Espana

I am bringing the blogging action back!!! My last post was in August 2011. I have plenty of reason to get back to it now! I left Tuesday night and drove back to Fitchburg and got there around 7pm, I checked my email and Jeremy had sent me an email telling me he broke his shifter in the world cup in France that day. So unless I brought a sram shifter with me to Granada I would be S.O.L. and have to buy a brand new shifter at around $100. So I called every person I could in the Fitchburg area and NOONE had an extra sram shifter. I finally called Al Donahue in East Hampton and he hooked me up! I had to drive a few extra hours to get the shifter though. So the mission was successful and I left for Spain the next morning. It took me about 36 hours of traveling to get to Granada. My flight from Boston to Philly was horrible, we got on the plane and had a wind delay and then after we landed there was no terminal to park in and then when we finally found one, there was a luggage cart stuck in front of it. So I had to run to my next terminal which was of course on the other side of the airport, like a mile away. I made it just in time to be the last person to board the plane. When I landed in Madrid, I learned my brother had missed his flight in Brussels and I had to sit in the Madrid airport for 5.5 hours waiting for him. So I tried to sleep and nothing happened. He finally showed up with these 2 huge bike bags and we had to drag all of our luggage to the shuttle which dropped us off in downtown Madrid and we continued to drag all our crap into the train terminal which took us to the bus station. It was a lot of work and we were finally south bound on the bus. It was so good to catch up with him and hear all about his Euro racing adventures.

After a 5.5 hour bus ride we

finally arrived in Granada. The bus ride from Madrid was long and when we left, the landscape was not that beautiful, and the further south we drove, the more epic the landscape turned. Field after open field of hilly olive tree orchards, beautiful mountain ranges that seemed to grow with each hill we passed.

My friend from the Berkshires was waiting for us at the bus station and helped us get a taxi and brought us to his friends place near downtown Granada, I am staying with Christina and her boyfriend in one apartment and Jeremy is staying with this guy names Jonas right across the hall, we both have our own bedrooms and we are totally hooked up.

We had a nice pasta dinner with our hosts and got to know them a bit and joked around all evening with good food and drinks and I passed out and ended up sleeping for 13 hours!!!! I was soooooo tired and Jeremy came and knocked on my door at noon and told me to get my ass out of bed. We chilled and made coffee and breakfast and got our bikes all put together and ready to go. We couldn't wait to hit the road and ride these epic, epic roads around Granada. Marc came and got us and we hit the countryside for a nice 2 hour easy spin. I can't even descride how beautiful the landscape here is. In the backdrop is the Sierra Nevada mountain range, with peaks around 10,000 feet and every other direction you look are beautiful mountains. The roads , once you get out of town are small and wind through olive tree fields, there are people on bicycles everywhere, and after one ride in the countryside I can see why there are so many cyclists. A group of roadies were with us leaving town for the first 30 minutes of our ride, and they didn't speak a word of English. It was pretty awesome.

After our ride, we headed into downtown to meet up with some friends. Barcelona was playing Madrid in a soccer match, so we headed into a local bar for drinks and tapas to watch the game. It was totally crazy, Spanish people LOVE soccer, the whole bar erupted with cheering and screaming when Madrid scored a touchdown :-).

Anyways, I'm being long winded. It's Thursday now and we just got back from an amazing 4 hour ride through the bost beautiful scenery. I am so tired and will write more later!