And the only way to get over this is going to be cold turkey. Just nothing. Just walking away from it no matter how much it hurts, because at some point you have to realize that all the swapped helmets and bike trips and gagged-on Powerbars will never translate into love. He’s never going to wake up one day and feel this great chunk of something missing in his life....

“One of these mornings / Won’t be very long / You will look for me / And I’ll be gone...”

I don’t usually wear music when I ride, mostly for safety reasons: there aren’t that many car-free areas where you can ride in Madrid, and I don’t trust my own with-it-ness not to start playing air guitar mid-ride. But as I’m sitting here in the bedroom, plunking away on the laptop, thinking about what I could make for dinner that wouldn’t involve actually going into the kitchen where my room-mates are smoking themselves silly, I realize that maybe it would be a better anaesthetic to start heading out with the MP3: I wouldn’t be left alone to start delving deeper into my thoughts and starting to realize that kind of shit. But in a sense, if it’s going to happen, it’s better that it happen on a bike, I suppose: when you’re riding a bike, you can’t focus on the faces of the other people. You go hiking with someone who’s in a bad mood, you can’t get away from it. Someone’s on a bad mood on a bike? Ride thirty yards ahead – problem solved. So while this little revelation dawns on me today and hits me full in the face like a cruel laugh, the one comfort I could take was, at least, no one could see me want to cry.

And riding with beginners is like herding cats is like trying to get over an ex-boyfriend: All you can do is try to get everything together beforehand: once everything is set in motion, there's no other option except breathe deep, hold on and don't read too deeply into what's going on.

The Only Fiesta in Spain that's a Guaranteed Shit Storm
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Ruminations
[Mantra to myself: I will not repeat "TFS." I will not repeat "TFS".]

So it's the time of year for Fiesta de la Bicicleta, which is organized by the COPE, the Catholic Church's radio station. I am no fan of COPE; neither is The Owner. I find their attitude towards anything that's not distinctly pro-Franco kind of nauseating. However, they are the main promoters behind the one-day "Fiesta de la Bicicleta", so there's gotta be SOME kind of good going on there; they could just can it altogether. So I post the information on the PedaLibre group message board, figuring that people might be interested.

OOOOOHHHH NO. TFS. (Ouch! Sorry.) All of a sudden a shit storm ensues because apparently, because (TFS....) no one talks to anybody about anything that could be improved. No one turns around to the COPE and says, Great Event! Know what would make it even better? Why not do it every month? No. Instead, they're all sitting like little kids at their computers, sending off messages about what jerks and child molesters the priests at the COPE are, and that everybody should avoid them...

On the one hand, I understand where the protests are coming from. That the City Council decides to make one universal gesture towards cycling every year in order to shut everybody up and to try to make political hay from it is cynical at best. It would seem counterintuitive that the most conservative radio station in the country would support an activity that’s generally associated with fairly progressive politics. And you’d think that, for one day a year, the drivers of Madrid could behave themselves and give everybody else space: they do it for the Saint Sylvester Half-Marathon, organized by Nike every December 31st; they do it for the Vuelta; they’ll do it for the Cabalgata de los Reyes, which is the Spanish equivalent of the Santa Claus Parade. But there’s something about the Fiesta de la Bicicleta that just makes Madrid residents see red. They can’t get over the idea that they’re being asked to sacrifice the streets for half a day, and cyclists get hit, they get verbally abused, they’re told to stay off the roads....and we’re talking families getting threatened by cars, not some dreadlocked kid trying to BMX his way down the Castellana off the hoods of every BMW along the way. (Though one can understand the temptation.)

At times like this, rather than pull out TFS, you have to take a deep breath and remind yourself that the cultural changes that many other societies went through just didn’t happen here. They didn’t have the riots of '68 or the petroleum crisis of '73; many of the mistakes and issues which we’ve learned how to deal with (the do’s and don’t’s of activism, for example) are things that are only starting to come to the forefront now. It’s natural, I suppose, that the antagonism with which things get done here will not go away easily. That Javier Solana, a former Spanish Minister of Defense, is head negotiator with NATO continually blows me away. But there’s some hope as well: If Javier Solana can become a reference for negotiating skills, why can’t the Pedalibreros?

Especially since we’re talking about an event that the folks at the COPE aren’t wild about organizing. It’s great publicity, but it’s a pain in the ass to organize, and The Owner told me (I don’t know if this is true or not) that the woman who organized the event last year had a miscarriage after everything was over. So why wouldn’t they want more help with it? Establish the rules first, make the first one a real success, and then ride on the success of that by amping it up. Have a Fiesta de la Bicicleta each month in a different area of town – Chamberi, Tetuan, Carabanchel, Vallekas – getting the people in the biking organizations in each part of town in on the act. Where are the good place to do biking and tapas? What about community arts groups?

And this is where being North American kicks in because you start realizing that there are other options, that you don't have to accept things just because someone says they have to be that way.

Things will always change slowly if they're going to change for the better.

But it was really hard not to think of some of those guys - and I'm not being sexist, each and every one of them was of the male persuasion - and NOT think of my Grade Five teacher, Margaret Rupert....

"KNOCK IT OFF, OR I'M GONNA KNOCK YOUR HEADS TOGETHER, YOU BUNCH!!!!"

