It Must Be the Week for Crashes

 My friend John led another long bike ride this past week. I recently wrote about John's craziness as a ride leader, and so I was marveling at how perfect this ride was. He has pre-ridden the route so we knew where we were going. We were riding the surprisingly good trails through Prince Georges County, headed to Lake Needwood. The weather was perfect. Yeah, we got stopped a little short of our goal by a downed tree which blocked the path, but no matter - we were all having a good time. And then Jim went down.

We were on the Northwest Branch Trail, ducking under East-West Highway. The trail runs alongside a creek, and the whole thing descends to get under the road, so you speed up a bit from the downhill. Going under the road, the trail is narrow, with a railing on one side and a wall on the other. Somehow Jim misjudged it. I think he hit the railing, or he just have lost his balance. In any case, his bike went down and he hit the ground hard. I was behind him and saw it happen, and the way he hit the ground I thought he might have been seriously injured. Jim is, after all, one of the older riders in a senior citizen bike group - an octogenarian, he only this year switched to riding an ebike. He ain't young, but he's tough!

Crash location (courtesy of Google Maps)

The rest of us gathered around him. I implored him to stay still and not move but, ornery old bird that he is, after a few minutes he got up, and we saw that his face was bloody, his glasses were trashed, and one eye was already swollen shut. He was soon up and walking around, ignoring my request that he sit down, or at least lean on the railing. He had said he felt a little dizzy, and I was worried that he might take another fall. fortunately, he seemed generally OK, and the bleeding was superficial and stopped quickly.

Bike crash victim

Anyway, the next thing we had to do was to figure out how to get him out of there. As I mentioned, we were right at the crossing of a major road. Another cyclist and I scrambled up the embankment and could see that we were maybe a quarter mile from a shopping center (and a Metro stop, it turns out). We considered getting Jim and his bike up to the road and walking him to the Metro stop and having someone escort him home, but decided that was a bad idea. We would call 911.

Jim's Apple Watch was ahead of us. It had detected the crash and had dialed 911 for him. This is a nice feature (and it works!), except that even under the best of circumstances it's hard to have a conversation on a watch (sorry, Dick Tracy), and that problem is even worse when you're distracted from just having crashed and are surrounded by cyclists asking if you're all right. Jim was having an unproductive conversation with the 911 dispatcher via his watch. We hung up and called 911 from a cell phone. To their credit, they immediately correlated our call with the incident report they had received from the Apple Watch. To our dismay, it was hard for them to figure out where to send help, since we didn't have a street address. "The Northwest Branch Trail, right where it crosses under East West Highway" is actually a very precise location, but apparently not the kind of location specification they're used to dealing with. We saw an ambulance go by on East West Highway, but it didn't stop. Eventually, a pair of cops found us and they communicated with the ambulance to guide it to our location.

Since Jim was able to walk, he went on foot (holding onto one of the cops for support) about 500 ft. to where the ambulance had stopped. Then they put him on the stretcher, loaded him in, and took off to the ER. The cops took his bike. Jim had called his son, who was on his way to meet him at the ER. At that point, the remaining group members cycled back to the start. We heard from Jim later; he did get a couple of stitches in his face, but was otherwise OK. I'm certain we'll see him back out on his bike soon!

That was Tuesday's crash. Thursday's crash was something I saw only from a distance, but it was strangely enjoyable. Regular readers of this blog know that I'm not a fan of rowers. They're the most inconsiderate river users, with an attitude that they own the river and that everyone else has to get out of their way - after all, you can't expect them to ever yield to you since they're facing backwards and can't see where they're going. Also, for the last few years the Washington-Liberty HS rowing team has been launching from the same dock my kayak group uses. This isn't usually a problem, but for the past few weeks they're been having some sort of Learn to Row program and have been clogging up the dock just when we want to use it - the previous week we had cooled our heels for 20 minutes waiting for a bunch of novice rowers to get out and haul the shells up off the dock. So, I admit to having schadenfreude over rowers' mishaps.

We launched without incident (the rowers weren't there, thank goodness) and headed up the river. As we passed under Memorial Bridge we noticed four eight-person crew shells racing down the river alongside Roosevelt Island. They were moving fast, with coaches on motor launches egging them on - clearly they were racing each other. But there was a problem in that there was a motorboat anchored just off of the south end of Roosevelt Island, right in their path. Now, the coaches should have noticed this and directed the rowers to turn left. I think the presence of the obstacle should have been clear to them as they passed under Roosevelt Bridge, at least 1,000 feet - roughly three football fields - in advance. But they didn't react. Instead, they kept egging the rowers on, and only very belatedly switched to yelling at the rowers to change course. Unfortunately, a sixty foot long, eight person crew shell does not turn on a dime. The last thing I heard the coaches yell was, "Don't Hit the Boat! Don't Hit the Boat!" Then we saw one of the shells stop abruptly as it, well, hit the boat (the other shells continued the race).

Fortunately, the hit didn't seem (or sound) hard. The shell didn't flip over or sink. No one wound up in the water. The coach's launch was right there to help. I'm guessing that the power boat wound up with nothing more than a scratch. But it was very satisfying to see the river lice screw up in a way which was so obvious that even they couldn't deny their screw-up.

So, have fun, but be careful out there!

 

John's Crazy Bike Rides

I'm active in a bike group which is part of Arlington's 55+ program. I started to have free time during the pandemic, and about the same time grudgingly began to accept that I am in the 55+ age category. I went looking for things to do and found this group, which at the time was barely alive. The previous generation of ride leaders had stepped away and of course the pandemic was a giant monkey wrench. I volunteered to be a ride leader, a process which involved a shocking amount of bureaucracy (background check, resume, application), and for a while, I was the only ride leader! Over time, my friends John and Clare (with whom I went biking in Portugal) pretty much took over leadership of the group, though I'm still part of the leadership group. Clare is very good at the mechanics - getting the ride calendar to the county on time so it can be published in the rec booklet, making sure ride leaders show up, etc. John does the hands-on ride leading, and even organizes alternative plans such as coffee or lunch for bad weather days when rides get cancelled.

John's a really good guy, but not always very detail-oriented. Truth be told, he can be what my grandmother would have called farchadat (פֿאַרטשאַדעט), a Yiddish word meaning confused, clueless, or generally out of it. 

The normal 55+ rides are about 20-25 miles long and generally stay mostly on trails. John decided he wanted, on alternate weeks, to organize a series of more challenging rides of about 40 miles. Let me tell you about a the two longer rides John has hosted so far. Let's start with the first, from Columbia Island Marina to Lake Artemesia in PG County. 

I had an early optometrist appointment that day, so I showed up at the marina just in the nick of time with my eyes still dilated from the eye exam. I was wearing those goofy free sunglasses they give you when you have an eye exam. Actually, the pair they gave me was a little higher quality than the cardboard sunglasses you sometimes get and looked almost like something you might actually wear on purpose. Given that I was joining riders in their 60's, 70's and 80's, no one was phased by my oversized, old-folks style wraparound shades. Even with them everything was kind of bright and blurry.

Groovy post-eye exam shades

Besides not being able to see right, my other problem was that as I pulled my bike out I discovered that one of my tires felt soft - not really flat, but squishy. I didn't have time to change the tube, but decided I would pump it up and see if it held air. Maybe I could get through the ride. I mentioned this issue to John.

