It can be done - Legalize trails!

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He's got my support. Arrogant or not!

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Whistler in Spain? La Molina!

Cool stuff. On Thursday morning I decided to head into the Pyrenees to get on my mountain bike. I had asked around but nobody really knew where to go but I did pick up some town names and googled ab bit. Someone had mentioned La Molina and I even found out it had a bike park! How promising? After 2hrs (!!) of trying to find out on the web how to get there by train I gave up. Was the web-page fake? The RENFE (Spanish Train Service) web site didn't give me any results. So after 5hrs of sleep I got up at 5:30 and just headed to the train station with my bike in the bike bag. Turned out that by the time I finally got there I had missed the first train by 3 min. The next train didn't leave until 9:45h. So it was time to kill some time with strong espresso in the cozy train station cafeteria. Süüper!

Then it turned out that it would take over three hours to get there and the train tracks were beeing fixed and at half way we got loaded into buses. I almost got sick on the bus as it was racing on the winding roads up and down the mountains. At one point we passed a ski lift area with big and flashy banners for the La Molina bike park all over it and I thought this was totally worth the trip!

But then the bus didn't stop for another 5 min or so. I got worried. Did I miss to push the "next stop" button? But the driver had previously stopped in every little town so why not now? He saw that I put a bike in a bag in the trunk of the bus. Where else would I go other then the bike park? I rushed up the drive and just said in very cool Spanish ".... ... ... ....". I figured he had it all under control. Problem was he was still driving and we were now going down the mountain again. Further and further.

Ah, another sign saying Le Monlina Stiona (or something) and he stopped right in front of the lonely train station that was being fixed up and had no train service at the moment. I jumped off the bus and he took off. So here I was, in the middle of nowhere, 500m below and 7 or 10km from the bike park and no bus to bring me up again! And the time was ticking. By the time I got there it was 1pm and the last bus was going out of there around 6pm. So that only left like 4hrs of solid riding.

But my initial plan to just leave my travel gear and bike bag at the tourist information or the lift station (as I had done before) wouldn't work now. I had to unpack the bike and ride up to the park again and find a spot to leave my gear until the night. I walked around the deserted area with some houses close by, spotted a cafe/bar and walked in and had basically already decided that I will leave my stuff there and started taking my bike out the bag and assembled it. The server of the cafe came out to figure out what was going on and luckily she spoke some (very little) English. She got the situation right away and said I could take a bus up again in like 45min. No way, that would cut too much of riding time. I need to start cylcing now! She loughed and grabbed my bags and put the in the spare room and whished me a good ride. At least that got sortered smoothly :-)

I pedaled up in about 33 degrees and approached the "real" La Molina up the hill. It was deserted as well. Even though there were tons of very bautiful and new buildings and hotels. Ghosttownish.... I found the parking lot for the bike park and it was emtpy. Ok, it's a week day, not many others would ride that day. But non of the lifts was going. And, yes, the whole thing was shut down for upgrading work on the slopes for the winter and bike trails. Up on the slopes I could see big trucks driving around moving dirt and boulders.

No prob, I just pedal up where ever. I am here to ride! I left the trucks behind me in the bottom area of the lift and was moving up the mountains on forest roads. It was dead quiet and very beautiful. I enjoyed every minute of it? I made it up to the top at 2000 m, rested a bit in the sun and went out to find some trails to get down. From the top the village looked a bit like Whistler nestled in a valley sourounded by mountains. It is a very beatiful spot but it felt strange to be the only biker on the mountain! On the way down I enjoyed some really beautiful and technical trails. But I was thinking that I better don't crash as there will certainly nobody come by for a couple of weeks...

I arrived down at the cafe where I had left my bag around 5:30 pm and had a huge dinner! The cafe's only customers seemed to be some Spanish forest workers, which perfer the XXXL version of dishes. I had a plate with two huge chicken wings, country potatos, salad and two fried eggs. The plate looked like 4 kg of food! But after the climb and the riding in the heat I certainly felt like loads of cals. And was it ever good food!

The bus showed up at 6:30pm right on time and we on the winding roads again. By the time I finally was back in the bnb in Barcelona it was already midnight. A roughly 8 hour journey for 4 hours of riding. Sounds insane but it was totally worth it! Really makes me want to move in the mountains now....

Checking out Barcelona

Biking North of Madrid

One day I took the train to a small town north of Madrid to do some mountain biking. Alfonso, a very nice guy, I met online through the site globalmountainbiker.com recommended I should head to Cercedilla, where I could find some of the best mountain biking around Madrid. What can I say, it was fatastic, very beautiful and very hot as well. Most of the trails weren't very tough but the scenery was just wonderful. I had a great day, got about 4 hours of riding in and I am thankful for Alfonso's recommendation!

Madrid is HOT!

So the next top on my trip around the western part of Europe was Madrid. And Madrid was HOT! 36 degrees every day. A very nice, clean and busy city. Unfortunately, not many cyclists around.

A bit of Lison and surroundings

... and a couple of pictures more of Lisbon.

Lisbon: Day 1

Ok, just giving you some flavour of Lisbon, Portugal :-)

Lumix

Ok, looks as if I got a new camera. Again. After my old camera mysteriously dissapeared somewhere in a chalet in Switzerland I finally got the nerve to get a new one. So expect so see a lot of STUPID shots of me taken by me in the future. But the good news is that I seem to be back and training again (I think I said that a couple times this year already....). So I ended up just spending 150EUR on a Lumix DMC-FS6 as more than one sales guy in several stores recommended it. So and even though I spent countless hours reading camera reviews I still ended up going for a real human being's recommendation. I guss I did it so that, in case the camera is crap I can go back and throw it at the sales guy - which then will make me feel better.

So, the typical blog shot. Sorry, can't spare you that one.

And now some running for analysis: Actually not too bad. Ok push-off, arms quite high enough. The back seems a bit stiff.

Yeah, acceptable also here. Push off could be a bit more pronounced with the right thigh streched further behind. However, the right knee could be much higher. Arms again quite OK.

I guess my left hand shouldn't drop any lower for a light jog. But what's OK is the high heel. Well, relatively high. At least I am not totally shuffeling.

I am quite pleased (so far) with the picture quality and I will spend some more time in the future analysing running, cylcing and swimming form to track progress.