Spanish Classes in Valencia

Traci and I spent five weeks in Valencia studying Spanish with Don Quixote.  It was a great experience.  Each day we had class for 4 hours with a 30 minute break.  The classes were conducted entirely in Español, which was extremely challenging.  The first week was the toughest and most overwhelming, but with time we became more adjusted to the immersion.  There were times when the class felt more like pantomime 101 instead of a language class, but I think it was worth it.

Traci and I were not in the same class, but that was probably better.  She had studied more Spanish than me, so she started in a higher class.  Getting some time apart was not a bad thing, and I’m not sure if we could have forced ourselves to only speak Spanish together.  For the first week are classes were even at different times (Traci met in the evening).

The school placed us in a student flat that was shared with another language school.  It was within a short walk of campus, which was nice.  We had a shared kitchen, which was a great way to save money preparing our own meals.  A lot of the other students were placed in “host housing” which included meals and a chance to “interact with a Spanish family”.  The reality was that the host was just someone with a room for rent.  They rarely interacted with the students, and many of the meals were poor.  One person even said that all they received were microwaved TV dinners.

The student flat came with it’s own quirks, of course.  The most annoying was that the hot water heater ran on propane that required a new tank every week or so.  To keep a long story short, lets just say that we had to take a few cold showers.

The best part of our time in Valencia was the people that we met through the classes and in the student flat.  Half were college students, but there was also a world-champion Lambada dancer from Brazil, a French woman that helped to organized film festivals, an 18-year old professional poker player from Scotland, a Swiss woman that worked for the UN, and lots of other interesting people.  It was easy to remember all of this, of course, since asking each other our professions was a common way to practice our Spanish (Soy engener mecánico).  We shared our flat with a girl from Russia, a couple that met at a University in the UK (she was from Vermont), the French film girl, and a Chinese girl that never talked to anyone.  Other students were from Holland, Turkey, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and Thailand.

We also had the option to attend an hour long “cultural” class, but we rarely did.  They tended to be a bit boring, but with the one exception being Wednesdays.  One of my teachers, Estaban, was also a trained chef.  He would lead a cooking class to show how to prepare several easy, no-cook dishes from his home of Columbia.  It didn’t hurt that he also showed how to prepare either Sangria or Pina Colada.  It was a class that we didn’t skip.

For the last week Traci signed up for an additional two hour conversation class, which she found to be very beneficial.  Our usual class focused on grammar, which didn’t leave much extra time for regular conversation.  With the fast pace that we were including new material, it could get stressful at times as well.  Traci found the conversation classes more relaxing and was surprised at how quickly the time would fly by.  Of course the conversation class would not be very useful without a few weeks of grammar, but Traci wished she had more time with it.

The big question, though, was did we actually learn Spanish?  We felt that most of the other students absorbed a lot more than us, especially since most of them were already working on their 3rd or 4th language.  As typical Americans, we are not forced to adapt to other languages as often as other cultures, and this also makes it more difficult to adapt and learn a second language.  The more we studied, the more we realized that we had a lot more to learn to hold even a basic conversation.  And I’m sad to report that Traci failed her first real test after we finished our last class, of our last day…

She thought we was ordering an American style hamburger, but instead she received one more meal with an egg on top.

Actually, once we left Valencia and resumed our nomadic travels, we were surprised how much Spanish we were able to speak.  We knew enough to order food; understand numbers; get a pension, campsite, or hotel; and ask for directions or help.  It may not sound like much, but to handle these day-to-day tasks without asking “hablas ingles” was great.   I felt a lot like Bart Simpson when he suddenly realized that he could speak French.  We realized how useful this was when we left Spain for France and couldn’t remember how to say thank-you, please, or goodbye in French.  Hopefully we can continue to practice our Spanish when we get home.

 

Granada to Valencia

We decided to rent a car in order to get from Granada to Valencia. The cycling option would have required us to pass over the Sierra Nevadas, while a train would have required us to go back to Madrid with several transfers. So we made a spreadsheet to compare the cost of car vs train, and found that it would be worth it to drive. (Yep, we are nerds).

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It was only five to six hours to drive there, but we decided to camp near Totana to break up the driving.

We have discovered that ants are extremely fascinating when you are camping. Drop a little breakfast on the ground, and there can be a ½ hour of solid entertainment.  I’m not sure how fascinating they would be if we had TV or internet, but the price is right.