Five minutes later we were all gathered near the marina building. I was down on one knee pumping air into my tire when John announced, "it looks like everyone's ready - let's go!" and the group took off. I swear, I think that man never healed from some long-ago head injury. I quickly pumped a little more air into the tire, packed up my pump, and chased after the group - I caught them in the middle of the 14th Street Bridge. It was a sizable group of about a dozen riders, and John rode in his usual style - running red lights or passing through lights that were changing, without thinking about whether the whole group would make it through. I'll add that John hadn't distributed the route, so it was important that the group stay together. Also, he hadn't designated a "sweep" (a person who rides in the back of the group to handle any stragglers or other issues). Since I was already at the rear and generally knew the route (John and I had test ridden it a few weeks earlier), I decided to sweep the ride.

John is also guilty of my least favorite rider leader behavior, which is that when he stops for a break, he waits until the back of the ride catches up and then immediately takes off again. In doing that, the faster, stronger riders get breaks, while the slower riders never get a chance to stop. By the time we got to Bladensburg some of the people in the back were already slowing down (including, inexplicably, one guy on an eBike), and I mentioned to John that he should pause long enough to give the riders at the back a chance to rest as well. From then on, every time we'd stop he'd ask me if they had rested enough - not to be a jerk, but just because he really didn't seem able to gauge the idea of giving the riders in the back a rest break.

We made it to Lake Artemesia without problems and did a quick lap around the lake. My bike tire was still holding air. Here's another thing about John - he likes to go out for lunch at the end of a ride, which means that he doesn't like long rest stops along the way (see the previous paragraph). A lot of ride leaders, having reached the ride's destination, would take a snack and water break before heading back but John just continued on to start the trip back. The folks at the back got slower and slower. Finally, I was tailing a woman who was doing about eight miles per hour. She wasn't struggling or upset; I guess her legs were just getting worn out and she slowed wayyy down. I was glad that I was sweeping, because otherwise she would have been all by herself and would have gotten totally lost - a couple of times I had to correct her when she made wrong turns. 

Anyway, eventually we all made it back as far as the Wharf, where about half the group stopped for lunch at the Falafel, Inc. (I'm ambivalent about this place because of the decor at some of their locations) while the rest continued over the bridge back to our starting place. Overall, a successful ride, but maybe a little much for one of our riders (to her credit, she wrote a very nice email to the county saying she enjoyed the ride and praising John's leadership and my support for her along the way).

Which brings us to John's next long ride, to Lake Needwood in Montgomery County. Unlike the Lake Artemesia ride, John hadn't pre-ridden this one and so all of us were on a journey of exploration. I was actually kind of happy to have a little unknown adventure, as this week I was supposed to have been on my annual week-long kayak camping trip, which is usually a week full of fun unknowns. Unfortunately, this year's trip fizzled when just about everyone dropped out, and once it was down to just the Hungarian and me we decided we didn't have critical mass and cancelled.

Anyway, we headed north from Pierce Mill in DC. Not as many people showed up this time: it was down to just the 55+ ride leaders (John, Clare, Gordon, Roy, and me) plus a couple of additional stalwarts. The beginning of the ride was easy - trails we've ridden many times before. But then it got rougher. Not crazy, but bumpy, skinny trails which wound through a bunch of Montgomery County community parks - not exactly the promised bucolic scenery. When we were still about seven miles from Lake Needham one of our riders decided he had had enough of having his bones rattled by the root heaves and turned back (this was the same guy who disappeared from one of my earlier trips - at least this time he told us he was going to turn back!). The rest of us soldiered on, switching back and forth multiple times between Beach Drive (smooth pavement, but lots of cars and no shoulder or bike lane) and the trail (bumpy, bumpy, bumpy). 

Noy again ...

Early in the trip, our first planned break, at a playground known as Candy Cane City, was thwarted because the park was fenced off for construction, and a few times we had to stop and figure out where we were going or correct for wrong turns because the trail system was confusing. When we hit yet another closed trail somewhere in Rockville, we decided to abandon our goal of reaching Lake Needwood and instead head to nearby coffee shop for a break (when Clare is along on rides, John is more inclined to take breaks). The trail took us to close to the shopping center where the coffee shop is located, but there was no bike-friendly way to cover the last 1/2 mile or so. We just gritted our teeth and rode our bikes on the 40 MPH, multi-lane road, hoping that we wouldn't be run down by traffic.  Even worse was riding the same stretch on the way back. It didn't make sense to cross the road and ride with traffic, as with multiple lanes of traffic we wouldn't have been able to get back to the correct side of the road to catch the trail. So, instead we waited for a break in the oncoming cars and then rode the wrong direction down a 40 MPH road for a half mile to get back to the bike trail. Again, we lucked out and no one ran us down.

The ride home was less eventful. We were retracing our steps and so didn't have to stop quite so much to figure out where we were going, and we rode on the road a bunch to avoid the worst sections of the trail. This route probably won't stay in our repertoire, but trying new things is always good. Best of all, no one was whiny or complainy about the suboptimal ride - even the guy who turned back just went off and did it without making a fuss about it. Alright, we weren't far from home - but it was a nice exploration of new places with a good group with a mindset for adventure.

Bike Refurbishment

Would you like to read a bunch of nerdy stuff about how I've been tinkering with my bicycles? Of course you would.

I have two bicycles (not counting the cheapo mountain bike gathering dust in the shed). Both are titanium framed bikes from Lynskey, a boutique manufacturer in Tennessee (a state which apparently exports high end bicycles in addition to country music, hydropower, and yokels). 

In 2015 I was first getting back into cycling, and I discovered that choosing a bike had become very complicated, in that since the last time I had paid attention there had developed many specialized types of bikes from which to choose - racing, touring, cyclocross, gravel, adventure, etc. I didn't know what to buy. I reached out to my friend Cyndi, who I know from the kayak world, but who is also bike obsessed. She advised me to just buy something, anything, since - as with kayaks - the only way to figure out what really suits you is to get out there and get experience. She pointed out that we'd each been through many kayaks (at least eight over the years in my case), and that I'd likewise probably buy and sell a bunch of bikes before I figured out what was right for me. So I went on Craigslist and got what turned out to be an excellent deal on a five year old Cyclocross (CX) bike - good for general riding and commuting. I later added the other bike, which is more designed for comfortable distance road riding.

Well, the CX bike is now sixteen years old and the road bike is eight years old. They've both been ridden a lot. I had the opportunity to get a free bike fitting, which is where an expert on bike fit adjusts your seat position, etc., and recommends tweaks - different length cranks, handlebar height, etc. - to fit the bike perfectly to you. The reason I got a free fit was that it was from bike mechanic friend who had just trained in bike fitting - it was like getting a free checkup at the dental school, with less risk of disaster. Anyway, the bike fitter gave my CX bike a once over and said everything was worn out on it: it needed a new chain, chainrings (the front gears), cassette (the rear gears), and wheels. We hatched a plan to combine parts from both bikes to rejuvenate the original cyclocross bike, and that I'd then sell the carcass of the distance riding bike (titanium frames have resale value).

The CX bike got the handlebars and derailleurs from the road bike, plus a new cassette and chainrings, upgrading it from a 20 speed (2x10) to 22 speed (2x11) along the way. I bought new cranks better matched to my leg length (per the bike fitting), and the bike also got some deferred maintenance done including all new cables, brake pads, and bar tape. Oh, and I also put on a more padded seat.

The CX bike also got the wheels from the road bike, but that didn't last long. I decided I wanted outfit it with wide tires (that's the trend these days) and so bought new tires and entirely new wheels to go with them, since the existing wheel rims would have been too narrow for the new extra wide tires. 

New wheels: If you look closely, the little nipples where the spokes attach to the rim are red, matching the black and red theme of the bike. Even the valve stem cap is red.

