life @ 13
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Sprit Catches You and You Stop at Page 60
man's best friend is going down for the count
pics updated
i admit that i did not explore very much, and it clearly had a certain kind of charm (a unesco world heritage site, whatever that means), but by my standards cuenca fell just on the other side of awesome...and this is with lots of awesome ice cream and real coffee. without those it would have fared worse. maybe i'm being unfair (note: search blog, i seem to say this a lot), but when i walk into a store and someone shouts to the back "ingles!" as if because of mywhite face and hands and red hair i cannot communicate in spanish. this happened twice. but i got some good things done...the bike has the correct number of teeth, there is a dreamy new $50 .25" of padding between my ass and the seat, and i'm a little leaner and meaner -- 7 lbs less crap, and apparently 10 lbs less me.
so i left the city on time...but after 6 crappy hours sleep. and i'm still near the depths of a cold. and my body is only about 80% as far as the food processing goes.
BUT
for the first time in a couple weeks, i have SPIRIT. it feels good to turn the cranks. the legs are flowing with ease. once the morning food goes down, i'm actually generating some real power. hell yeah.
the road is flat and busy for 20k, then it turns off and even though it's still the panamerica, it's quiet....like a car a minute quiet. quiet enough to listen to mozart quiet. then is climbs 800m at a fairly severe 8% grade...and near the top of this ascent are two big ass dogs, one of which gets a mouthhold on your pannier. you are not pleased, and for a few moments you are not at all one with the world.
then you reach the top....the road is brand spanking new concrete, you get a 10k cruise along the top of the ride, the view is excellent on both sides, the carfee air is delicious, it's a pleasant 60 degrees -- feels like freedom. hell yeah. ups and downs for a while, wait out some rain, descend 1000m, ascend 400, and you're in oña, hanging out near a peace corps volunteer from minnesota who is at least a little drunk and is more interested in talking to the people she has seen every day for a year than you. no big deal, at all. then the family invites you in, makes a bigass meal of soup and rice/lentils/chicken/salad, says they have a bed for you (no hotels here), let you spend the night, make coffee and eggs in the morning and send you off with a shot of whiskey. only notsoawesome part of this is they are running a business, and charge you a slightly steep $10 for all this. oh well. 105 km and 1700m of climbing, a sportsman's day
got up early today and was on the road by 7. road went up right from the start, from 2000 to 2900. i'm really not a morning climber. afterwards, it's pretty much a day in the office....if the ecuadorian andes are your office. thank god for the ipod...it really helps on the climbs, which can get particularly boring. the descents and scenery were spectacular today, though. another climb from 2150 to 2850, down again, some upward blips on the descent, up from 2275 to 2450 at 9%, down to 2300, then up to 2700. i really flew up the last climb, took just over 40 minutes of wheel-spinning time (14 minutes per 100m is average, 11 is pretty fast....when i was sick coming out of ambato i was struggling to climb 100m every 30 mins). lots of wind at the top of the ridge, a couple little climbs which tried to finish me off, then 800m of descent into Loja...a university town, maybe my favourite kind. 69 miles, 7:40 on the bike, and 7800' of climbing, not a flat spot the entire way.
taking a rest day to kill the cold and eat lots, then 2 more days and i'm in the desert in Peru. Unless plans change, i might not see the andes again until late march (going to take a vacation from the "vacation").
man's best friend is going down for the count
pics updated
i admit that i did not explore very much, and it clearly had a certain kind of charm (a unesco world heritage site, whatever that means), but by my standards cuenca fell just on the other side of awesome...and this is with lots of awesome ice cream and real coffee. without those it would have fared worse. maybe i'm being unfair (note: search blog, i seem to say this a lot), but when i walk into a store and someone shouts to the back "ingles!" as if because of mywhite face and hands and red hair i cannot communicate in spanish. this happened twice. but i got some good things done...the bike has the correct number of teeth, there is a dreamy new $50 .25" of padding between my ass and the seat, and i'm a little leaner and meaner -- 7 lbs less crap, and apparently 10 lbs less me.
so i left the city on time...but after 6 crappy hours sleep. and i'm still near the depths of a cold. and my body is only about 80% as far as the food processing goes.
BUT
for the first time in a couple weeks, i have SPIRIT. it feels good to turn the cranks. the legs are flowing with ease. once the morning food goes down, i'm actually generating some real power. hell yeah.
the road is flat and busy for 20k, then it turns off and even though it's still the panamerica, it's quiet....like a car a minute quiet. quiet enough to listen to mozart quiet. then is climbs 800m at a fairly severe 8% grade...and near the top of this ascent are two big ass dogs, one of which gets a mouthhold on your pannier. you are not pleased, and for a few moments you are not at all one with the world.
then you reach the top....the road is brand spanking new concrete, you get a 10k cruise along the top of the ride, the view is excellent on both sides, the carfee air is delicious, it's a pleasant 60 degrees -- feels like freedom. hell yeah. ups and downs for a while, wait out some rain, descend 1000m, ascend 400, and you're in oña, hanging out near a peace corps volunteer from minnesota who is at least a little drunk and is more interested in talking to the people she has seen every day for a year than you. no big deal, at all. then the family invites you in, makes a bigass meal of soup and rice/lentils/chicken/salad, says they have a bed for you (no hotels here), let you spend the night, make coffee and eggs in the morning and send you off with a shot of whiskey. only notsoawesome part of this is they are running a business, and charge you a slightly steep $10 for all this. oh well. 105 km and 1700m of climbing, a sportsman's day
got up early today and was on the road by 7. road went up right from the start, from 2000 to 2900. i'm really not a morning climber. afterwards, it's pretty much a day in the office....if the ecuadorian andes are your office. thank god for the ipod...it really helps on the climbs, which can get particularly boring. the descents and scenery were spectacular today, though. another climb from 2150 to 2850, down again, some upward blips on the descent, up from 2275 to 2450 at 9%, down to 2300, then up to 2700. i really flew up the last climb, took just over 40 minutes of wheel-spinning time (14 minutes per 100m is average, 11 is pretty fast....when i was sick coming out of ambato i was struggling to climb 100m every 30 mins). lots of wind at the top of the ridge, a couple little climbs which tried to finish me off, then 800m of descent into Loja...a university town, maybe my favourite kind. 69 miles, 7:40 on the bike, and 7800' of climbing, not a flat spot the entire way.
taking a rest day to kill the cold and eat lots, then 2 more days and i'm in the desert in Peru. Unless plans change, i might not see the andes again until late march (going to take a vacation from the "vacation").
Archives
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]