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November 16 Wednesday Bicycle touring Spain from Vittoria Spain to Burgos Spain The farmer's field had prickly bushes. We had to be careful as we pushed our fully loaded touring bicycles back up a slope to the dirt road beside the field. RASP is a good name for our Spanish ride. My throat is still sore from all the industrial smog and pollutants that the factories and trucks belch into the air. The people we have seen today are old, tired-looking, and unsmiling. In downtown Burgos, Sharon crashed. We had considered taking a ring road around the city with the trucks, but we thought we weren't allowed on it, and we weren't sure which way to go anyway, so we headed straight through Burgos and ended up downtown. With the wind blocked by the buildings we were cranking along on our bicycles at a fast pace. Out on the open road we had a headwind, so we were enjoying the stillness of the air in the city and we were rushing through the downtown to get away from the gawking people as quick as possible. Sharon was riding her bike close behind me. A streetlight turned amber. I went to go through just as a pedestrian stepped out in front of me. It was at an intersection without cars traffic entering at the point where the lights were -- only a crossing for pedestrians. A pickup truck was parked at the very edge of the crosswalk which blocked both ours and the pedestrian's view of seeing one another, and the pedestrian didn't hear us. I slammed on my brakes to avoid running into her. Sharon hit her rear brakes, but apparently they aren't tight enough to use in a panic stopping situation. She didn't have time to get onto her front brakes fast enough. She ended up plowing into the back of my bike before skidding to a halt on the pavement. The woman pedestrian looked at Sharon laying on the pavement, then, without a word, hurried on her way. There were lots of people standing on the sidewalk as it was 4 o'clock, but not one came over to offer assistance or even to ask if Sharon was okay. Too many lead fumes in the city makes them brain dead? I picked Sharon and her bike off the road and we hobbled onto the sidewalk to inspect both of our touring bikes for damage. Sharon's mirror was shattered. My rear fender was knocked up into my tire. Sharon had a skinned knee and elbow, but luckily she had been wearing lots of clothes since the temperature is cool. The extra padding helped. We got back on our loaded touring bikes and pedalled slowly away. Somehow we missed our little road out of town that we had been shooting for and ended up back on the National road -- which we could have taken on the ring road and missed going through city centre. When Sharon realized this, she pulled her bike over to the side of the road and started to cry. "I want to go home!" Holding her shaking shoulders, I tried my best to console her. My, but we're having fun now. Since we weren't in exactly the best place to call it quits on our long distance bicycle tour, we decided to suck it up and continue cycling down the road away from Burgos. Cycle touring in Spain is so fun! Burgos has a big church. A canal runs alongside and smells fetid. Hundreds of people were out walking during siesta time. They stroll along newly constructed cobblestone paths and stare at us as we ride by on our fully loaded touring bicycles. They are building more walking paths. Spain seems to be in a big hurry to go from an old agriculture-based economy to a new industrial one. It is such a contrast. We can tell things are done in a rush. For example, we cycled into a brand new gas station. The floor was immaculately clean with sparkling marble tiles. But the washroom door wouldn't shut properly -- it didn't fit inside the door jamb. A slide bolt to lock the washroom door has been put on skewed, so it is chewing up the door every time someone tries to use it. Expensive-looking new tile on the wall has a huge chip out of it in two places where they have tried to install a hand dryer. Instead of routing the electrical cord behind the wall out of sight like someone who thought about things before doing it -- the cord hangs from the machine, goes into the tile in one place, comes out in another place and plugs into an electrical outlet. Weird. And the holes in the tile that the cord goes through wouldn't look so bad if they were nice and round, but someone has just taken a hammer and given the tile a smack to break off a chunk of it. There, that oughtta do. Weird. |