The new wheels, being black with red accents, look totally cool on the already black and red-themed bike. I mounted the wide 40mm tires, put them on the bike, and adjusted the brakes for the wider rims. The frame is not really designed for tires that big, and so making it all work involved one little hack, using some thin bungie cord to hold the rear brake cable out of the way to keep it from rubbing against the tire. Bike complete, and awesome!

The orange bungies hold the brake cable up off the wheel. Cheesy, but effective.

But once you start tinkering, it's hard to stop. Now, having ridden the upgraded bike for a bit, I think I'm going to hit a little bit of "undo" on a couple of the changes. First of all, I can't get comfortable on the new seat no matter what I do to adjust the angle and position. It pokes me in what I'll call a sensitive spot and a day of riding on it makes me pretty sore. I think I'll go back to my previous seat. Hopefully REI will take the new one back - though I would understand completely if they told me to go pound sand because my bony, hard to fit butt is not their problem.

Also, the 40mm tires are bouncy and fun, but slow. Plus, I really don't like relying on the bungie hack for something as important as brakes. I'm going to go back to 35mm tires, which is what I had on the bike before.

All told, I probably spent about $800 on this refurb, most of which I expect to recoup from selling the other frame. A bunch of that was for the new wheels (which it turns out I didn't need since I'm going back to narrower tires), but, I don't regret it - they're new, they're spinny, and they look nice. Eight hundred dollars might seem like a lot of money, but it gives me a like-new bike, and a bike like mine would cost about $5,000 new these days. And the irony is that Cyndi was wrong: I've owned this bike for ten years, and I'm still happy riding it.

As to the leftover road bike frame, I had a brief delusion of rebuilding it into an eBike. As is happens, one day while getting ice cream in Del Rey, I bumped into a guy who was riding a Lynskey (unusual enough, since it's an uncommon brand), which he had converted to a mid-drive eBike. It was cool, and I immediately fell in love with the idea of creating a titanium frame, custom eBike, all for a third the price of buying an eBike new, since I already had a frame and wheels. However, once I spent some time researching what it would take, I realized I'd be taking on a complicated project. I mean, I could easily handle it if all went well, but creating a Frankenstein eBike had lots of opportunity for complications. I'm back to the idea of selling the frame, which will refill my wallet and open a bike parking space for some possible TBD future purchase.

Current state of affairs: the refurbished bike on the bottom, and the road bike carcass up top

I Lost a Cyclist!

My mother was born in the U.S., but as the first American-born child in a recently-arrived immigrant family living in a Jewish immigrant neighborhood, her first language was not English, but Yiddish, and that's the language which she used when speaking to her siblings and to my grandmother, even into adulthood. Growing up in a Yiddish-speaking family, I learned a lot of Yiddish phrases, such as "alter kocher", which translates pretty closely to "old fart". Which brings me to last week's bike ride. I lead rides for the bike group within Arlington's 55+ program. While the group is officially called the "Tour de Friends", if you follow me on Strava, you'll see the entries for those rides titled as "AK Ride", "AK" being an abbreviation for the aforementioned Yiddish phrase. The participants in theTour de Friends rides are generally well on the "+" side of 55, and so it was a matter of some concern when one of my riders disappeared in the middle of a ride. Not that I wouldn't have been concerned if a younger rider had gone missing, but there's a wide range of harm which could befall someone who is, well, 55+++.

It was a cool, drizzly morning and I was pleasantly surprised to see about ten people waiting when I showed up at our meeting place of Barcroft Community Center. The rain was supposed to be stopping shortly, and while I had a few cancellations, there were more stalwarts than I had expected. We did give the rain a little time to dissipate, and by the time we started riding it was just misting, but the trails were definitely wet.

We headed down the Four Mile Run Trail to the Potomac, then south down the Mount Vernon Trail. At the top of Old Town I decided to stop and wait for the whole group because there was an unexpected trail detour. The group caught up, including my sweep, but we were short one rider. We tried calling him, and on the first time the phone was answered, but there was no one on the other end of the line. We tried texting, but no response. At this point I started to imagine that my missing rider had slid out on a rain-slicked section of trail and was lying in a ditch by the side of the trail somewhere, injured and barely able to get to his phone. The only consolation was that he hadn't been the last rider in the group and no one had spotted him as they rode. We had a planned stop under the Wilson Bridge just on the other side of Old Town. I conferred with my other trip leaders and we decided to continue on to that point and see if he'd show up there.

We got to the Wilson Bridge and, well, no missing rider. By this point the rain had stopped, but it was still a wet, grey sort of day, so a few participants were more than willing to turn back and retrace our steps, looking for our missing rider along the way. I continued leading the remainder of the group south, though we too turned around a little short of our original planned destination of River Farm.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. When my group met up at Peet's Coffee in Shirlington with the folks who had turned back early, they reported that they had finally been successful in contacting our missing person. He hadn't dressed for the inclement weather, was getting cold, and just decided to turn around and head home without telling anyone. So, I was able to close that Missing Person case, and I didn't have to report anything back to the county Recreation Department. Whew! 

So please, dear reader, if you ever decide to leave a group trip early, please let someone know!

Late twice

 I usually like to be on time, but recently I wound up being late for two different outdoor activities. But they turned out OK.

The first was Ralph's Cherry Blossom paddle. I left plenty of time to get there, but as I was driving there my stomach gave a little bit of a twist - the kind of feeling which sometimes signals that sometime soon I might need to find a bathroom in a hurry. Since my stomach had in fact been a little upset the day before, I decided it was worth it to detour to try to find a bathroom along the way, since we were launching from Gravely Point, which has no facilities other than some truly disgusting Port-potties. And I really wanted to take care of any digestion issues before I found myself out on the river in a dry suit.

My first thought was to detour to my home-away-from-home at Columbia Island, but for some reason lately they've been locking the bathrooms there, so instead I detoured into Rosslyn, figuring I'd head for the McDonald's. Long story short, the bathrooms there required a code and the place was crowded, so I decided to roll the dice and skip the bathroom break. It turned out not to be an issue.

I was surprised to find Ralph and a group of about ten other paddlers still there when I arrived at the marina ten minutes before the stated launch time of 10 AM. Ralph has the annoying habit of launching whenever he's ready without regard to agreed-upon launch times. As an example, I remember one Assateague camping trip where, fifteen minutes before our scheduled departure time, I was still packing up my stuff and looked up to see the rest of the group caravaning out of the campground to head for the day's launch site. 

Anyway, I managed to get ready in a real hurry and was ready to get underway at 10:01; however at that point we didn't actually launch. Rather, we did 10 minutes of warmup exercises on land, then launched. 

As is always the case, the day of the Cherry Blossom paddle was breezy, with conditions forecast to worsen as the day went on. We could feel it when we headed across the river. A group from Waters Edge Kayak Meetup launched at the same time we did, except they left from Columbia Island. We could see them make their way across the river, and we met up with their group as we all approached the Tidal Basin. They looked at the trees for a bit then headed straight back - I assume they didn't like the choppy conditions. Being more hardy, we CPA'ers headed on, down towards Haines Point; however as soon as we got south of the 14th Street Bridge things really started to kick up. The wind was from the south and the tide was out, which combined with the clapotis (bounce of the waves off of the shoreline) made for confused, choppy waters. I remarked to Ralph that we might want to reconsider our plan, but he said that all we had to do was make it around Haines Point into Washington Channel and we'd be fine. This didn't really make sense to me in that, (a) even if we were protected in the channel, we'd still have to come back out into the soup to it home, and (b) the channel wasn't guaranteed to be calm (in fact, the area around Haines Point is often particularly choppy in these kinds of conditions). As we pressed on I had to make a decision - turn back and face the waves back to Gravely Point on my own, or stick with the safety of the group as it pressed on into worsening conditions. I decided that staying with the group was the better choice.

