“…quiero subir cuesta arriba aunque me cueste trabajo.” (“…I want to go uphill although it cost me dearly.”)
–Soleá, a traditional flamenco song
We had two objectives in Madrid: to get our bicycles out of storage and to see a bullfight. The sun finally came out in Spain after a long rainy period, and though I was sure that this was the way the country was meant to be seen, it made retrieving our bicycles from storage in Madrid a hot and sweaty experience. I got my darling sweet love Samantha–my light green steel frame bicycle–to our hotel, but left her in her box. Our reunion would have to wait until Barcelona, where Jenn and I would begin our journey on two wheels.
As to the second objective, I had calculated that if we did not find a bullfight there, we might not see one at all. They had been cancelled in Seville due to the rain, it was outlawed where we were travelling up north in Catalonia, and the tickets for the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, where we would see the famous running of the bulls later that summer, were too expensive. I knew little about it, except that the bull was killed, but I was adamant about seeing one because it was “quintessential”. We took an Uber to the ring, got our tickets from a machine, and found our seats in the Tendido Bajo Sol, the lower section in the sun.
Much like a spectator sport, the beginning of a bullfight is a procession. A band plays a march as a gate opens in the ring, out of which trot some ceremonial horses. Striding proudly behind them are the bullfighters: the matadores, with their colorful, skin tight costumes, embroidered in gold or silver; the banderilleros dressed in bright colors with their capes folded in their arms; the picadores on horseback in similar dress; and finally the other assistants who help in the ring at various times, but mostly stay behind it. For those who have never seen a bullfight, the pomp of the trumpet blasts and the parade of bullfighters may remind you so much of a sport that you think, as I did, that what might follow is a game of competition and good sportsmanship. But it is not so. What follows is a highly ritualized display of man’s domination over nature.
The procession over and the ring nearly empty, the crowd’s chatter dies as a gate is opened to a dark passage. Then, launching out of it with the mute energy of an electric shock is a fighting bull, weighing more than a ton. This sends the first of many shockwaves through the spectators. He will stand stock still, rib cage expanding then falling, his nostrils flaring, and his head jolting from one foe to the next as the picadores run around in a pack trying to get his attention with their pink capes. Once he has found a target, he will lower his head, and scrape his hoofs on the ground, sending sand flying like sparks, and dust rising around him like smoke, charging up his focus and energy, then discharging suddenly, and bolting forth. At times, if he aims too low on a charge, he will catch a horn in the sand, and all of his weight will be heaved around until he falls and his horn is loosened by the angle. With each charge at a cape, and each near miss of the bullfighter wielding it, the bull sends a high voltage shock through the crowd. He sustains a pulsing energy, even after his muscles have been loosened by the jabbing and twisting of a spear into them by a horseback picador, or by the dangling, flesh-tearing barbs hooked into him by the banderilleros. It is only at the end, drained of blood and dizzy from all the cape passes that he falters a little. In his final charge, he is stabbed in the heart through the back with a sword by a matador. He falls, perhaps choking on his blood, still turning his horns on anyone approaching him, still clinging to survival. Occasionally, he will return to his feet before a bullfighter can get to him to sever his spinal cord with a knife, but he meets his end that way, his body jolting, and his head hitting the ground.
Bullfighting is considered an artform, not a sport. The bull does not have a chance of survival, though the rules maintain his dignity. For example, the bull must be approached from the front, and never from behind. There are rules and customs regarding almost every detail of the fight, from the colorful flamboyant clothing of the bullfighters to the types of passes that are made with the cape. There are six bulls, so six fights, and each fight is structured in three parts, or tercios: the part of the lances (tercio de varas), with the picador; the part of the flags (tercio de banderillas), where the banderilleros leap like praying mantises and hook a colorful, furry barb into his back; and the part of death (tercio de muerte) where the matador does the final passes with a red cape. It is in the middle of all this structure that the art takes place. The fighters strut like proud peacocks, and twirl on a planted foot as they do pass after pass with the utmost control and finesse.