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Before getting back on the road, Traci did a short jog while I rode my bike up into the nearby Parque Natural Sierra Espana. It was a solid climb up a beautiful road, and once I neared a town I noticed a turn-off for a lookout point. I couldn’t resist continuing, so as the road continued to get steeper I started to notice several white statues.

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By the time I reached the top, I had figured out that each statue was a station of the cross.

Once we reached Valencia on Thursday and returned the car, we were able to ride 10K south of the city to a campground on the edge of Parque Natural de la Albufera and right next to the coast. It was extremely easy to get to by bicycle, as there was a bike path that went all of the way there.  We made arrangements the next day to start Spanish classes on Monday and to move into a student flat on Sunday.

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We had a few odd things happen to us while camping. The first thing, which wasn’t a surprise, was that it rained. It always seems to rain when we camp, even in places that have water rationing. I’m not sure how we became so fortunate to be the bringers of rain for Spain, but I wish it would stay mainly in the plain.

We were next to rice fields, and we discovered that the local farmers would scare away birds throughout the night with fireworks, shotguns, and what sounded like dynamite.  Every hour, on the hour.  It made for a great nights rest.

The next thing was that while taking an afternoon nap, I thought I was having an odd dream about Germans trying to figure out how to put up a tent. When we woke up and looked out our tent, there was another tent only a few feet away and right in front of ours. Despite there being only a few other tents in the camping area, two young German guys decided to put their tent as close as they could to ours. I don’t think it was on purpose, but it was funny. The odd thing is stuff like that seems to happen to us all the time. We have sat down in several empty restaurants, only to have someone walk in later and sit down at a table right next to us. This isn’t a case of a waiter sitting someone next to us, but a customer choosing to sit as close as they can to the only other people in the restaurant. As Americans that are used to a bit more elbow room, it is hard for us to ignore.

The strangest thing came when we walked down to the nearby beach. There were not very many people there, but we noticed a strong similarity to those that were there. Most of them were male, over the age of 40, and completely naked. We decided to skip on swimming that day.

Click for a slideshow of pictures from our trip from Granada to Valencia.

Sorry Coleen, but there are no pics of naked men.

 

Granada, Spain

Our next stop after Rhonda was Granada, Spain.  I think it had to be one of my favorite cities.  It was surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountains, yet was only 70km from the coast.  The downtown was an interesting mix of modern buildings and old buildings.  There were narrow moorish streets and large catholic churches.  The area was very green, but more similar to northern New Mexico or Arizona.

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I did a ride out of town again.  This time on a popular route to a large man-made lake/reservoir.

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When we were on the train from Rhonda, we met another couple from Switzerland that were bike touring.  We talked them for a little while after we arrived, and the first thing they asked was if we had tickets to the Alhambra.  Our response, “What is the Alhambra?”.  They looked at us like we just fell off the train, and we quickly learned it was for good reason.

We woke up early one morning to see the Alhambra  only to find out that they were sold out of tickets within 1 hour of opening.  Most people order their tickets online several months in advance.  We tried to do the same back in town, but they had already stopped selling tickets online for that month.  They usually have about 100 unsold tickets each day, but they told us we would have to get there very early to get one.  So the next morning we were there 1 hour before they started selling tickets, only to be greeted with an already long line of well over 100 people.  Many had been waiting since 6am.  Fortunately, we had an ace up our sleeve as we knew that the majority of the people were waiting to buy their tickets with cash, while there was a second place to purchase a ticket at an automated machine with a credit card.  The line was a lot shorter, and after an American woman came by to kindly let everyone know, “I heard they aren’t selling tickets here today”, well it only got shorter.  Traci and I just looked at each other wondering who she received such important insight from.  With an armed security guard ready to open the door at exactly 8am, we had tickets in hand by 8:15am.  We tried not to  gloat as we walked back by the mob of people still waiting to buy their tickets with cash.  I’m sure the highly informed American woman was still in cue.

The Alhambra had to be the most beautiful and interesting monument that we visited, and well worth the extra time and effort.  From a distance it looks like a fortress, as it served as the last stronghold for the Moors that were pushed out of Spain during the Reconquista.

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The inside, though, was an amazing masterpiece of elaborate carvings.  Flowing water was prevalent throughout the buildings and courtyards, with several reflection pools and fountains.

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As we toured the grounds of the Alhambra, we realized why getting tickets was such a challenge.  Not only was it a beautiful work of art, but they only sell a limited number of tickets for each 1/2 hour tour.  This kept the number of people wandering around and trying to take pictures to a minimum so we could enjoy the tranquility of the gardens.  If we had missed our entrance time, we would not have been able to enter.  This is common at some of the more popular sights here, and I really like it.

