Sun, sea, and heat test
The valour of cyclists twain....
Pedal wrench ordains.
The bustle on the beach, already stuffed with fishermen and sunbathers at 0800, roused us from Barcelona dreams. We packed up our sleeping bag and gathered the items we had prepared for our ceremony: wine, pedal wrench, and cyclist clothes.
Standing in our underclothes in the surf, we intoned some words to each other intended to convey the incredibleness of our accomplishment: we finished 5000 kilometres of our journey. Pedal wrench touched to the shoulders meant that we had been accepted into the Brotherhood of Cyclists. We washed away each other's doubts and fears and naïveté with a dousing of wine over the head, then stepped into the Mediterranean and washed ourselves five times (one for each thousand kilometres). We stepped over to the showers to cleanse ourselves and prepare for the application of our robes. With our cycling outfits donned, we stepped to our bikes to prepare.
But we didn't get very far. Standing just next to our things was a man. Next to the man was a bicycle. Attached to the bicycle was a trailer. Behind the trailer was a dog. He was travelling.
We stopped to talk to him for some time. His name is Mariano Schärer, and he's findable on Facebook. He's Swiss, and in May he decided that he was done with taking the same train to work every day and seeing the same people and working for the same boss. So he packed up all his things and his dog and set out on a world tour that he expects to stay on for 5 years. Evan and I thought we were going for a long time... anyway, his bike weighs 67kg, and he goes 20-50km per day. That's a different trip from ours, and we briefly thought about how far we could go if we kept up our pace for 5 years. All of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia...!
We did eventually get going. He was heading to Barcelona, so we had to part ways. I think he'll have a good time, though. :)
The ride out was lovely; part of it was along some seaside mountains that were positively breathtaking. It was not a long ride day (only about 100km), but we got to see some amazing things, and we really liked meeting Mariano. Tonight, we are sleeping off to the side of a fallow field near the highway. It's actually quite nice and quiet.