We pressed on for a while, making perhaps a half mile of forward progress, before Ralph finally decided to cut the trip short and head for home. He estimated the waves were around 2 feet at that point. While in terms of amplitude they were nothing like, say, Georgian Bay, they had a short period and seemingly random direction and so pushed us in all sorts of directions, as waves in the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay tend to do. We retraced our steps up the DC side of the river to the 14th Street Bridge, which (along with construction barges parked in the river for bridge work) gave us some cover from the wind. The ride back up to the bridge was challenging, but crossing the river in the lee of the bridge wasn't bad at all. Once we made it across we had to head back downriver to get to Gravelly Point, but interestingly, the water on the Virginia side of the river was much calmer. We could see whitecaps on the DC side, but we had only light to moderate chop. A little more excitement than expected, but it still beat fighting traffic to see the blossoms!

Getting ready to launch

My second lateness isn't nearly as interesting. I just forgot my bike shoes when I left to meet someone for a bike ride (I was driving to a bike ride, something I hate doing) and had to double back to get them. The ride, though, was really cool. Many times I have ridden the Anacostia River Trail as far as Bladensburg, but had never before continued past it. Those of us who live in Washington's tonier suburbs sometimes consider PG County in Maryland to be the poor relation, but the county has some amazing bike trails! This was one of the prettier bike rides I've done in the DC area. Past Bladensburg we continued to parallel the river on the Northeast Branch Trail, riding through Northeast Stream Valley Park. The trail took us past the end of the runway at the tiny College Park Airport, and then finally we turned onto the Paint Branch Trail to Lake Artemesia Park. It's not a giant lake - maybe half a mile end to end - but it's a pretty park, and we rode the trail around the lake.

From there we bumbled our way into the town of College Park (GPS tried to take us through a chain link fence), where we got coffee at Vigilante Coffee. Being a lefty college town, the bathroom at Vigilante had several pieces of anti-Zionist graffiti. At least I initially thought it did, but when I looked a second time the writing turned out to be illegible, as if it had been scratched out with a key. Whatever one might have to say about their restrooms, their carrot muffin was delicious, and given that the ride was the day before Passover, I especially savored it knowing I was going into a week where I would be forbidden from eating decent baked goods. 

We retraced our steps on the way home. This is a ride I definitely want to do again. 

Biking in Cape May

We recently visited friends who retired to Lewes, Delaware (near Rehoboth Beach). We've visited them many times at this point, so this time to do something different we decided to take the Lewes-Cape May ferry and bike into Cape May. Going on a ferry with a bike is fun. I'm not sure why - I guess because you're kind both pedestrian and vehicle. You roll onto the ferry like a car, except without any traffic hassles, and you're traveling light, like a pedestrian. I've taken a bike onto ferries in Portugal, the Netherlands, Delaware/New Jersey, and of course, there's the Staten Island Ferry in New York (which I've ridden as part of the Five Boro Bike Tour). 

Ferries vary in size. The ones I took on my Netherlands trip were tiny little boats - rafts, almost (though big enough to hold a couple of cars), crossing tiny canals or small rivers. Until recently we had a fairly small fdrry locally: the now (at least temporarily) defunct White's Ferry on the Potomac. It's a cable ferry across the Potomac at a point where it's only about 900 feet wide. White's Ferry started operating around 1800, and is named for the Confederate (of course) veteran who operated it just after the Civil War - the ferry boat itself is named after a Confederate (of course) general, Jubal Early. Right now White's Ferry isn't operating due to some dispute with the owner of the land on the Virginia side. I hope it comes back!

Anyway, the Delaware Bay crossing is about 15 miles (I know people who've kayaked it!) and so the Cape May-Lewes ferry is more substantial, with a vehicle deck, a middle deck with enclosed seating, a restaurant, bar, and gift shop, and an open top deck. We spent the 85 minute ride from Delaware to New Jersey topside, taking in the scenery and the sun.

There was a mini parade float version of the ferry riding on the ferry

Once on the New Jersey side we rolled off and began our five mile bike ride from the ferry terminal into Cape May. Of the four of us I was the only one without an eBike. Fortunately,  the terrain was flat and this wasn't a fast crew and so I didn't have to work too hard to keep up. 

This was a pretty ambitious ride for Valerie - a lot of riding in traffic, or in bike lanes alongside traffic on fairly busy roads. Definitely a little hairier than our trail-based riding at home, and she handled it very well! She did occasionally have to stop because here hands would go numb. It's not clear how much of that was her Reynaud's Syndrome, and how much of it was from clutching the handlebars out of fear.

Our first stop was Bagel Time Café, located right on the beach. Interestingly, this was the only time all day that we saw the beach - the rest of the day we were a few blocks inland in town. Our friends' primary destination was a specialty store called the Cape May Peanut Butter Company, and we biked there next. We locked our bikes up outside of the peanut butter store but left our peanut butter shopping until the end of the day so we didn't have to carry the jars around all day.

We spent the rest of the day browsing the cute little shops in Cape May. As is typical with this somewhat ADD group we could never agree on a eating another meal, and each of us just noshed when we felt like it. We tried getting ice cream together, but in our group's ADD fashion we couldn't find the ice cream place and when we finally found one, we didn't like it as the only thing they sold were giant custom chipwiches. - you couldn't just get a scoop of ice cream there. We decided to hold out instead for ice cream at the Hopkins Farm Creamery, which is among our favorite ice cream in the world and is conveniently right near our friends' house. 

Mostly we window shopped, though did Valerie buy a cute dress (unusual - Valerie doesn't often wear dresses). Finally, at the end of the day we returned to our bikes and did our serious shopping of the day - for peanut butter. I hadn't understood what exactly the peanut butter shop could be selling that would have merited a whole store - I mean, peanut butter is just one thing, right? But it turns out they have many varieties of flavored nut butters, plus all kinds of peanut-based foods and candies. I bought a small jar of cappuccino peanut butter (which is really good!), while our friends kind of bought out the store - lots of gifts, plus restocking their own peanut larder.

The ride back to the ferry should have been just the reverse of how we got into town, but our friends have this interesting habit of disagreeing over which way to go and pointing in exact opposite directions (we've also experienced this with them in the car). We all biked around in circles for a little bit, not something we appreciated since we were all kinda tired at that point, but eventually we got on track and made our way back to the ferry.

At the peanut store

On the ferry ride home we sat at a table inside, as we had had quite a bit of sun during the day. Our friends bought Valerie and orange crush cocktail, which she actually drank.

A fun day for all. We rode only about 15 miles, but it was an adventure!