On our walk back to town, Traci and I talked about how we had not seen many of the festivals or parades that are common in Europe.  Sure enough, while having lunch we heard a marching band.  We dashed over to the main street and fought our way through a large crowd to watch a parade.

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At first we thought we were really lucky to catch it when we did, only to find the same parade still marching through town an hour later… in front of our pension.

The other highlight of our trip was when Traci felt like stalking this man and his pet rat.  My bad, chihuahua.  She thought their matching outfits were cute.

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Click here for a slideshow of our pictures from Granada Spain and the Alhambra.

 

Rhonda, Spain

Much like Merida, Rhonda was a town that we didn’t plan on visiting, but with the bikes we needed to stop there on our way to Granada.  And also like Merida, we were really surprised how much we liked it.  The town had a huge gorge that cut it in half and provided some great views.

Like many of the southern Spanish cities, the architecture had a strong Muslim influence.

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I also snuck out of town one day and did a long ride through the surrounding area and mountains.  It ended up being a lot of fun and very tough.  The views were great.  I also smashed Traci’s top-speed record with a descent at 78kph (48mph).  HA!!

The other highlight was finding a restaurant that not only served really good tapas, but also had a beer tap at every table.  Too bad this idea would never fly in the US.  The concept was really simple though, a flow meter measured how much beer was distributed and they calculated that value against a price per Liter.  While the food was really good, Traci still fell victim to her curse of runny eggs.  It was still delicious.

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Click here for a slideshow of our photos from Rhonda, Spain.

 

A long walk to Algeciras

When I last left off, we were in Tarifa in the south of Spain. So on May 14th Traci and I needed to ride east to Algeciras near Gibraltar.  There was no train service in Tarifa, so it was the closest city that did.  I was expecting a hill or two between Tarifa and Algeciras, but was not expecting this:

That is right folks, over 1000ft of climbing in 7 miles of riding. It made for a long day for several reasons, but one of the problems was that the bikes did not have low enough gearing to go uphill for that long. Traci walked much of it, and I’m lucky that she didn’t toss her bike over the railing in frustration.  She did make me push both bikes at one point.  It had to be our toughest and ugliest day here in Europe.

Eventually we did make it to the top, and getting down the other side took no time at all.  When we reached the bottom and started to enter Algeciras, Traci finally spoke to me again to ask what my maximum speed was coming down the hill.  I told her 65 kph, and I finally saw her crack a smile again as she told me she hit 69 kph (43mph).

We could see the Rock of Gibraltar on the downhill, which was neat.  We had no plans on visiting it, since we understood it was an expensive tourist trap.

We were not very impressed with Algeciras, as it was a busy port city.  While trying to find a pension, we had a beggar harass us and insist on us giving him some money.  He kept changing languages until he finally realized that we would respond to english.  He even pointed out that he didn’t even have a bicycle.  I’m surprised that Traci didn’t just give him hers.  At that point we decided that we didn’t even want to stay in Algeciras, so we headed straight to the train station to take the next train to Rhonda.

 

Video catch-up

I finally had some luck uploading some videos from our travels.  The first is from the finish of Le Tour in Toulouse under the 1K to go sign.  I’m not sure who that was yelling so much gibberish in French and Spanish… wait, do I really sound like that?

There was a large TV a little further down the course that I could almost watch the sprint on.

The next two videos are from the international Fireworks competition that we watched in Tarragona, Spain.

This video was from our ride near Merida, Spain.

And the final video was of street performers in San Sebastion, Spain.

 

Narbonne - Last of le Tour

After Foix, we visited one more tour de France stage in Narbonne.  To get there, we had to return to Toulouse to catch a train.  If we were on the 11:59, it would get us to Narbonne in time for that day’s finish. To keep things interesting, I opted to ride the 80K (50 miles) in the morning while Traci caught a local train.  I got a late start, though, and only had about 3.5 hrs to get there on time.  Sure enough, I had to fight a headwind the entire ride.  With one hour to go for our train, I was still 30K (18.6mi) from the train station.  I kept my head down and managed to make it to the station with 3 minutes to spare… but Traci was not at our meeting point.  She showed up 15 minutes later to find her worried husband.  The train she had planned on catching didn’t run that day, so while I was suffering and hurting she was on the next train trying to telepathically tell me to take my time.  A cell phone would have probably worked better.  There was another train later that day to Narbonne, so no worries.

