Backroads Staff Ride 2010

I think anyone reading this will know that I work for a company called Backroads. Just in case, however, Backroads is an "active travel" company that takes people on outdoors trips all over the world. Once a year, as a gift to its hard-working employees, our boss treats us to an all-expenses paid biking trip together somewhere in the world. This year it was Spain, thus the idea for this whole trip.

I met up with 140 of my coworkers, many I had met, many I hadn't, at the Barcelona Sants train station. We exchanged pleasantries and boarded the bus from BCN to a small mountain town called "Puigcerda" (loving referred to as the "pooge" by some) which sits on the border of Spain and France.

We dropped our bags that very day and went on a 70k ride to start the trip. We rode through small towns, climbing up into the hills, and with each consecutive place they became more deserted.

The Start of the trip...our brave and near-nude leaders

I remember cycling through one tow

n, covered in cobblestone and ancient looking bridges and churches, and only seeing one person. That person was a man who was exiting an old wooden door onto the street. He wore

simple country clothes, a cloth kangol style hat and over his shoulder was slung a shotgun. At his feet was a small beagle. I imagine they were going hunting.

The next several days consisted of a lot of riding. So much so that on the last day I had to stop because I was having some pretty serious knee pain. Lots of partying. Backroads has an unofficial motto of "Work Hard Play Hard" which we follow as if it were written in blood. Every day I would get off my bike, ass hurting, legs jelly, hangover still lingering...and it would be time for drinks. You just can't say no to 140 smiling lovely people jumping up and down in spandex throwing beers at you. It's impossible.

It's sad that I can't tell you all the names of the towns we went through because there were some amazing ones. I do know, however, that we stayed in Puigcerda, Comprodon,

Figueres and Palamos, which is a port town on the coast.

On the last night of the trip we headed to a bar in Palamos where there was to be a foam party. Have you ever been to a foam party? I had not. How very strange and fun. You're dancing, having drinks and the WHAM all of a sudden there is foam everywhere. If you're claustrophobic or have a fear of drowning you should proceed with caution to one of these things. I drank a lot of soap. There was glitter, an open bar, broken glass and emergency first aid, the YMCA was played, skinny dipping in the ocean, and massive, skull-in-vice hangovers.

There is a lot more to say and write about this trip, including just how beautiful everything was. We biked on roads I never would have found myself in a hundred years. We rode over bridges built in the 14th and 15th centuries, past pastel colored houses, past fields of corn and grapes. We climbed thousands of feet to mountain tops and got to drop for 25k straight at times. No roller coaster can top that.

Beachside Sunset, Palamos, Catalunya

At the end of it? I realize that I am so lucky to have the job that I do. Thanks to everyone who had a part in that. I am truly happy.

Espana 1 - First Nights in Barcelona

I arrived in Barcelona and took the train to my friend Diana's house in Gracia, Barcelona. Despite my massive jetlag, after a nap Diana, her roommates and myself proceeded to drink wine and go to a club...until 7am. This rite would be repeated several times in the following weeks.

In the day or two before I left to meet my fellow Backroads employees for the staff ride Diana and I explored the city: Parc Montjuic, Barceloneta and the port, the ramblas, the Boqueria market. Lots to see and do. Here are a few highlights.

Dinner at "Petra"

Diana had heard of a small restaurant in the Borne neighborhood that was meant to have affordable eats to die for. Boy was she right.

We showed up at 9:15pm for dinner, it having opened at 9pm, and the place

was already full. We snagged the last table for two. The decor is simple, creative and fun. The ceiling lamps are adorned with forks and spoons and the menus are located on wine bottles sitting on your table when you arrive.

A bottle of house wine, a salad, and two main courses were 33Euro. That's unheard of around here so far as I can tell.

The Salad: Ensalada de Queso de Cabra, Pina y Nueces. A delicious mix of fresh greens, a generous portion of goat cheese, juicy chunks of pineapple and walnuts to finish it off.

The Main Courses: Pato con grusella y rucula. A leg of duck over a bed

of spicy arugula. The duck itself was tasty but it was served with a sauce that was a little overbearing and resembling bubblegum. I took the duck out of the sauce and ate the meat, wrapping each bite in a warm and gooey bit of arugula. Flavor country.