While it was bloody, and more gruesome than anything I had seen, I was conflicted on it, and on some level I understood it. To many contemporary minds, displays of this kind are thought of as deriving from the same impulse that causes extinction of species, destroys rainforests, and pollutes our rivers. Many of us today see nature as something that needs to be protected, and I include myself among them. But this is a perspective that has been informed by the facts of today, with our inventions capable of mass-scale destruction, and I think mankind’s essential view of nature is that it is a fearful thing to be survived and overcome. Bullfighting came of age before the Industrial Revolution, before we knew how well man could dominate nature, and before anyone thought of it as a thing to be protected. The attendees of the first bullfights may have hoped to see salvation from things of which they were rightfully afraid. Bullfighting may have been a sermon to a fearful congregation that they need not live under the tyranny of nature–that sophisticated and human things like rules and ceremony could triumph over the base patterns of being.
I heard arguments both against and in favor of it. Those against usually call it bloodthirsty, inhumane, and outdated. Those in favor usually argue that it is a staple of Spanish culture, brings in millions of euros to the country, and that the bull would probably face just as gruesome a death in nature as it would at the hands of the bullfighters. My only contribution to the debate is that bullfighting is not about killing nor about satisfying bloodlust: it is about overcoming base things and fear with order and art. As far as its legality in Spain, I satisfied myself with the answer that it was not my country, and I ought not have a say.
As I have already been graphic about the bullfight, I will not go into detail about the next day carrying a bicycle box and all my other somewhat-overpacked luggage through the hotel, then train stations, into taxis, and finally downstairs to the basement in a hostel in Barcelona. I will only say that it involved a lot of language probably not suitable for children. Tired of looking at her box, I left Samantha alone again to enjoy the city luggage free.
Barcelona, in the northern Mediterranean coast, is the capital of the proud Catalonian region of Spain. They speak Catalan in Catalonia, and it is not a dialect, thank you very much. (Though it sounds a lot like an easier rhythmed Spanish, with the ends cut off the words). Though they are a part of Spain, they hang up the Catalan flags on their balconies, and often badmouth the rest of the country as somewhere between corrupt and immoral, and lazy and incompetent. The last criticisms are the most sacrilegious to Catalans: hard work and brains are their top virtues, and Barcelona is by far the most economically thriving city in Spain, and near the top in all of Europe.
It looks like any modern European city, with balconied buildings, wide tree lined boulevards, and public parks every few blocks. But it always seemed like there was a breeze carrying the salty air, whether through the shops on La Rambla or the small crammed alleys of the Gothic Quarter, and the sea never seemed far away. It is a part of their economy, through trade and food, but also a part of their architecture with buildings made to look like rolling crystal waves, and with huge misty fountains throughout the city.
Despite its beauty, I did not at first get what made it so great. I often feel that I only begin to understand a place when I meet someone who has lived there for years and is still inspired by it. Southern Spain had the love of one of my best friends from college who was born and raised in a small southern hilltown. From all his stories, I got inspired to travel there. But, while I had met Catalans before, I had yet to meet a proud one who loved the region. The Catalan who inspired me the most was a man who had been dead for 90 years–Antoni Gaudí, the famous Modernist architect whose unique style, inspired by nature, gives an undeniable character to Barcelona. His works capture the essence of what is around them, but also have that rare quality that would make Barcelona unimaginable if they had not been built. After visiting Park Güell, and learning about his life, I began to see how you could call Catalonia home. The language, the city, the culture, and even the desire for independence from Spain, regardless of my political opinion, became more familiar to me. His Roman Catholic faith also took on a fresh meaning in his church, La Sagrada Familia. I grew up Protestant, and my encounters with it were mostly limited to the cathedrals of southern Europe where I had traveled before. I felt it was grandiose and ornate, but dripping with superstition. But La Sagrada Familia captured the Catholic version of the Christ story in such a new way, I was ashamed of my ignorance and lack of insight. To Catholics, Christ is central, but we share in his story. Their faith stands in awe of the mind of a Creator, and also of the magnificence, beauty, and sophistication of the universe He created, and in which we may all play a part.