So the next day we learned our lesson from Toulouse and arrived in the start area around 11:00am.  It gave us a chance to soak in the media frenzy.  The big conversation was Ricco and Saunier Duval getting kicked out the day before.  I was able to utilize the super zoom function on our little camera to catch the perplexed smugness of Bjarne Riis on the subject in mid-interview.

Slipstream and Columbia happened to park their buses next to each other, so I hung around that area for a while.  Columbia had a great way of letting everyone know how many stages they had won so far, with the lions in their front window.  I also thought it was funny to see how Slipstream crammed extra bicycles in every possible free space they had, including under the bus.

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With Garmin as their new sponsor, all of Slipstream’s bikes had their latest and greatest wireless bike/GPS gizmos.  I also thought that the Chipotle water bottles were classic.  The only thing better was the horrible pronunciation of Chipotle in this video.

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Speaking of videos, while I was there Velonews showed up to do their daily clip with Julian Dean from New Zealand.

I tried to discretely take that picture, which as you can see from the video was not that discrete.  You can also watch as I go from very interested, to mildly enthused, to bored, to checking to see what day of the week it really was (I was wrong as well), to thinking about walking somewhere else, to noticing that George Hincapie had ventured out of the Columbia bus, and finally paying attention again for the end of the video.  Dean had to be the friendliest of the riders that I saw, as he had just came over to chat with his fan club when Velonews had shown up.  After the video, he hung around to chat with ‘his mates’ to ask where they were going to watch the stage that day, if they were going to watch any of the race in the Alps, etc.

Bike racing is funny like that.  Some guys will hang out and chat just like it was the start of a local road race, while some guys hide in their bus till the last possible moment and ignore their fans.  I was standing next to a couple from Scotland who coud not get David Miller (who calls Scotland home) to give an autograph, or for that matter even say hello.  In his defence, I’m not sure I would want to give autographs on the way into my office either, but I also don’t have companies paying for the advertising space on my ass.

I didn’t get to talk to any of the American riders, but I did talk to Allen Lim for a short while.  He was a funny guy and told me a quick joke that had been passing around the riders that morning.

How does Ricco drink his coffee in the morning?

Like this:  Imitates drinking with wrists stuck together due to handcuffs.

It was funny at the time.  Well, it would have been funnier if I knew that Ricco was in the French slammer, but Allen was kind enough to catch me up on the news.

Traci and I walked down the course a ways to catch the start.  I was really lucky getting this pic of Evans in yellow.

The other amazing thing was how quickly things are torn down to be moved to the next city.  About an hour after the start, I snapped this pic of the trucks and trailers used as the stage for rider sign in.

The other thing that surprised me was how committed the cities are to hosting the race.  In Toulouse, I watched the night before their finish as a city crew removed the ‘zebra stripes’ in the final corner before the finish and removed a median that was in the middle of the road.  A few days later they were repainting the stripes and reconstructing the median.  From someone that has helped promote races in the US, that was an amazing sight to see.

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So this is my last post on my experiences from watching the 2008 Tour de France.  You can see a slideshow of all my pics from the races here.

 

Happy Birthday Traci!

Happy birthday to my favorite wife.

For Traci’s birthday, we will be traveling to Zwiesel, Germany to visit a town that her father’s family originated from. It should be interesting, since Traci’s parents are here to enjoy the trip with us.  They have been here for almost a week.  To meet up with them, Traci and I zipped across Italy by train, down into Austria by bike, and finally met up with them in Munich.  I’ll have to elaborate more on that later.  For now, we are staying in Oberammergau for the rest of the week.

I have been lacking in the update department again.  Hopefully that will change since Traci’s parents brought us our new toy - an Asus EEE PC.  We purchased it online and had it shipped to their house.  It is tiny, but very useful and serving as a good replacement to our dead laptop.  I’ll try and get caught up on some posts in pictures in the near future.

 

Tour Stage 11 - finish in Foix

From Toulouse, we traveled south to Foix for stage 11 of the Tour de France.  It was not a major climbing stage, but did include a nice cat 3 hill near town that was after a tough cat 1.  The unique part of this stage was that we could watch the riders on the climb and still had time to ride back to town to catch some of the finish.

Foix is at the base of the Pyrenees and had a large castle near the center of town.