Hamburguesa con brie y mermelada de tomate: A bun-less hamburger with a massive hunk of brie sitting atop. Served with a sweet tomato jelly that complimented the brie.

Aside from the food the setting was perfect. A small restaurant, full of people talking but not at all too loud. A good 'evening in Barcelona' energy about the place. The service was fantastic. That's saying a lot considering how many of the servers in this city seem to have a not so secret disdain for tourists.

Get there, and make a reservation if you're smart.

NYC Round 2

The last time I was in New York City I was here for an entire 24 hours. This time around I had 2 1/2 days. Combine the two trips and it's still a very small amount of days to experience a place. But damnit, I love this city. New York is: energy, style, ego and unity, stitched together by a train that runs anywhere you need it to. The subway is a people-watcher's paradise.

I didn't do the tourist itinerary last time. Didn't do it this time. Just a lot of walking and some old friends.

ON SHOES/I LIKE YOUR BOOTS AND YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

Beat up white chucks and black socks

New York makes me notice shoes. Shoes & Boots. Big Fat Nikes. Shin-high leather with downward facing cuffs. Suede lace up mens boots; straight from the 50's in tan and light blue. Beat up white chucks and black socks. Lugs with the tongue flopped out. Laces tied and tucked back inside. Jeans rolled up neat.

So while it seems NYC has a surplus of shoes (and shoe repair stores, something I'm not used to seeing) they do not have a surplus of sandals. In fact, they may be one of the harder items to find in New York.



ON THE SANDAL GRIND/SANDAL CAKIN'

I met up with an old friend named Minka who lives in Harlem. He makes movies. We had a coffee up on Amsterdam somewhere, talked about life, creativity, women, and how the we liked how the light changed from the front of the coffee shop to the back.

Riding the train with Minka

Leaving the coffee shop my right sandal blew out. Old faithful green Havaianas decided that was it. So there I was in one good sandal and Wigwam socks. That's right, I wear sandals and socks. You can get away with a lot in New York, you just have to have a sense of conviction. We must have walked 3 or 4 miles. I asked a lady police officer, two women in clothing shops, two different shoe repair shops, couple of street randoms. Finally, a pair of $2.75 blue sandals at the 99c plus store. Rubbed me a nasty blister, now covered with a Spiderman Band-Aid.
Moral of the story: Wear shoes in Harlem.



GREG

Walking out by NYU in the afternoon I decided I wanted a coffee. Surprisingly, I was finding that there weren't as many coffee shops as in San Francisco. I decided to ask a stranger waiting at a crosswalk. Not only did Greg know of a great independent coffee shop but he was going there himself and offered to show me the way. Turns out, as I find happens a lot, I have a lot in common with perfect strangers.

We sat and talked for a few minutes at Third Rail Coffee: A Coffee Place for Cyclists. (http://www.thirdrailcoffee.com/) People had some pretty great shoes there, too. The Baristas were playing Mariah Carey and Ashanti and singing along as I wrote in my notebook.

Greg was serving tables at a place in NYC but was pretty sure he didn't want to be doing that too much longer. He got a degree from a prestigious east coast school in Ethnomusicology. At one point he received a grant from the Smithsonian to conduct some research but ended up more traveling in Spain and Portugal on the money. We talked about that seemingly universal feeling of being in your 20's and figuring out how to be you to your fullest potential. He's planning to take a bike touring trip across India. Best of luck, Greg!


AMERICAN HANDBALL

Being that I was just walking around on my own most of the time I was happy to let anything at all grab my attention. I watched a group of guys playing handball for a while. Frankly, I wasn't aware this game existed. It looked very much like a grown up version of ball wall from elementary school, with a whole lot more cussin'.

Hand Ball has got a big following and its own set of terms and lingo like: bullet, double-down, fly-shots, tree top and whip. I feel I missed the Seinfeld episode that covered all this.

