Blog 12 Another twist in the road was straitened our today. We woke up in Palma because we needed to get Augie’s bike fixed after his accident on the Sa Calobra. Because Mallorca is such a popular place for cyclers, we didn’t have much trouble finding a place where Augie could rent a new trekking bike. Today, in order to achieve efficient and complete success we decided it was best to split up to fully solve the pickle we were in. Basically, our situation was that we had a broken bike on our hands, needed to get a new one, and didn’t know what to do with the broken one because we still needed to fly back to Madrid with it. We decided splitting up was best because I could take Augie’s bike to a storage place and rent out a unit while Augie took my bike to the rental place where he would rent a bike and wait for me. When we met up, Augie would have his new bike, I would have line, and Augie’s broken one would be stored away until we fly out this weekend. It turned out, finding the sto...
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Weekly Blog 2 This week we finished a large chapter of our project and began a new one. This first couple days this week consisted of banging through the rest of the Spanish mainland, stopping in small towns, and cleaning trash in appropriate areas. We found many locations that had cans and plastic all around with a dumpster right down the block which made for an efficient clean. While cycling on the small towns of the mainland, I feel like we made many more connections than we did in the bigger areas. Around the cities, people are in a hurry and are trying to keep their day moving along. In the small towns, people take the time to ask us where we are from and we get to learn more about them too. It seems like the travelers we meet in the small towns also are more open and willing to meet new people. Perhaps that is because there is more stress and people need to be more sharp around cities. Throughout the week, we have met many cool people on journeys similar to ours. Over time, w...
Blog 11 Holy moly what a day! Augie and I woke up in Banyalbufar and hit the road. We immediately were joined by many other cyclists on the road who were from all over the world! We met some Americans on one uphill who I talked about the Celtics with. Cool dude! We continued the beautiful coastal route with our original goal being Port de Soller. This was about a three and a half hour ride but the beautiful scenery made it fly by. Once we reached Port de Soller, we both agreed we were good to keep going. Little did we know we were about to climb 15K up a curvey hill! That was not easy! I had a hard time feeling my groove again on the saddle after our break by the beach. I suppose my muscles thought I was done for the day. Although the climb seemed to never end, the view we had got increasingly better. Something that I did find extremely annoying though was the motorcyclists that would just whip up and down the road. They were not even going anywhere. I saw the same five people on the...
Blog 10 Our day started in Palmanova where we found everything to be super touristy. Once we got water for the day and a new supply of sun scream, we hit the road for our first strong ride on Mallorca. The ride was not easy we hit a pretty large uphill pretty early on which seemed to never end. After climbing that uphill for a good 30 minutes, we were spit out onto a more developed curvey road that continued to take us up a mountain. Although we were slightly struggling, other cyclers started passing us and encouraging us on. Eventually we reached the top of the mountain and enjoyed the beautiful view. At the view point, there was one of the men who encouraged us on as he passed. He congratulated me for reaching the top and recognized the difficulty of cycling with all the weight we were carrying. This man was bout 60 years old but still cycled strongly. He told me he came to Mallorca from Germany every year to cycle where he cover about 200K everyday! Although he was a German tank o...
Blog 9 Our day started on the ferry we fell asleep on yesterday. I woke up as the ferry was pulling into the harbor in Palma de Mallorca. Once all was unloaded, the employees of the ferry said we did not need to take the shuttle bus to the terminal because we had our bikes so we were just free to go. We were tired and still recovering from the 107K day before so we agreed that it was going to be a light day today. We hiked into the city to explore a little and get whatever last minute fix ups we needed before beginning our circulation Mallorca. First on our list was a good pot to go with our stove. We bikes to an outdoors store where we easily found a perfect pot to cook our more proper meals. Next on the list, we headed to the nearest “Orange” store (a phone service company) so augie could get another SIM card with more gigabytes. Augue took a while in the store but I enjoyed waiting outside protecting the bikes because I got to observe the bustling street we were on. It was busy wi...
Blog 8 I woke up before Augue this morning in our campsite. The Dutch people next to us were doing peaceful yoga which was pleasant. I decided to go for a walk. I walked into town thinking I could get us more peanut butter for we ran out. Unfortunately the market was closed but I wasn’t too sad. I noticed up the road there was a bakery which I thought was awesome at the moment. I strolled in and of course the baker lady knew I wasn’t from the area. She continued on to ask the usual questions were faced with. She was impressed with our project and said she herself was just in the US last year and loved it. I bought a delicious chocolate treat and a cream one for Augie and headed back to the campground. I really enjoy those interactions because they are great for practicing Spanish and people like what we’re doing so it is always fun telling them. Our ride was the longest one yet (107K) but it was mostly downhill so it was smooth sailing (with the acception of the rocks we faced for an ...
Blog 7 Our day started with the beautiful people who took us in to their cabin park. They gave us coffee and cake for breakfast and we left on our way. We knew the ride was going to be on many dirt roads but we were unaware of the huge climb we were going to face. As we were about 30 mins in our ride, a park ranger drove up to us and asked the usual questions we’ve been faced with “where are you from”, “where are you going”, “how did you get so good at Spanish” just the usual stuff. As we continued to talk with him he warned us of the huge rocky climb we were about to face about a kilometer down the road. We convinced him that we were both strong young men that were capable of doing such a climb and he looked us up and down and agreed. We talked about our project which he liked. He also told us how beautiful the parks in the US look on his TV. After we said our goodbyes, we headed to the start of the climb. It was one of those hills that had lots of turns so when you would think you ...