March 26th: Fontanillas de Castro to León
Udai Kapila
- 4 minutes read - 727 wordsLast night was great, the couple that runs the Albergue made soup and pasta for me and another hiker… dinner was a family affair and even though there was much chatter in Spanish, I was able to paricipate in bits and pieces and it we all survived… the same really uneasy feeling I had going through Portugal is totally non existent here… I got stopped by the cops today for not wearing my helmet and having headphones in… I “Si, si, si…” my way through the entire conversation and even was able to answer where I was going and where I came from… and it was yet another interaction that left me with with another spoonful of hopefulness…
The morning ride was great… 40kms to the first town by 10:30am where I got a cafe con leche and a massive slice of cake. It took me a good 45 mins to get out of the town because the roads mysteriously just ended and then the next 70kms took me 7 hours. It was flat, but the winds were coming from unhelpful directions, whatever they were and I was out in the open, flat farmlands for the whole rest of the day…
Notes from two years later: I remember that about 40kms away from my destination, my back tire finally gave out and exploded. I had patched its sides and one spot that was worn down to the threads with as many tent patches and duct tape as I could, and the tire finally gave up. I was on this emptyish road, with about 10kms either way of nothing, no turn off, no trees, no bus stop shelter, nothing. And to add to it, the relentless wind just kept hammering me. I pulled my bike into the drainage ditch on the side of the road to get some shelter, and switched out the tire. Luckily, a few days before, I had stopped at a bike shop and had bought a new tire, in preparation for this fatality. I remember a man driving a truck with dirt bikes on a trailer en tow, he slowed down and asked me if I was ok. I was not ok. I was yelling into the wind like a mad man. But I gave him a double thumbs up and a wry smile.
There is a wierd duality in the suffering sometimes, like you are playing an extremely frustrating video game, but you wouldn’t be playing it if you weren’t enjoying yourself. And playing the game allows you to be frustrated in an isolated context, so that you can be free from frustration in the real world
There’s something about the wind that you still feel it at the end of the day when you are lying in bed… you can feel the tiredness in your eyes like you have just gone for a long swim, the tingling of the skin on your face, the soreness of your whole body, arms, back, legs, just from trying to stay upright… today was one of those days where i endured… but then I also thought about the first few days of the trip… nothing compared to that and that gave me a little bit of courage to keep the course…
I didn’t have the strength to negotiate dinner, and there just so happened to be a McDonalds on my way into the city… choices made themselves… such a drastic difference from dinner last night to tonight… but I guess thats the contrast to make last nights dinner feel even more special! Perspective is everything.
Tomorrow I head into the mountains… people keep saying it’s going to be tough… I am looking forward to the suffering and might even take the off-road route for the first day - advice that it is rideable from a warm showers host…
Also a note before I forget.. met a wierd “brother” of the church at this Albergue and he was very keen to find my “origin”…. Nobody is really that interested in my Canadianism here… he probed so that he could tell me some story about India… it’s a very mild racism, I think more that they think being Indian is more interesting than being Canadian, but the next person who asks me, I don’t think I will have the same kind of patience I have had so far…