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November 20 Sunday Bicycle touring Portugal from a side road on the way Lisbon Portugal to Lisbon Portugal At 5:30 AM I check outside. Lo and behold it is clear! The moon is shining bright. We pack up our sleeping bags and small cycle touring tent, turn on our red blinking Vista lights and ride off. We are cycling along the Rio Tejo River. The cycle terrain is mainly flat with a few rises. We easily cycle along, covering 40 km in a short time and see a road sign indicating Lisbon 89 km. Like the racing hare, we figure we have it made in the shade. We pull our heavily loaded touring bicycles to stop at an early morning cafe and enjoy fresh buns and pastry and syrupy sweet glazed doughnuts. Now this is what I call cycle touring in Portugal! We get back on our bikes and ride from 9:30 to 10:30 AM. We see another road sign for Lisbon: 85 km. Damn. They've moved the city farther away from us. We cycle to an Intermarche food store. Since I am starving I make Sharon pull her loaded touring bike to a halt. Intermarches in the France stores had great chocolate. I enter the store with a mission and return with fats bars of chocolate. Fuel for hardworking touring cyclists! At 11:30 AM. we continue our bike ride down the road. We are supposed to meet Susan and Vicky at the Lisboa or Lisbon International airport at 1:40 PM today. Saw a woman riding in the bucket of a tractor. I wonder if that's his first wife? They were dressed up. It looked like they were off to church. Maybe riding a touring bike isn't so bad, after all? Sunlight streams through a forest slantwise, making it look like a paradise. One certainly sees some great moments in nature while on a long distance bicycle tour. We cycle across a long bridge on N10. Traffic has been heavy, but only a few cars pass us to the uphill halfway point on the bridge. I'm praying to my guardian angel that there's no cars coming behind us. Finishing my prayer, I hear Sharon shouting, telling me to hurry up, there is a big truck coming. Dang! In my prayer I hadn't said anything about no trucks. One has to be so specific. The truck driver beeps his horn a half-dozen times. What does he want us to do!? There's nowhere we can stop our bikes to get out of his way on this bridge. We start cranking like crazy, hit the top part of the incline, and build up speed going down the decline at a fast pace. We are cycling in a frenzy. We're almost to the end of the bridge when I hit a "pavemento deformato" area which is really bumpy. I hear something crash to the ground off the rear of my bike. I start to slow down. Sharon yells at me to step on it ... it was just the pineapple drink I had bought at the food store. At the end of the bridge we pull our fully loaded touring bikes off the road and stop. I wave to the truck driver who was behind us for the past kilometre. I see why no cars passed us -- they were backed up behind the truck for two kilometres. The Lord works in mysterious ways! I walk back on the sidewalk to see if my pineapple drink is salvageable. The long line of cars continue to stream past. Along the curb I find the plastic 1.5 litre juice bottle. It is badly scratched, but it's unbroken. I pick it up like a trophy and run back happily to our bikes. We haven't had time to buy a decent map of Portugal. We have only a large scale map of Europe that Ange and Jacqueline had given us when we arrived in France. It's our sole guide as we cycle towards Lisbon, Portugal. I see a bystander and pull my touring bike to a stop to ask directions to the airport. He writes down the names of all the smaller towns we will need to pass through to get to the airport -- about seven names in total. "Beeceecletas no N1" he says (guess he hasn't noticed we've been riding on N1 for a couple of hundred kilometres). "About 50 kilometres to airport," he says. No, I think, that can't be right. It is 12:38 PM. We have one hour. We turn off the road into the first town the guy has on the list he gave us. We cycle into a long traffic jam. We start to cycle past the stalled cars on the right. Up hills, over dales, through suburbs we pedal. We hit Lisbon. Somewhat worryingly, there are still no signs along the N10 route we are cycling that say: Airport. We pull our loaded touring bikes to a stop at a Y intersection and once again ask directions. Pedalling on our way once again, we cycle through a shanty town slum area big time like no other I have ever seen in real life. Lots of black people are standing outside corrugated metal shacks. Where the heck are we? Must have missed that sign for Detroit or Chicago back there somewhere. Clotheslines are strung between light standards and even in the boulevard islands. Sharon is cycling in front. As we pass a trio of kids that are standing outside a metal shed, one picks up a plastic bottle full of yellow liquid and hurls it at us. It hits me on my calf, bounces against my bicycle chain, busts open and sprays me with an unknown smelly fluid. I swear at the little bastards. Welcome to bicycle touring in Portugal. It gets better. Beggars line the roadside with filthy hands outstretched. Where the heck are we? Did I miss the sign for India back there somewhere? At intersections, people approach cars, begging, when the car drivers stop at traffic lights. I'm just about to admit we have cycled into an alternate universe when I spot our first airport sign. After our alternate cycling route, going extra kilometres in a roundabout manner, we arrive at the terminal. It is 2:10 PM. We hope the plane is late. Of course it isn't. Leaving Sharon with our fully loaded touring bicycles, I go inside and check the arrival board. The flight is not even listed. I don't see Susan or Vicky. I wait a couple of minutes and then decide to check at the info desk to see if the flight has arrived. Yes, she tells me, it arrived at 1:40 PM as scheduled, but the passengers could still be inside the arrival area getting luggage. Fifteen minutes later, I spy Susan coming down an aisle, out of the immigration exit, with a baggage cart. Her panniers are piled on the cart. Vicky is nowhere in sight. I give Susan a big welcoming smile to the start of her Portugal bicycle tour and say, "Lose Vicky?" Without a trace of kidding, Susan says, "She had to cancel. Her Dad's ill." Somewhat stunned to hear this news, I ask, "Where's your bike?" "They lost it," Susan groans. We go and tell Sharon the wonderful news. Susan has been to the lost luggage depot already and filed her claim. They told her another flight from Paris was arriving at 4:30 PM, and her missing bike may be on that flight. We wait around to see if it is on the next flight, eating truffle chocolates that Sharon's sister, Diane, has kindly sent for us. Delicious! Exactly what cycle tourists in a down mood need. The flight from Paris arrives. The missing touring bike doesn't. When Susan checks back at the missing luggage area they track down the bike. It is in Toronto of all places. It hasn't even left Canada yet. I can tell already this is going to be a great Portugal bicycle tour. They tell us the bike will be in Madrid at 7 PM tonight and it should arrive in Lisbon tomorrow morning. They will deliver it to wherever we want. "The campground," Susan says. "What's that?" they ask. "Camping." "Camping?" "Yes, camping." "Camping?" I can tell already that bicycle touring in Portugal is going to be a lot of fun! A highlight of the day: we hit 10,000 kilometres for our bicycle touring trip on our way into Lisbon! Susan takes a cab to the Lisbon campground. We ride our touring bikes to the campground ... it turns out to be a hairy cycle ride along the autostrada with about a zillion speeding cars. We pull our bikes to a stop and buy delicious smelling charbroiled chicken with picante sauce (cycle tourists can't live on chocolate alone). We end up getting lost in the dark. There is no one around to ask directions except for black people. Man, it's hard to see those guys in the dark! We finally pedal into the Lisbon campground. We are exhausted. There is lots of hot water in the shower though. I'm sure that I leave a foot-wide dirt ring. It's our first shower since we stayed overnight at Catherine and Christophe's, back in France. I make it last. If there's one thing a touring cyclist enjoys as much as ice cream and chocolate, it's a good long hot shower. I emerge squeaky clean. Unfortunately, all my clothes are dirty. But one thing at a time. |
