Life On Two Wheels

Along the river and toward the mountains a morning shadow shimmers across the road. The rays of the first light jet through the trees and across a figure gliding upon the road. His breath trails in short spurts, petrified as it hits the icy air. All is quiet except the slight sound of the athlete as he summons himself for yet another days work. Soon the rest of the world will bustle with life as well and the brief simplicity of cyclist and nature will disappear into the everyday struggle of life in full motion; the errands and intervals, the appointments and intersections, and the deadlines and finish lines OutPaceTheRace

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Lost and hopeless, okay maybe not

Gerona, ESP
Saturday, October 07, 2006

It’s like the world has stopped and everything moves in slow motion. You’re stuck in your own time as the world moves to a different beat. What can you do?
It’s not so bad, I’d just like a little heads up on when the flight might come so I can do something other that sit in the apartment waiting for that call or e-mail with the time of my flight. Gerona’s really not that bad, it’s the being stuck in an apartment all day that I’m not extraordinarily wild about… It’s like house arrest or something; it sucks no matter what house you’re in. Now I know what it feels like to be Yasser Arafat.
Anyway, I woke up this morning with a new sense of hope. And after the 3rd cup of espresso I was up and ready to reside in the house all day with a rejuvenated feeling of, well, desperation… I called Johnny up to get the latest on the ticket front and he explained once more that his calls continued to go unanswered. Evidently the primary reason for this is the conflicting schedule of track nationals and my flight home. How this can be a problem is somewhat ambiguous to me do to the late invention of computers and cell phones… and now even the BlackBerry wireless handheld… Anyway, Johnny said to go ahead and frolic freely outside of the apartment & he’d take the heat if I miss my flight. So, I did a little exploring outside of my normal locale. The place is actually full of interesting stuff. There’s this ancient city wall surrounding one side of the town that I discovered. You can walk along the top of it, so I followed it to its end and then hiked up this road to the top of this hill I didn’t know existed. Turns out there are the remains of this castle like thing up there. I fumbled around in the rubbish awhile trying to make out whether or not there was more to it than a bunch of walls. I couldn’t tell and I was a bit tired so I went back to town and over to the store in case I don’t leave tomorrow… in which case I’d need sustenance for the state of town on Sundays.