Weekly Reflection 1

The first week of me and Augie’s senior project was busy, exciting, and filled with twists. The business came more early on in the week. On day one we were frantically running around doing last minute errands to make sure we had everything we needed. We made it to our flight on time and before we knew it, we had landed in Madrid and bussed to Segovia. Although all our bodies wanted us to do was sleep, we forced ourselves to remain awake in Segovia all day so we could quickly adjust to the time change. To stay awake, we needed to keep ourselves busy. We strolled around the city and went to some parks to begin the trash pickup aspect of our project. We also spent a fair amount of the day with the Proctor Segovia crew and took classes with them. Although there were not many official plans for the day besides get our bikes, all the activities we partook in made the day a busy one.

The next day was where the unexpected twists began. It started when we needed to find an alternative to our gas stove. The gas for the stove we originally bought wasn’t sold anywhere in Spain so we had to find a new one quick. It turned out to be very easy to find a new cheap stove that had gas available all over. Another twist in the road was about two hours into our ride from Segovia to La Fresneda and Augie took a little spill. Augie was fine besides some knee pain but his bike was damaged. This was a huge twist and it originally worried me. I wasn’t sure if we could get Augie’s bike fixed in time for us to complete the route set for our project. Our sponsors Ryan and Mikaela came in huge and picked us up and pointed us in the direction of where we could fix our bikes. We had to spend another night back in Segovia but we did well the next day to go to a repair shop and fix everything the bike needed. The rental companies insurance covered everything and we were good to go yet we still were behind the schedule we wanted by one night. Our solution was to take a quick bus to Madrid and bike to our campground from the bus station. We said our goodbyes to the folks in Segovia (for the second time) and made it to our campsite safe and sound. We had a rest day planned the next day so Augie could rest his knee and because the days planned ahead were pretty long ones.

During our rest day, Augue and I decided we should go do some trash cleanup of the local area. Our camp was in an area filled with factories and unfortunately there was a lot of trash that needed to be cleaned. Augie and I dug around the bushes for trash and eventually filled six whole bags! We disposed of them properly in a nearby dumpster. While picking up the trash, I noticed that most of the litter consisted of cigarettes, juice boxes and water bottles. This made sense for the area because those are exactly the what I would expect a factory worker to be consuming. Picking up trash the first week taught me that the trash in an you pick up can teach you a lot about the area your in.

The next day was a long one, even longer than expected. Although the navigation said a little over five hours, we took closer to nine hours. The off-road conditions kept us a a very slow pace. The day after, we learned from this and left at sunrise. The ride was much easier when we left earlier because we could take breaks whenever we needed and we still were set on time. I am very pleased with our project so far. I have been experiencing a new part of the world while improving its conditions which is challenging yet motivating. I am excited to see what next week has in store for me.