We were able to stay in a campground that was on the course next to the 3K to go banner.
On race day, we opted to ride to the hill, though we could have followed the race better watching the TV at the bar in the campground.  In fact, a 7 rider chase group caught the lone breakaway rider right near the campground and that was when a flury of attacks occurred to decide the winnner, the natonal champion from Norway.  These fans that we met were probably his motivation, as they were camped out at 2.5K to go with a well decorated van in support of their country’s riders.
On the ride into town, we passed under the 1K to go banner.  It was very difficult not to get in the drops, put the bike in a big gear, and start hammering to the finish.
We rode halfway up the 5K climb and found a comfy spot in the shade to wait.  I tried to ride the rest of the way to the top, but a French motorcycle policeman zipped by shacking his finger “no”.  I stopped and talked to a younger policeman standing nearby, and he clarified that I was not supposed to be riding on the course (just for the record, I was not the only one doing this). I mentioned that my wife was back down the hill and checked if I could ride back down.  With a slightly worried look on his face and in broken english, he said “OK, but… uhm… do it… uh…. ast?”  I was confused and clarified with some pantomiming, “You want me to ride slow?”.  “No”, he said, “go fast so HE doesn’t see you” referring to the higher ranking officer on the moto.  “HA! Fast is not a problem.”
An hour later, the publicity caravan arrived.  It is a long, rolling parade of oddly shaped cars and buses.

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They drive the entire course playing music and throwing free stuff at anyone standing on the side of the road.  Usually at the start, finish, or anywhere a lot of people are standing it is a challenge to get anything.  Small fights will break out over a cheap hat or pen.  But it appears that we found the magic spot and ended up with a large pile of loot.

7 hats from Skoda, 4 hats from champion, 2 Bouygues hats, 1 sausage hat, 4 bags of pretzels, 6 bags of haribo candy, 4 le journal de Mickey, 1 sample of liquid detergent, 4 yellow bags, 1 red cow bag, 3 neon bracelets, 1 deck of cards, 4 keychains with a cartoon devil on it, 1 keychain bottle opener, 2 eyeglass cleaners, 2 yellow unidentified thingies, 2 red unidentified thingies, 1 bottle of water, 5 pens, 1 red bag with a newspaper, and 1 megaphone.

The biggest surprise of them all, though, was two sample bags of sausage.

In case you were wondering, the sausage was really tasty.

Some time later we heard helicopters getting closer and the race finally appeared.  If not for some Australian fans that could speak enough french to get updates from the locals with a radio, I would have had no idea what was going on in the race.  I tried to take some pictures of the race action, but this was what I got.

Unless you really enjoy taking action photos, I would leave the camera in your pocket and enjoy the show.  Graham Watson and cyclingnews take better pictures anyway.

After the ‘autobus’ came through with the sprinters and other non-climbers, we rolled back down the hill to try and catch the finish.  While there I caught this picture of a crazy fan.

My favorite part of his costume was the pink bunny skewered on the end of his lance.

After the riders finish they have to make their way through a mob of media and fans. They usually don’t miss a beat, and I saw several like Fränk Schleck that would conduct interviews while riding slowly back to the team bus. 

Saunier Duval almost left their star climbers behind, but they were able to pick them up on the way out in their Tonka Toy like bus.  Ironically, this would be the last time that Ricco has to worry about getting a ride home from a race, as he was kicked out for dopping the next day and the entire team was sent home.  Maybe they tried to leave him behind for a reason.

Once the Grande Debacle was over, Traci and I were pooped.  I had thought about going back and riding back over the hill, but I barely had enough energy to cook dinner.   At the campground we had a good time talking with our Dutch neighbors from the Frisia area of Netherlands.  In addition to traditional Dutch and English, they spoke another language called Frisian between each other.  They also spoke and understood German, but only spoke a little French.   It amazes me how well and how often people master 3 or 4 different languages here.

 

Start in Toulouse

While in Toulouse we planned on catching the start of the next stage. What I had forgot was that each day’s start is not always the same. They schedule everything so that the races finish around 5pm, so since we took our time getting to the start I was only able to catch a glimmer of the ‘Grand Debacle’. I guess it was only fitting, since I tend to be late to most of my own races as well.

I did manage to catch a picture of current German National champion Fabian Wegmann from Gerolsteiner sneaking back to the car for some more snacks.

By the time we fought our way to the start village, the party was still going on but the riders were long gone.

While very disappointing, the entire day was not lost. We did have a good dinner that was raw egg free. Instead Traci ordered a very non-French dinner of what had to be the artery clogger special. It was a hamburger with two hashbrowns for buns, cheese, and bacon.

It was really good.