Portugal Part III - The Cycling Trip Continues

 Tues 10/22: Santiago do Cacém to Porto Covo

A word about breakfasts: the breakfasts at our hotels were all pretty similar, and we didn't find them too odd for the American palate. There's (surprisingly) none of the odd sea creatures I encountered in at a buffet breakfast in Japan, and none of the salads you'd find in Israel. For the most part the breakfasts included various dry cereals, instant oatmeal, yogurt, an assortment of pastries, and some wan fresh fruit. Every breakfast included a small warm food section with industrial scrambled eggs and various porky breakfast meats, and let me say, there seems to be a nationwide pride in making the worst scrambled eggs possible. I mean, they were uniformly inedible. Interestingly, there were also always trays of cold cuts and bread. I guess either cold cut sandwiches are a Portuguese breakfast food, or the hotels, which cater to active travelers, give their guests an opportunity to grab something to eat later for lunch. Sadly, the cold cuts were never labeled and seemed entirely pork-based, so I never indulged. There were a few innovations I'd like to see at home: fresh-squeezed orange juice, including one place with a Willy Wonka-ish do it yourself juice squeezing machine; hot milk for your coffee; and most places had decaf. But where's the doggone waffle maker like you'd find at any self-respecting American hotel breakfast?

One other item of note: the lobby lounge area of our hotel was equipped with a Roland electric piano, and I took the opportunity to play a few songs one morning while our group slowly shuffled in. I enjoyed having a chance to play, and they were all suitably impressed 😀.

The day's ride was described as an “easy day, with a hilly start”, which was fairly accurate – except the description didn’t mention that our ride included yet another rough unpaved road section. We started by riding paved roads up to the Roman ruins above town. The ruins were pretty small, but they still looked interesting to me; however, when the group found that there was a 3 Euro entrance we decided to move on. 

Roman ruins

We knew we were going back towards the coast, and yet somehow our ride started by taking us up in elevation. I mean, c’mon – how is you have to ride uphill to get to sea level? Where are we, New Orleans? We passed through some typically pleasant countryside before making a turn into – uh, oh – a dirt road. Today’s road was through some more really lovely scenery, but while it was better than the previous day’s totally unrideable sandy trail, it was still borderline to be able to ride it on our bikes, which had front suspension to cushion the ruts but lacked the beefy tires you'd want for this kind of trail. Mike, Terry and I gingerly made our way through. Clare and John walked. We all met up where the pavement picked up again, and then continued on to a recommended stop at a little rural café, where we had our daily Coke Zero break (but of course, no food other than our energy bar snacks). Another ugly Americanism: every day when we stopped for our Coke Zero break there was much hue and cry about the lack of ice - how could these savages serve soda without ice? Well, from everyone except for me - I actually prefer my soda the European way, without ice. On this one occasion the woman behind the counter was actually able to provide ice for our drinks, which made our group very happy. What made me happy was my ability to say something close enough to "um sem gelo" that the woman understand that I didn't want ice. I feel a real sense of accomplishment any time I can make myself understood in a foreign language - even if it's something as simple as three words.

Riding on the dirt ...

... and on the pavement

Our tour definitely steered us towards little local businesses. One of the features our app mentioned in its descritpion of today's café is that there’s an old guy who works in an adjacent shed (apparently not affiliated with the café) who is a beekeeper and honey maker and is notably devoted to the craft. We got to see him working at scraping the beeswax out of some frames, readying them for the following year. The old guy speaks no English, so we kind of smiled and waved at each other. It turns out that Mike used to keep bees (!) and he was able to explain to us what the guy was doing and pointed out the different pieces of equipment.

The old beekeeper

Sitting under the olive trees while we drank our Coke Zeros

The ride after our stop was truly stunning, as we were riding right along the coast. The Alentejo Coast of Portugal faces the Atlantic, and every beach we visited on our trip had big crashing surf. There's also varied topography. While some of the beaches look similar to East Coast U.S. beaches, others have dramatic cliffs and giant rocks extending out into the ocean. Our route took us to an overlook where we had to walk along a narrow path atop a rather sheer cliff to get the best view. Interestingly, there was a little horseshoe shaped beach area carved out of the cliffs, totally private except to those atop the cliffs. This, it turned out, was a nude beach; however, it being late October, the beach was sparsely populated, and those there were largely limited to what seemed to be vacationing elder naturists. Sorry, no pictures.

Scenic coastline

"Nude beach"

Finally, we made our way into Porto Covo, a picturesque fishing town turned beach vacation destination, with whitewashed houses and a quaint-as-heck little town square. We were staying in a small suite hotel. In contrast to the sometimes small rooms at our other lodgings, at this place I had a whole 1 BR vacation flat. I would have loved to have had the kitchenette (Microwave! Stove! Dishes! Utensils!) for the nights I bought dinner at the supermarket in our previous town, but ironically, in Porto Covo we ate dinner out. 

The posse rides into Porto Covo

After a shower and a brief nap I walked down through town to the beachfront (finding a geocache along the way), where I ran into John and Clare. I joined them for a beer in a bar, during which we discussed strategies for the next day – the route again included dirt roads, but Clare’s goal was to find a way to avoid them. John's plan was to go back to their  hotel room after dinner and study some combination of RideWithGPS, Google Earth, and Google Maps to find a paved, though likely less picturesque, alternative to the official route.

The three of us continued to dinner at an Italian restaurant. After three days of energy bars for lunch and supermarket scrounges for dinner, my tagliatelle with mushrooms, onions, spinach, goat cheese, garlic, pesto, and capers was delicious beyond words. Mike and Terry wound up eating at the same place, and after dinner we walked back together and then went our separate ways for the evneing. I walked around the hotel grounds a little bit, checking out the pool and their laughable mini-golf course, then retired to my room for the night.

Scenic coastline at Porto Covo

Whitewashed buildings (the number 42!)

Porto Covo at sunset

OMG, the tagliatelle was good!

More oddball Portuguese plumbing

Weds 10/23: Porto Covo to Vila Nova del Milfontes

Breakfast at the Porto Covo Hotel was a little weak. I mean, they had the same bricklike eggs, weird cold-cuts, and so on as everywhere else. I was able to get my cereal, yogurt and some little pastries. It’s just that they seemed to be cutting corners a little bit. For example, instead of a fancy Nespresso machine there was just a Thermos of coffee – and no decaf. On the flip side, this hotel seemed to host lots of active tourists, for example, some other cyclists, and a pair of young German women and an Australian trio all doing the four day hike of the Fisherman’s Trail. It was fun to chat about everyone's adventures.

Our ride was going to take us to our final cycling destination, the beach town of Vila Nova de Milfontes. Once we get there we’ll have covered most of the wild Alentejo Coast, almost to the more developed and better known Algarve region. While short in mileage (only 22 miles), and described in the app as as a “Short flat day” and a “nice and relaxing day”, it turned out to be as challenging as the other days due to the fact that it was almost entirely on rough dirt roads.

Have I mentioned that Clare really doesn’t like riding unpaved roads? John had failed to find an alternate route, and at this point in the trip, she decided she just wasn't going to even try to ride the unpaved parts anymore; she just walked them. We were all inclined to cut her some slack since she’s soldiering on despite having some family stuff at home. Also, it really didn't separate the group very much, as we only crept along on the dirt trails, and were happy to wait a few minutes every now and then for them to catch up. Plus, to her credit, she’s never complained about the situation – she just walked the dirt segments.

We started off with another dirt path along yet another set of fabulous cliffs. I’ve got to say, the days rides have become predictable – a bumpy back road leading to some incredible coastline which is even prettier than what we previously thought  must the prettiest coastline in existence. Somewhere along the ride there’s a castle. And finally, we ride into a quaint town that’s even quainter than what we previously thought must be the quaintest town in existence.

So yeah, another ride along some cliffs and pounding surf against cliffs, giant rocks, and tranquil beaches. This time we went past a seventeenth century fort used to protect the coast against pirate attacks, and another fort out on an island which has been occupied since 216 BC, starting with a Carthaginian settlement. The area has been a fishing center since Roman times – apparently the Romans made some delicious fish sauces. Here’s one of their recipes: mix fish eggs, fish guts, small fish, and shellfish. Heat well, then let decompose for about 2 months. Yum! 

