Days Nineteen and Twenty: Failure

I have gotten off somewhere, because I don’t think I’ve been walking 20 days. Oh well. If this blog ever becomes a book I’ll retitle the entries.

I rented the bike without much trouble, other than having to call my bank because two transactions, (rental and deposit) for almost the same amount, from the same place, within minutes of each other,got denied. But I got it.

It was awful. I missed my bike so much, but Baby is sleek and light. This was a black monster at least 5 times heavier. I’m a road cyclist, not mountain. Baby doesn’t do rocks and gravel. So I didn’t know how to handle them. And whoever said the meseta is flat LIED! I went down a hill that would have made a mountain biker go “Whee!” but made me go “Augh!” and begin walking. I walked that damn bike as much as I rode it. W/o Bike shorts, (feast day, remember?) Over rocks.

I realized that even if I managed to get shorts and took roads, I was still pedaling a black beast five times too heavy, and my legs just weren’t equal to it. Plus there is a prevailing west wind ( the direction I’m going) and approximately every mph of wind is one degree of incline. So I did this.

Figuratively, not literally. That’s over $400 lying there. But note the discarded articles around it. By the time I got to the albergue I was sobbing with exhaustion. There was no WiFi. We had paella again. Pepe’s was better.

The next morning Christina offered to ride the beast to Hontanas. The sunrise was gorgeous.

After a large breakfast we walked to Itero de Castillo, almost 30 km down the road. They don’t come out in the pictures, but some of those inclines were 20 degrees or more. Yeah, getting rid of the bike was the right decision.We were supposed to go to Itero de la Vega, where I sent my back, but just couldn’t make the last three km. So the husband of the hospitalera took me to get it. Now I am using the WiFi late at night (the whole village shares one router) and I am all caught up. Goodnight.