We spent several days exploring Barcelona by foot, only taking public transport once. As we walked from one wine shop or eatery to the next, I absorbed as much as I could of Jenn’s culinary and viticultural knowledge. My taste for wine and food is still hopelessly underdeveloped, but Jenn taught me the best she could.
The time came to assemble the bicycles and repack everything into their panniers. Jenn only had two wheels to slip on, some bolts to tighten, and a few bags to pack. But I had disassembled nearly everything and had to engineer it together in addition to the jamming and twisting Tetris game of packing all my cheap, oversized, heavy gear into my bags. At the end of the evening, Samantha was still badly off balance, and my derailleur was only reaching five of the ten gears in the back due to a cable that I had clipped too short. The next morning was supposed to be our start, but it ended up being a cluster of unfortunate mechanical malfunctions, and we decided to stay another night. The good of it was that my bicycle was now operational. The bad of it was that we now had three days instead of four to ride 250 miles to Montpellier, France where we would meet my brother, Chris.
I stayed in the basement perfecting the balance of weight. Jenn eventually left with a group from the hostel to a tavern. By 10 PM, I had finally had enough. There were only so many times I could trade things like a notebook in one bag for a band-aid box in another. It was not going to be balanced, and I had no idea what I could safely leave behind.
Stewing over my inabilities, I navigated to the tavern. I had missed most of the fun and nearly everyone was drunk. Then Jenn told me she was ready to leave, and I exploded. Though she accepted my apology later that night, I would beat myself up about it for the next few days. I learned the skill of inconsolable guilt while attending conservative Christian schools most of my life, and I am adept at it. In this case, it had been years since I had exploded at someone like I did. Not only was I embarrassed, I was afraid this might open a Pandora’s box, and I went on a mission to ensure any anger or frustration was locked behind a door where it could not get out. I had been so good over the past few years about holding down my temper, “going with the flow”, and being less opinionated. Though I felt less like myself, I found that people liked me more that way. How can you dislike someone who always goes along with you and never argues?
We left the hostel the next morning before noon. I was only a few blocks out when I realized I had neglected to bolt the left side of my rear rack to the frame. I fixed it and moved on in a wobbly and imbalanced fashion through the busy, fast moving streets of Barcelona. By the time we made it to a cycle pathway by the coast, I had gone the wrong way down a one-way street at least twice, ran a red light that nearly caused an accident, and had knocked off a pannier on a street sign due to my instability at slow speeds. Balancing upwards of 80 pounds of luggage on a bicycle is an art, but in the same sense that portrait painting for a dictator is an art–one wrong stroke and the only thing I would paint was the streets with my insides. This pressure would never go away.
It felt like we had ridden a hundred miles by the time the shadows covered the roads on that first evening. When we finally stopped to look up a campsite, Jenn’s mileage app on her phone showed us a soul shattering 30 miles. I had huffed and puffed, pushed and sweated, strained and stomped my pedals through hours of hilly Barcelonan traffic, all for less than a third of what we needed to do that day. It was in complete disobedience of the Almighty Spreadsheet. I hung my head in shame. This unfortunately meant that we would have to take a train in France. This was something I was hoping to avoid while cycling–they were a cheater’s way of getting somewhere when I had 2 perfectly good wheels to get there.
But we had to worry first about where we would sleep. In As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Laurie Lee talked about “…that faint sour panic which seems to cling to a place until one has found oneself a bed.” I realized that evening my level of panic at an unprepared-for sunset was mild like Lee’s, whereas Jenn was given triple doses of it. I somewhat enjoyed not knowing where I would lay my head, but to Jenn that was hell. Just as the last blue-green light on the horizon was fading to star pricked blackness, we found a large entrance with the word “Bungalow” written across it. I used my magical Moroccan haggling skills with the owner, and got us one for 20 euros. The only catch was that the paint was still wet, and there was no bedding on the mattresses. We walked through the streets filled with tacky clubs and cockney British tourists with patchy sunburns and settled on pizza at a little tent cafe, then turned in for the night.