We rode dirt trails through some wooded areas. I was out ahead and had stopped in some shade to wait for the rest of the group when I noticed what appeared to be something almost the size of a ping pong ball walking itself across the street. On closer examination it turned out to be a dung beetle rolling a ball of, well, dung. They’re pretty big bugs. Weird and fascinating to watch. And icky

Then for a while we were on a busy paved road with no shoulder, with big trucks – the European equivalent of 18 wheelers flying by. Eventually we reached a junction where the app showed two possible routes: the preferred route was to duck back onto dirt roads for more scenic beauty, but you could also continue on pavement to town. John and Clare opted for pavement and traffic, while the rest of us took the dirt road. You know how I mentioned that each beach was prettier than the last? Well, here we were again, down a little side path to yet another breathtaking beach, where we watched surfers and marveled at the large wall built to create a sheltered port area.

The town of Vila Nova del Milfontes, from Faro Beach

Statue by the water in Vila Nova del Milfontes

Scenery on the way to Vila Nova del Milfontes

Eventually my group rolled into Vila Nove de Milfontes and headed for the promontory at Farol Beach, where there’s a weird statue and views down onto several beaches. John and Clare’s route had unsurprisingly been faster, and they met us down at Farol Beach, having already dropped their bikes off at the hotel. The five of us went into town, where we sat at a cafe and each ordered a Coke Zero and a side salad. Once again, no real lunch, but at least we ordered some kinda food! I swear – do these people ever eat? From there we walked over to a market. I wouldn’t call it a supermarket – more of a neighborhood market. The place lacked a prepared foods section and there wasn’t much there for me to eat, save for the famous Portuguese cans of fish, so I left empty-handed. John and Clare bought some snack foods and a fair amount of alcohol. We had gotten into town too early to check into our hotel, but by the time we finished our soda break and food shopping, it was time to check in. The HS Milfontes was the most bare bones of the hotels we’ve stayed in all week, but it’s fine, and the location is great – ocean-front balconies, and an easy walk into town. And the water pressure is unlike anything I've ever experienced. It's like being pressure-washed. Which feels great after a bike ride. I went through my usual post-ride ritual of showering (mostly to wash off the heavy, goopy sunscreen I use), napping, and staring at my phone for a while. 

I walked down to the water by myself to watch the sunset, and bumped into my fellow travelers – John and Clare going back to hotel to eat their supermarket dinner, and Mike and Terry going to a restaurant to eat (they invited me to join them but I declined – restaurant was the traditional Portuguese menu). Instead, I ate by myself at a place which surprisingly had chicken on the menu, a seeming rarity here. I had chicken breasts with a mustard sauce, apples. The dish came with fries, and a side salad. An actual side salad! I swore I was going to eat only one or two fries, and usually I have the willpower to avoid food that's bad for me, but I wound up eating them all.

Vila Nova del Milfontes sunset scenes

Chicken dinner!

Special kayaking note: Vila Nova del Milfontes looks like it has some good kayaking, with its large, sheltered cove. There were a few places which offered kayak tours, and I smiled to see the familiar Wilderness Systems logo on a kayak just outside my hotel. More surprisingly, right across from our hotel there was what seemed to be a boathouse (well, giant temporary building) which seemed to be home to the local serious kayakers. One day I saw a guy hosing off a K2 racing kayak and a wing paddle. I wish I had had the opportunity to talk with that guy - and to go paddling!

Racing paddler

Thurs 10/24: South of Vila Nova del Milfontes

Our final day of touring! And another place where we were staying two nights, so no packing! 

As always, we started with breakfast at the hotel. Like our previous hotel, this one seems dominated by active tour groups – in this case, a cycling tour group from Germany. They seemed very fit and even Mike (who is pretty tall himself) noted how tall they all seemed.

Today's ride was again on sandy dirt roads and, as readers might by now anticipate, Clare opted out and therefore so did John. Mike, Terry, and I decided to do the planned ride but as it was an out-and-back route we decided to cut it a little bit short. We’re all already a little bit sore from days of off-road riding and weren’t really looking for 40+ more bumpy miles. The tour company - ever responsive on Whatsapp - gave us a good suggestion of where to turn around.

We started out crossing the bridge over the Mira River, then again ducked onto back dirt roads, taking us through the towns of Nascedios and Almograve, and finally to viewpoints at Porto das Lapas, and into the Costa Altenejana e Vicentina Natural Park to see the stunning scenery at Cape Sardão, where we found more high cliffs, made of 300 million year old schist rock, along with a 100 year old lighthouse. Positioned as it is at a crossroads among various parts of the world, this area sees flora normally native to the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and North Africa. Today was the first day we had significant wind, which was in our face as we rode out, giving us a little bit of a challenge. It was also the first time we saw cloudy weather. During the course of our ride it went from the amazing sunshine we’ve had all week to totally overcast. No rain or anything, just the novelty of clouds and wind.

Scenery south of South of Vila Nova del Milfontes

Celebrating the end of the ride

Look carefully - there's a stork nesting in the rocks

Mike on the trail near Cape Sardao

The app pointed out that this is the only place in the world where one can see storks nesting in ocean rocks – usually they like to next in trees, or like ospreys, atop just about anything – power poles, chimneys, etc. And we did indeed spot a stork nesting in an incredibly improbable-seeming spot.

 On the way back we stopped at a local café in Cavaleiro for our ritual Coke Zero break (a relatively cheap € 1.80), then retraced our steps home. Today’s road was mostly rideable, with little patches of tricky sand. Mike and Terry each took a fall – fortunately neither was seriously injured.

The whole group met up for dinner at Choupana restaurant, where we initially sat outside at the ocean-front deck but quickly realized that with the sun setting and a breeze blowing, we were going to be cold – so we moved inside. As with most traditional Portuguese restaurants, the majority of the menu was grilled sea creatures with some token ham and beef dishes. I tried to order the veggie burger, but they were sold out, so I went with chicken – yes, they actually had that Portuguese rarity, chicken. All of us ordered the chicken so they served us family style, two freshly grilled chickens: boiled potatoes (except for Terry, who opeted for fires), and another meager salad. As always, John splurged and ordered the bread basket, and we got some wine, with which we toasted our successful trip. For a farewell dessert the five of us split a cheesecake (having eaten chicken, I didn’t try it), and a caramel custard (very eggy – meh). After dinner we all walked by to the hotel together. John, Clare and I would be traveling back to Lisbon together, so we knew we’d see each other the next day. Mike and Terry were continuing on for more travel in Portugal, so we said our goodbyes. I went back to my room with a goal to stay up at least until midnight to begin the transition back to East Coast U.S. time.

Fri 10/25: Vila Nova del Milfontes to Lisbon and Home

Not much to say. I took a walk around town in the morning - one final chance to soak in this wonderful country before heading home.

Walking around town

John, Clare and I had arranged transport back to Lisbon. Unlike our tiny Uber at the start of the trip, we had a roomy van with a personable young guy named Alex at the wheel. John was continuing on to London, but Clare and I took the same flight home. By weird coincidence, my friends Helen and Eric were on the same flight! A smooth flight, a quick Metro ride, and another adventure successfully completed!

A final look at Vila Nova de Milfontes

With Helen and Eric on the Dulles people mover after arrival back in DC

One last bit of trivia ...