Requiem for a Local Bike Shop Pt 2
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Ruminations
The Owner used to be a shrink. This is not the advantage it would seem to be, as you're never entirely sure if you're being manipulated or she's geniunely unsure if she should ask you something. And the tone of voice she uses is so precise to that one thing that no sooner has she opened her mouth than you know EXACTLY what is going to come out:

"But Patricia! How are we going to...."

There's no way of being able to capture in words (well, I could, but it's not the point of this blog) the sing-song-y helplessness, the moue of an ex-smoker's mouth, that she does this with. The look of helplessness that should not belong on the face of a woman who wears a ton of eye makeup and no blush or lipstick. It makes me yearn for the bitchy bosses of the past who did not hesitate to make it clear that what they wanted and when they expected it by. WHAM.BANG.WHOOP. There it was, loud and clear: "Get me the phone number." Like a REAL boss would do....

Instead, what I got this morning was a little-girl-lost look and what was either a very, very wimpy chewing out or some milquetoast attempt at regret: "You should have been at Festibike yesterday, giving out pamphlets to all the families that were there...all the mothers with kids." Festibike is basically the Madrid version of the Banff Bike Festival - any mom who takes her kids there probably bikes up the southern end of La Pedriza park and the Sierra de Guadarrama before breakfast. Either that or she's been hauled there by her husband. And I would have just been one more person handing out publicity bumpf. I can't think of a worse way of publicizing something that's NOT meant to go for the biking crowd. We should be approaching community groups, not some harried housewife who's trying to distract her eight-year-old from the Extreme BMX demonstration. And I'm sorry, but I do NOT work seven days a week for someone else. I made that very clear right off the bat.

She probably thinks I gave up hope. I'm not even sure I had it in the first place.

Requiem for an LBS
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Ruminations
I don't know how I didn't notice the dirt before. It wasn't like there were huge dust bunnies lurking under the bikes or anything like that, but there were small things - remainders of cobwebs hanging from the spotlights, a thin film of dust on the frames of the bikes, made even more noticeable because many bikes these days are painted in a dark, matte finish...

And then yesterday, when they started moving the smaller mountain bikes and the hybrids downstairs, I noticed in a big way how the walls were badly dented, how pockets of dust would gather in the loops of packing tape that the guys would use to put posters up on the walls. And some of the posters they'd mounted were from companies the store hasn't worked with in years - GT, Colagno, Cannondale. At some point Short and Blonde had decided that the best way to attach the posters to the two pillars holding up the catwalk - there's a catwalk that takes over two-thirds of the main floor, and no one over a size 48 can move comfortably through the other side of the store - with packing staples. I mean, at some point, he must've taken a staple gun and just *WHAM!* straight into the gyprock. There was no getting them out of the wall except with a letter opener, which just made the gouges worse.

I don't know if it's because I know that I'm leaving on the 16th of November or I'm just getting sensitive about the issue of cleaning because my room-mates are so bad at it. But everywhere I look now, these signs of neglect, of the store being unloved, become more and more obvious.

The windows that are not getting washed. The tire marks on the ceiling. The scattered ficus leaves which don't get picked up every morning. And, the thing which gets me the most, the main display window which has two torso mannequins - one with a long-sleeved Trek/Volkswagen maillot (?90) and another with a ?135 Castelli jacket. And on the window ledge, between both mannequins...a handful of dead mistletoe and four dead flies. It's been that way for at least two months. And it's the metaphor for the store: it looks good at first glance, but what you see after a prolonged glance isn't ugly or tragic...it just makes you think about what could be achieved if anyone there gave a damn.

The Owner says that she calls the place "The Ministry" because the four people who still work there - Short and Blonde, Tall and Dark, Cuca and Yisus - know that, whatever little work they do, they'll still get a paycheque at the end of the month. Fucking the dog, as it's indelicately called in Canada, is hardly a uniquely Spanish tendency; everyone's done it in a job at some point in his or her life. But it saddens me to think that the small things, which are not that difficult to do, are the things which customers may be picking up on these small things and deciding to go elsewhere. The Owner says that she gets depressed when people go to Decathlon (the French sporting-goods superstore) to buy their bikes. Well, Decathlon is clean and the staff make an effort to find you what you need. If they don't have it, they'll get it. And you find lots of interesting other things that you are happy to spend your money on. I cannot say those things about my store.

An example: A friend mentioned over wine last night that she'd be interested in a CamelBak pack (we're thinking about going for a long weekend in December, packing light) but she wants one with a bit of storage space (liner shorts, deodorant, food) and in any other store, they would have gotten on the phone and asked, or made a note to call the supplier and let her know on Monday. Not Short and Blonde. He made some noises about maybe calling the other suppliers on Monday to find out, so I told her, look, just to go this other place because they'll have it. She's now the proud owner of a cool, fun CamelBak for the trip. And I'm considering going there to buy one for myself, because I know that hell will freeze over before Short and Blonde actually picks up the phone.

Now, if they're going to do that with friends of the business (as they're referred to in Spanish), who they could get away with a bit more cheekiness - why shouldn't they do it with regular customers? And I'm sorry, but there's no room for that. And I don't want to be part of a business that couldn't give a damn.

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.)

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.