The day had not been what I hoped. I was sore, salty, and crisp from the sun, and I had to resign, dejected, to my fate of being a bicycle touring cheater by riding a train. Yet I was also satisfied, lying on top of my sleeping bag, listening to music. I had not made it far, but I had made it out of the first part of the journey. The next one was sure to be more physically demanding and less on a tourist route. As I dreamed of what lay ahead, one phrase kept popping up in my thoughts. It was a line from a flamenco song, translated by a local in Seville for me: I want to go uphill, though it cost me dearly. I resolved that this would be my mantra anytime I got too comfortable or complacent.
But that brings up a question: why I would want to make things uncomfortable for myself by riding a bicycle and living cheaply? I had saved up for so long, and was travelling through some of the most beautiful and cultured places in the world–why would I not want to live the “good life” for a while?
There are practical reasons. If I lived it up, and stayed in hotels every night, rather than camping or sleeping in hostels, and ate at upscale restaurants, instead of jimmying every other meal together from leftovers, I would only have enough money for maybe a month. Even if I did this half the time, I would not make it past July. In the long run, bicycle riding was cheaper than long distance public transport, and more convenient than local public transport in the cities.
For the most part, however, my reasons were impractical. I wanted to see, experience, learn, grow, meet as many people, and expand myself as much as possible. Bicycle touring and living cheaply accomplished all these goals more than taking the well beaten path, because that path is usually beaten by a leisure travel industry that has a vested interest in keeping travelers from experiencing anything but what will make them the most returns. I am certainly not against capitalism, I am only against lying to myself that I am experiencing another culture, when in reality, I am trapped on a tour, in a bus, or at a resort with other tourists.
My style of travel, though not always glamorous, was always honest, and every day was new. I never knew who I would meet, and only had a vague idea of what I would see. One day, we rode along with a fellow bicycle tourist from Israel named Guy, and got lost down a dirt road with old ruined farmhouses with trees sticking out of the roofs. Another day, I was approached by a roadside prostitute wearing nothing but a bathing suit bottom. It also seemed more magical, and the slow natural connection to places and people made me more aware of my surroundings. It seems that I hardly went a mile that was not by a vineyard, through a stony hill town, or in some clearing, valley, or somewhere else I would have looked out at longingly from a train window as I whirred by at 200 miles per hour. Sure it was hot, sure it was hard work going up the foothills of the Pyrenees, sure I took a wrong turn onto a freeway, got a flat on some road debris, and prayed in fear that no cars would pull off on that shoulder while I changed my tire. But it was all worth it.
By the time the third day’s road was rolling under my wheels, Samantha had submitted under my balance, and I had submitted to the fact that she would never go the speed of my racing bike at home. Despite our blossoming relationship, Jenn had a more natural connection with her bike. I supposed it was because all bikes are women. Though they would sometimes fight over a rubbing brake pad or something like that, she had an intuitional understanding of her fellow woman that takes years for men to master, if they ever can. Anyways, this was how I justified the fact that she was nearly always about 10 minutes ahead of me.
On the third day, I made it to the mountainous border into France, cheered on by the Spanish border police, “Vámonos, vámonos al otro lado! Bravo! Bravo!” Jenn had been waiting a while. I was drenched in sweat, out of breath, and my right leg was cramping, but she looked totally unwinded, and totally in her element. My view of her from before was ironic. I had felt that I was the one who wanted “to go uphill”–to rough it, to live with less and ride more–and that she was more glamorous in her taste and style. Yet here she was, far ahead of me, eager to get going and do more miles on a bike carrying two-thirds the weight. In some ways, she was the better adventurer, and I could not have done those first three days, or much of what came next, without her.
We rode down into France. I had my first flat, as I mentioned, and we hauled our bikes onto a train from Perpignan to Montpellier. We had done less than half of the 250 miles we had planned, but I knew I had done my best, and my best was all I could do. I feared that the Almighty Spreadsheet’s infallibility was being called into question, but more important than any readjustments of schedule, the dynamic of the adventure was about to change. So far, it had only been the two of us. Two solutions to a problem, two places to visit, two bikes to fix. At the train station in Montpellier, the familiar sight of my brother Chris came around a column. And then there were three.
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