Portugal Part II - The Cycling Trip Begins

Here's the TLDR version of the cycling part of our trip: Eat breakfast at the hotel. Pack bags and leave them by the front desk. Bike all day, passing through quaint towns and seeing amazing scenery, enjoying warm, sunny weather. Repeat the next day. More detail follows: 

Mike and John, who had previously done two bike trips in Spain together, agreed that of their three trips this one had the most spectacular and most varied scenery, as well as the most flawless weather. On the other hand, they said that on their other trips the cycling paths had been easier, and there was no riding on busy roads as we had to sometimes do on this trip. 

Sat 10/19: Sesimbra to Setúbal

The elevator at our Sesimbra hotel was broken when we arrived, leaving this as the only route to our rooms. Not easy to navigate with luggage ...

... but the view was pretty swell ...

... though my bathroom had some odd faucets which seemed to have been randomly stuck around the walls as a joke ...

... I didn't try turning any of them on.

We started our day by firing up the "Roadbook for Discovery" app which was our guide for the week. It's a perfectly serviceable app, but has some rough edges compared with more widely used, more robust apps like RideWithGPS (which Mike and John had used in Spain). For one thing, there were certain bugs you had to learn to avoid - like if you clicked on a picture in the description of a scenic spot, it would hang the app, and others you just had to learn to live with - like when the map would flip upside down every once in a while. Also, both the verbal directions built into the app and the tour-specific content were in less than perfect English, written perhaps by someone using the infamous "English as She is Spoke" as a reference. For example, if you'd miss a turn the app would give the warning of, "you are off track since 20 meters!". This sort of thing is why I advise my clients that there's more to releasing an app than just publishing code that according to the developer works perfectly.

The group upon departure

Anyway, each day's ride was broken into three segments: a little tour around the origin city, the main ride of the day, and a little tour at the destination. On this first day we started with a little tour around the city of Sesimbra, including riding out the length of a long jetty (a word I for some reason always associate with the Ant and Bee books of my childhood) to get a view of the city. When we had received our trip briefing the previous evening Rafael had warned us that the first day was going to be the hardest, starting with a steep climb up to Sesimbra Castle. Well, a running theme for my year's expeditions seems to be that the first day of the trip is a killer. It turns out Rafael wasn't kidding; castles tend to be built on the high ground for defensive purposes (never fight uphill, me boys) and we climbed over 700 feet in elevation over a two mile ride. According to Strava (the app I use to log my rides), we were riding grades of up to 12%, which is pretty steep (an EU bike route design guide states that "Gradient for cyclists should not generally exceed 6%, although very short sections with up to 10% might be acceptable", and even a site dedicated to hilly cycling defines a gradient of  10%-15% as "[a] painful gradient, especially if maintained for any length of time".  Fortunately, as I mentioned the steep climb was only for a couple of miles, after which we got to explore Sesimbra Castle. The castle site has been occupied since pre-history, and by the 8th Century CE was a well-established Moorish fort. In the year 1165, a few years after he defeated the Islamic colonizers in Lisbon, King Don Alsfonso Henqriques likewise kicked them out of Sesimbra, regaining control for the locals. So the site's got a lot of history!

At Sesimbra Castle

Every castle has a church. Here John and I are checking out the glorious goyishness at Sesimbra

Sesimbra Castle

Well, we figured we were done with the hard part and had a nice day of touring ahead of us. What Rafael hadn't made clear was that the climb to the castle was just the start of our misery. The day's ride was only a total of 26 miles, a distance which is not a challenge for me, but it was straight up all day. We climbed a total of 2,700 feet with grades up to 13%. Terry, who had the good sense to have rented an eBike, easily flew up the hills but the rest of us crawled along at around 4 MPH. People got off and walked when they couldn't take any more. I'm proud to say that the only time I walked was when I noticed my heart rate had gotten way above my target exercise zone and was up around 100% of my supposed maximum heart rate, though even just walking my bike up the steep grade wasn't much of a break. According to Strava, it was the second most elevation I've ever done in a single ride. My first place ride was century (100 miles), so the elevation gain was spread out over four times as many miles and so was much less steep. And, establishing a pattern for the week, we rode with basically no breaks for food, though I did occasionally pull over and grab little snacks out of my backpack.

Panoramic view from the top

It wasn't all pain, though. We passed through beautiful small towns, rumbled down some dirt roads past small farms, and passed multiple viewpoints with vistas down over the sea. The ride culminated in a scenic overlook with an expansive view sweeping from Sintra 30 miles to the north to our destination of Setúbal just to the south. Just to the south?! Did that mean we were done with climbing? Some German tourists we spoke to at the overlook said it was downhill to Setúbal from there, and indeed we enjoyed a steep and exciting downhill ride into town - albeit with a little bit unwelcome climbing at the very end. 

The group at the summit

After cleaning up a little I walked into town with Mike and Terry but didn't join them for dinner, since they were going to a place with the Portuguese menu (sardines, sea creatures ...). Instead I went to the Pingo Doce food market (via a fumbling experience in Lisbon I had learned to work the self-checkout - by this visit I was a pro) where I got a dinner of pre-fab salad, gazpacho, a roll, and some bananas, which I ate out on my room's balcony. A perfect, simple dinner. It turns out John and Clare likewise picked up dinner from a market. I should mention that throughout the trip Clare was having to deal with an eldercare crisis back home. she was a real trooper about staying positive during the day, but they tended to disappear in the evenings to get caught up on emails and phone calls back home.

Right by our hotel there was a statue of a can of sardines. The Portuguese are very proud of their canned fish - particularly sardines

An aside: Americans are such ugly tourists. The start of our ride had us riding on sidewalks, where we passed a lot of pedestrians. In the US, when you pass a pedestrian on a bike trail you shout "On your left!" as a warning before passing. We had no idea what the etiquette is in Portugal: is calling out a warning even a thing that people do in Portugal? If so, what's Portuguese for "On your left!"? To me, the most reasonable thing to have done would have been to shout "Excuse Me!" as we approached, since many Portuguese people speak some English. With her eBike superpowers, it was Terry who was out in front and I was amused to note that she was shouting "Scuzi!" as she passed people. I mean, why not shout at them using a word you know in some other European language, despite the fact that they're not likely to understand it? That way you can make yourself feel like you're worldly by speaking the European lingo. So what that it's Italian, not Portuguese? All Europeans are the same, right? Never mind the fact that Italy is a thousand miles away. Sigh - so American.

Sun 10/20: Setúbal to Santiago do Cacém

When you look in the Roadbook app, our second day's ride was listed as 50 miles. That's fairly long, particularly when we were all worn out from the previous day's climbing extravaganza. It turns out that the 50 mile distance is there as an option for those who really want the miles (or kilometers, as the case may be), but the default was to bike only 18 miles then get picked up by a van which would drive us the rest of the way to Santiago do Cacém. All being a little rubber-legged, we opted for the shorter option.

We are not a group of earlybirds, with a general consensus that we are unwilling to get started before 10 AM (I am the exception). Mike is a late sleeper, but my other three companions are a little bit more of a mystery, since I'd see them all down at breakfast bright and early when it opened at 7 - what were they up to for all those hours in between breakfast and our departure?

Setúbal at sunrise

Anyway, all that is a build-up to say that we got started at 10 and promptly missed the Setúbal to Troia ferry, which meant we had to wait around for an hour for the next ferry. Good thing we weren't trying for fifty miles, as it was nearly noon by the time we started riding.

