Email for my parents about the trip. Shoved it here too. Its a bit of an essay though...


Hola!
Here are a selection of photos from Madrid.

Bike boxes are heavy. Leaving at 2am from Derby for the airport, not much sleep on the minibus/airport/plane and then lugging the box around early morning Spain in the heat isn't much fun. But bike bags (with wheels) are £140, psh! After the carrying and when your arms begin to work again its alright. I figure you're cheating if you're using wheels. Got to Spain and the road with the apartment fairly early and phoned the landlord. He couldn't understand that there was someone else that had contacted him about his accommodation, so for any conversation with him I had to assume the name of Jenny Sharpe. A Spanish 'I'll be there in 10minutes with the keys' is not an English 10minutes, its a lot closer to 50 English minutes, but 40p cans of San Miguel was nice in the sun so no bother.

For the 4 weeks before everyone let their face grow, no shaving allowed (Ze already had a lot of face fungus to begin with though). Then once there, everyone had to shave it into a stupid shape. This would then cause a lot of stares and confusion from people we'd meet. One posh kebab shop owner was told by his staff that a lot of English customers had arrived, he said 'they can't be English, I lived in London for 4 years and no one has a moustache'. He thought we must've been from Denmark or Sweden.

Ze's hillbilly fuzz ensured that no one could look at him for more than 8seconds without having a laughing fit and Pants' very bushy RAF style 'tash would prompt all kinds of heckling, the favourite being 'eet's meee, Maaaario' with Italian accent. Mat only had a 'tash, so he decided to mohawk himself as well. Good effort.

There were 6 of us for the first 2 days (Ze, Pants, myself, Mat, Sketch and Phil). Start of the second day we tried to go on the underground to a skatepark, but with lots of Spanish shouting from the train guards we eventually found that after 10.30am bikes weren't allowed on the trains. Ridiculous.

Just riding down the street we saw a rider and Mat invented a language called Spinglish that involved mostly English words said slowly, the occasional Spanish word, probably out of context and a lot of gesturing. The guy, who we named Amigo, spoke less English than we spoke Spanish but took us to the bmx shop. Which was closed of course. Lazy Spaniards. Amigo instead took us to a number of street spots around the central part of the city which we were very grateful for. He was pretty helpful explaining to the Policia man (who had a big, old style pistol) that we didn't speak any Spanish and that we would leave the street spot. We later found out that Amigo had been on his way to hand in a CV to a car company when we'd met him and was kind enough to let us hi-jack his day.

At the end of the 2nd or 3rd day(?) we were riding back along a busy road when Sketch, at the front, cranked off following a car. We caught up and it was Stu and Stanny in their VW estate who had left Derby the day before and driven through France and Spain to join us for the next 4 days. Stu and I spent a lot of time talking to Jacobo (pronounced Hack-obo, which was why no one in the building knew of a Jacobo) the landlord trying to find out who in the building had a key to the garage for Stu's car. That was an ordeal. The next morning whilst talking to Stanny in the kitchen he bit into his Manwich (sandwich for a man) and lost his 4 fake front teeth.

Got up early enough to get on the trains with bikes the next day and used technology in the form of Phil's iPhone to guide us to a skatepark. The iPhone failed to tell us that it was part of a leisure complex and that it was for 'gays on trays' - skateboarders only. Instead, we went back to the station to get off near another skatepark. Oops. After 10.30. Ok, do what the iPhone says and work our way towards the right area. Spanish drivers are pretty scary when you're well out of harms way, at one point we saw a taxi 'park' into 3 other cars for no apparent reason, so with that in mind we rode the wrong way up a road that was only a little smaller than a motorway, the iPhone gets what the iPhone wants.

We found a half pipe in a town on the way, rode that for a bit. There were a load of clothes dumped behind it so Ze decided to hobo it up and do a disturbing photoshoot in a santa hat and suit jacket. Nice.

We found the skatepark which was a really good size with interesting stuff to ride and stayed for hours. We left and headed to the nearby station where we found out the 'until time' of the no bike rule, 9pm. Not fancying riding along the motorway while it got dark we found a kebab restaurant which was all posh and served the best kebabs ever. Started to rain a bit so we moved on to the next station to try them, met with the same angry Spanish train type person who wouldn't let us wait the two hours in the station entrance. Big bottles of beer where located as we sheltered under a tree. We played who could slide the furthest on your feet, without flipping onto your face in the rain and smiled nicely with a hola at seniorettas that walked past. Press ups were a forfeit for no reply, disdainful look or worst, making a young lady vomit. To my disappointment no one made anyone vomit.

The next day we unintentionally kinda wasted, Sketch had blisters on his feet as he had bought new shoes for the trip. School boy error... at least 2weeks to wear in new bike parts/shoes before going away, everyone knows that. Walked around Madrid and ate at Spain's finest eatery, Burger King. How cultured we are, you were allowed beer as your drink though!

Having learnt our lesson with the trains, Ze suggested boxing the bikes to travel with, build them to ride, then pack them again for the train. He would suggest that, he had a bike bag with wheels. Got on the train without problem despite taking up far more room than bikes would've, lugged boxes to the park and rode. This day was forecast to be cloudy and not that hot, it was very hot and mostly blue sky. Good good. More lugging boxes back to the apartment.

Landlord let us down in the morning, Ze was ringing him for 30minutes with no reply so we just left for the airport. Then it was cold in the UK, booooo.

Yup fun fun fun!

Ready for the next trip.