Turns out this game is huge. Supposedly (wiki-supposedly) there are 2052 handball courts in NYC alone. Haven't found your sport yet? Maybe it's Hand Ball.


LES CONTES D'HOFFMANN (Warning, Spoiler!)

On my last night in NYC my friends Jill and Tristan, who attend Columbia, asked if I wanted to go to Tales of Hoffman at the Metropolitan Opera. Naturally, I said yes and we dressed up to go.

Essentially the story went that a poet by the name of Hoffman, who very much liked to drink (and sing about how much he loved to do so) tells three stories of past loves and how each of them absolutely shattered him. Lovely!

The first love, Antonia, turns out to be a robot built by his professor friend. He is unable to see that she is actually a robot because he has been given glasses that make him view her as a real woman. While they are dancing at a ball her robot machinery goes haywire, causing her to spin out of control, knocking the magical glasses off. Hoffman realizes he has been dancing with a robot and begins drinking heavily.

The second love he falls for the busty and talented Antonia. Antonia sings beautifully and LOVES to sing. She loves singing so much, in fact, that Hoffman asks that she never sing again, for he wants all of her love and fears that her love of singing my taint their true and perfect love. She is tricked into singing by a doctor (who may or may not have killed her mother with potions?) and she sings so hard that she dies from singing (she had some sort of condition, my french = not so good) Again, Hoffmann is left with his cleft notes in his hands.

The third love is no love at all! Hoffmann is drunk at a house of ill-repute and decides to sleep with a courtesan (read: hooker) whose husband is in the general vicinity. I got a little lost here...but essentially an evil looking man tells Giulietta (courtesan) to trick Hoffmann into thinking she is in love with him. She does and steals his reflection (literally steals it, storing it in a mirror). Hoffman kills the guy in a hasty sword battle. But still no love for Hoffmann.

The story ends back in the tavern where the story began...and Hoffmann reveals that the these three women are actually three parts, three souls!!!, of one woman, Stella. However, when Stella enters the bar Hoffmann is too drunk to remember her name (although he loves her tenderly!) and she takes off with some evil chuck named Lindorf.

Sound strange? Confusing? Well...it was. But the singing and music was incredible.

If anywhere is home, this is it.

After being gone nearly half the year, and readying myself to be gone the rest of it, I was able to spend a week back in the Bay Area.

I returned from Charleston to San Francisco. My first act was to attend the last day of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. In it's tenth year the free, three day festival may be the largest gathering of bluegrass fans in the world and one of the largest parties in the city outside of Bay to Breakers. Over a million people attended in

the three days.

A billionaire named Warren Hellman puts this on and foots the bill for the entire thing. This guy is a private equity investment banker who just happens to love bluegrass, he himself plays the banjo, and quite well I hear. So, thank you Warren.

The Avett Brothers. Arrow Stage, Hardly Strictly

This year I was able to see the Avett Brothers, Railroad Earth, Yonder Mountain String Band and Keller Williams. Big names like Emmylou Harris, Earl Scruggs, Patti Smith a

nd Del McCoury played. Just unbelievable lineups every year.

This was a great re-entry into the Bay Area and reminded me of the many reasons I love it here. Wonderful people, wonderful weather, progressive thought and cause and one of the most interesting and eclectic group of citizens anywhere in the world.

Any given day...in the city of San Francisco

Catching Up

I'm making these little updates as I pack my backpack for my Euro trip. I have been gone from home, working and traveling, since mid April. In the past 4-5 months I have been in a number of different places.

- NYC -- Quick Visit en route to CR --

- Costa Rica -- Surf Trip --

- Salt Lake City, Utah -- work training --

- Zion and Bryce National Parks -- work training --

- Canmore/Banff/Jasper/Calgary, Alberta -- work --

- Whitefish, Montana -- rafting the middle fork of the Flathead river --

- Reno, Nevada -- Burning Man Festival --

- Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, llinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina -- charity ride and cross country drive, both for work --

The last post started in North Carolina. I could try to catch up on everything but because I'm about to pack up and leave on another adventure...time is of the essence. We'll move on to just after Asheville, NC.