On the ferry: "Vest of salvation" is a much cooler term than "life jacket"

€5.40 ferry fare for bike and rider

Our ride took us down the Troia peninsula, so we had lots of water/beach scenery - my favorite! There was an area where there were storks nesting everywhere -  - yeah, storks, like the ones which in fables (and cartoons) bring babies. Very cool - they're not really found in North America, and I don't think I've ever seen one before. They're really large birds, with wingspans of up to 10 feet! No wonder they're able to carry babies. 

Storks everywhere!

Our ride took us into rice fields. Apparently, this is a big rice-growing area and rice is an important element of Portuguese cuisine (it pairs well with sardines, cod, ham, and sea creatures). In fact, our planned route took us through the rice fields. It was cool to see rice growing, but we pretty quickly got tired of bumping and sliding along the rutted and slightly muddy double-track road. It turns out that Clare doesn't like biking on unpaved roads. At. All. It's possible she shouldn't have signed up for a tour which clearly states that it includes dirt roads - but that's just my crazy thinking.

Anyway, we bailed on the scenic tour of the rice paddies and turned back to the paved road and somehow made our own way down the coast for 7-8 miles before we met back up with the planned route. Along the way we stopped at Comporta Beach, where we went into the restaurant. I ordered yet another salad which turned out not to be a tossed salad, but another version of a caprese salad. What I ordered was the "Tri-color salad", which was described in the menu (thank you Google Translate!) as arugula with tomato, avocado, and cheese, but it turned out to be a stack of alternating slices of tomato, mozzarella, and avocado (hence the tri-color) accompanied by a 1/4 cup or so of arugula on one side of the plate, and some cherry tomatoes on the other. But the beachfront setting was lovely, and it was rare that we stopped for food anywhere along our day's riding, so I enjoyed my "salad". Needless to say, we demonstrated some ugly American behavior when my companions, who are all more experienced travelers than I, were shocked to find that European restaurants charge for water. 

Comporta Beach - lunch spot

We arrived at our pickup point ahead of the scheduled time and so we had to kill about an hour at the lovely Pego Beach - poor us! The crew that picked us up struggled a little bit figuring out how to fit five people and five bikes into the van, but eventually we got under way and we drove about 40 minutes to our hotel in Santiago do Cacém. There was a supermarket right across the street, and so we all decided to do another supermarket dinner. I availed myself of another pre-fab mixed salad (with soy fake meat bits!), a tasty "pizza roll", a banana, a lukewarm beer, and a Snickers bar. That last item is a real rarity for me, as I rarely buy candy - I can count on the fingers of one hand, with fingers to spare, the number of candy bars I've bought in the last ten years. Sure, I'll nab some chocolate if Valerie buys it. And I'm writing this entry two days after Halloween - don't ask me about eating Halloween candy. But really, buying candy in the store is something I almost never do - but I was feeling sad at my constrained eating. Also, the hotels we were staying in didn't have microwaves in the room (maybe that's an American thing?), so we were constrained to cold food.

Killing time waiting for the van at Pego Beach

 Anyway, by this point I had been traveling for almost a week and was ready to do laundry, and John had noticed that there was a self-service laundromat near the hotel (this was a really conveniently situated hotel!). The laundromat turned out to be very high tech, with centralized touch-screen kiosk control for all the machines. I did my laundry, then it was off to bed.

Laundromat selfie

Mon 10/21: Santiago do Cacém Exploration

One of the things we liked about this itinerary is that you'd get to stay in the same place for two nights once in a while, and it's really nice to have a day without packing, unpacking, check-out, and check-in. Since we were staying in Santiago do Cacém another night, the day's ride was a loop from the hotel. Upon leaving the hotel we almost immediately ran into a roadblock. A literal one, as our planned route took us down a street which was closed for construction. Fortunately, with a little help from one of the construction workers, who was eager to help and spoke a few words of English, plus consulting the map we found a way to bypass that spot by taking another road, then turning onto a footpath, crossing a railroad track, then continuing down a dirt path for a bit until we got back to our planned route on the other side of the construction zone.

 From there we continued through some small towns and pretty countryside, with groves of cork trees. Cork is apparently another big product in this region,and I for one have been a fan of cork trees ever since reading Ferdinand the Bull as a child. After passing through the village of Vila Nova de Santo Andre our path took us to Monte Velo, yet another gorgeous beach, where we also visited the lovely Santo Andre lagoon, home to 218 species of birds, as well as all other sorts of flora and fauna. From there we were expected to ride down what turned out to be a very sandy path. Honestly, part of the path was too sandy to ride, so we walked our bikes. The path was probably a mile long, which doesn't sound very far, but it sure feels pretty far when you're pushing a bicycle through sand! The path took us through some nice dune landscapes, and we finally emerged at Costa de Santo Andre beach, where we stopped at the beach bar for a soda (Terry got the last Coke Zero; I settled for a Pepsi Zero). By now I am aware that this group is generally uninterested in food during the day, so it being lunchtime, I chomped on a protein bar.

Pushing our bikes along the trail

Daily Coke Zero break

From there our route took us back inland, including a steep but short  climb up to the town of Melides, where we were supposed to visit the Monument to Freedom of Speech, which turned out to be covered up due to more road construction. 

Or next stop was the Lagar do Parral olive mill, which has been operated by the same family since its opening in 1906. Mike, Terry and I stopped in, though Clare and John continued on - Clare wanted to get back and catch up on messages/calls. I think Lagar do Parral is a tourist stop only for little bike groups like us operating through local outfitters. It has no tourist infrastructure and it's clearly not a big tourist trap operation. The grand-daughter of the founder showed us around a little bit, including taking us through the olive washing and pressing rooms  humming with machinery. As we stepped around the machines and over pipes, I thought about how this kind of up close and personal tour would never happen in America due to liability concerns. The first, "virgin" press of the olives is done right there, then send the residue off to other plants where they press out what our guide described as the "bad" oil. At the end of the tour the woman guiding us around grabbed some crushed bits of something dry out of a machine. Mike promptly grabbed one and tasted it, thinking that's what we were supposed to do - but it turns out she was showing us how they grind the olive pits to use for fuel. Not for eating. We all had a little chuckle over the misunderstanding, then Mike lost consciousness from eating olive pits, which are poisonous.

Just kidding - in reality, no harm done.

We bought some little items - site-made olive oil and olive oil soap - in their small shop. Their production, BTW, is 80,000 liters per year, most of which is used domestically.

Cork trees - stripped of bark (it'll grow back and be ready for another harvest in 8-10 years!)

Olives heading for the washer

Olive processing

Olive oil presses and separators

After that, the three of us made the (uphill as always) slog back to Santiago do Cacém. As I've mentioned, our ride every day has three parts. Having completed Part II, the day's main trek, Mike and Terry headed back to the hotel, while I continued on solo to do the daily Part III add-on, another couple of miles and a few hundred extra feet of climbing which took me up to the castle grounds (yet another castle) and through the old castle town. It was getting late and so I didn't visit the castle, but I did stop and enjoy the view from a couple of nice overlooks. Santiago do Cacém isn't as picturesque from above as some of the previous towns we've visited, so no pictures.

A friend I met along the way

YAAC: Yet another ancient castle

Dinner was once again supermarket food. They had neither the veggie salad nor the pizza rolls I had bought the previous day, so my dinner was pre-fab gazpacho (a whole liter of almost expired soup marked down to about 2 bucks!), bread and cheese, single-serving boxed Spanish wine, a banana, and I bought some breakfast cereal to snack on. I love breakfast cereal; grabbing handfuls of cereal (sorry, no milk, no bowls) made me much happier than the previous day's candy bar.

 

YASD: Yet another supermarket dinner

Read about the rest of this trip.