24 years. That is how long - give or take a few hours - I have had the fortune to live on this planet, not counting the months idled away in a giant fleshy fluid-filled sac inside my mother's body. This is one of the more eclectic birthdays I've had, wholly unlike any other. For a while in secondary school, and even in university, I forwent celebrating this day; being right in the middle of summer, it often clashed with summer jobs, summer vacations, and summer indolence. Today both continued and broke this tradition. It was less celebration than reflection upon time, a reflection spent in the company of peaceful Mediterranean waters at a beachside campground some 5 km out of Almería. One year older - and yet I have unwavering faith that these next years will prove very exciting indeed, for life is what you make of it...
...but back to the real point. How was the day? How was the ride? What did you see? What happened? And so on...if you must know, the riding part of the day started around 0700 and ended around 1500, during which time we travelled up and over long hills along some beautiful though uneventful coastline before cutting across a wide peninsula in the midday heat; we had all the usual necessary stoppages for breakfast and pastry and juice and snacks and water; navigation brought some challenges, though not too many. Most of these days, as it turns out, are minor variations on this theme: wake, eat, ride, eat, ride, camp, sleep. You get used to the rhythm, eventually become lost in it; even the effort of biking mostly disappears, so that you are able to enjoy anything you might see.
So maybe that is not the real point here; the real point, if there is one, is that time is definitely passing here. The symbolic act of passing from one year to the next, incrementing the great counter of life, is proof enough. And every day is one day closer to Istanbul, that far-off promised land where, having biked somewhat more than 10 000 km (we drew straight lines on the map to estimate distance, and not even our slight compensations fully account for the twists and turns in your average coastal road) we will cross into Asia, lay down our bikes with a contented sigh, and consider the trip formally completed. It still seems far away, but we'll make it in that tireless, stubborn, journey-of-ten-thousand-li manner.
What else? Almería is not exactly a remarkable city; it boasts the by-now-usual contingent of old fortifications and religious icons, has the usual pedestrian older town with quaint cafés and bars...having spent our afternoon swimming over by the campground beach, we headed into town to cook up a birthday feast of ceviche and seared tuna in an abandoned lot, where we were joined by a friendly vagrant who offered half-coherent tales of his upbringing in Algeria along with a smattering of drunken and therefore mostly incomprehensible French. At one point, as we were packing everything up, the Red Cross drove by to give the man some food; we offered him leftovers, which were gently but firmly refused. It is one thing to accept help, quite another to accept it twice...
...and then we head into the old town, where we down a bottle of cheap wine and drink horchata before setting out among the bars for overpriced drinks and tapas. Even the nightlife here seems muted; there are people enough, yet the bars are tucked away in narrow streets as if to keep them out of sight - and the young professionals have mostly left, following the lure of nearby Granada and Valencia. Still, it is a pleasant night out, and we ride back along the now dark coastal highway to the campground, contented in our peculiar evening.
So. 24 years. One more down the hatch, one more to remember...