I drove the next day to Charleston, South Carolina, a city I grew to love quickly. Southern charm, great food, incredible architecture and a region full of US history and lore. But again, it's the people I met that made the experience all the more special.

I belong to an online service that allows you to search for people in thousands of cities who are willing to meet up with complete strangers for anything from a bike ride to drinks, even so far as to offer their couch to you for the night.

Sylvie, a native Charlestonian (bottom right) responded to my message saying "come on down we'll ride bikes and I'll show you Charleston!"

I called her from my hotel room in Mt. Pleasant the night I got in, around 9pm. She said that I should definitely come meet her, she had Pabst in the fridge and a bike tour ready for me. Her only warning was that she kind of lived "in the ghetto."

My (I realize cocky, now) response was that I lived in Oakland. I was assuming in my head that her ghetto was probably not a real ghetto. I was wrong. I rode my bike across the bridge and followed directions to her house realizing very quickly that most everything around me was turning into boarded up windows, street lights were becoming scarce.

I turned onto a street into her neighborhood and in the street are a bunch of dudes looking the part of the ghetto and staring me down. I'm on a silver bike in a dorky silver helmet surely looking a bit confused. Anyways, long story short, I thought I was going to get robbed at one point and took off down a one way street to get away from some people

. After considering just forgetting the whole thing, I took a deep breath and found the house, people still looking at me sideways.

I'm sure glad I found the house because I had a helluva time! Sylvie and her roommates were hysterical. Now, I can't tell you why they live where they do but it's pretty interesting that they do.

They took me on a whirlwind dive bar and bike tour. We drank, played foosball (see above), rode the battery along the water, danced to Ace of Base and generally reveled in the good time life is.

I also ate some good food while there. Breakfast at Charleston's Cafe (http://charlestonscafe.com/cafe/home.html) and had a country omelette, grits

and a sweet potato biscuit.

Now, that's living.

Mr. Tipton: No self respectin' Southerner uses instant grits. I take pride in my grits

Vincent Gambini: So, Mr. Tipton, how could it take you 5 minutes to cook your grits when it takes the entire grit eating world 20 minutes?

Mr. Tipton: I don't know. I'm a fast cook I guess.

Vincent Gambini: Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into a grit faster in your kitchen than anywhere else on the face of the earth?

Mr. Tipton: I don't know.

Vincent Gambini: Well, I guess the laws of physics cease to exist on top of your stove. Were these magic grits? Did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans?

-- My Cousin Vinney --

Brief, Necessarily

Seeing as how I simply cannot seem to keep up with a blog about myself or my travels I've decided to change the format of this blog a bit.

Just a few weeks ago while driving cross country, Seattle to Charleston, South Carolina I met some folks in a tap house and decided that writing about the people I meet is more compelling to me than writing about myself. So that's what I'm doing.

Kat and Sean

I arrived in Asheville, North Carolina not knowing exactly what to expect. My cousin told me it was a great little town and was the most progressive spot in the region. I rode my bike from the hotel to the downtown area and took a seat in a taproom called "The Thirsty Monk" (http://monkpub.com/). While perusing the draught choices a young woman starting talking to me.

She told me it was pint night and offered me a sip of her beer to see if I might like that one. I did, and we were off to chatting.

Kat is a student at Warren Wilson University in Asheville (http://www.warren-wilson.edu/external_index.php) and is writing up her senior thesis. The topic? Creating bike tours that move from organic farm to organic farm in order to educate people about a more sustainable lifestyle and agriculture. Needless to say we had plenty to talk about.

Sean, Kat's boyfriend, came in a bit later. He was a student as well and a cook at one of the green restaurants in town focusing on local/market fresh produce. He has been taking a course and writing up a business plan for a Falafel Cart that uses locally and organically grown chick peas.

Sean told me that he wanted to name his truck "The Flying Falafel Bros." I laughed, of couse, and tipped my hat to his homage to the great music group the Flying Burrito Brothers. He told me that he had not named his falafel truck to be after this group and that the name was a coincidence. Well, I still think the "Gilded Falafel of Sin" is a good name for a falafel special.

Well done, Asheville. A cool little city with some great people.