October 1, 2018 to October 2, 2018
The adventure of getting to the adventure
The 9-hour flight to Dublin was uneventful. We then had 6 hours to kill before the final leg of our journey. It’s a long time to wait when you’re starting to experience jet lag, and you know it’s still going to take a few more hours and a lot of work before your head finds a pillow.
We considered ourselves lucky that the Dublin-Barcelona flight was half empty. We even reached the gate 15 minutes early. But then something completely random occurred. An exit door refused to open, and it took a while for the right employee to come over and figure it out. That ate up our gained time and then some. It put us further back in the immigration line too.
Once at the baggage claim, we easily found our duffel bag with our tent, 4 panniers, and trunk bag. It took us a bit longer to locate the bikes. A good 90 minutes of effort were required to assemble our steeds. My front rack is particularly difficult to mount. It is a delicate operation involving many spacers and coordination with the fender mounts. We had the entire baggage claim to ourselves, which emboldened us to toss our gear wherever it seemed most convenient. The emptiness made it all rather eerie, though.
Eventually we got everything packed into our panniers, and we were off to the races, so to speak. My seat post was too low, Sunyoung’s was too high, and our tire pressure was too low (I had let the air out of the tires as a precaution, not because I believe that they are affected by high altitude, but just in case someone at the airline insisted on it).
Sunyoung called our campground while I was wrestling with bike assembly. They put us at ease by letting her know that someone would still be available to check us in even if we arrived at “doce y media” or maybe even “dos y media,” which is what I thought Sunyoung had said.
The nav app predicted 30 minutes of riding time, and it was exactly midnight when we stumbled out onto the well-lit road. Traffic was light — mostly taxis. I had scoped out some of the route on Google Street Maps, so it felt familiar.
It was 1:30am by the time we finally got settled in to our little barracks. It felt so great to finally lie down! Sunyoung was able to fall asleep quickly, but my body is not so easily tricked into shutting down. It was still stuck at GMT-8:00.
Today's ride: 11 km (7 miles)
Total: 11 km (7 miles)
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