Luke slept late, and we spent a bit longer shopping than normal (had to buy provisions for dinner since the shops close early on Sundays), so we didn't end up hitting the road til about 11. My prediction about the weather turned out correct (for Zaragoza at least) and we had a lovely time getting ourselves lost and confused. It was nowhere near as bad as in San Sebastian, but due to a disruption in the earth's magnetic field that caused mass whale beachings off the coast of Sumatra and wreaked havoc with our internal compasses, we went north west instead of north east and only worked out our mistake when I asked a fellow cyclist and he pointed the other
way.
Blue skies
There were a lot of people out on bikes today. I guess it's the same everywhere around the world on a Sunday. Instead of going to church, people go out for a ride with their mates. Some of the roadies looked rather comical with bandanas over their mouths and full lycra suits. They must've been boiling! We rolled up our sleeves and talked about wearing our jerseys and shorts tomorrow.
After correcting our mistake, we'd already wasted ninety minutes and 15km, and with the late start, I was already starting to worry about getting to our destination (Sarinena) before sunset. It was quite a nice route with very little traffic apart from other cyclists, who would give us a wave and a 'Buenes Dias!'. Unfortunately, our completely flat run of the day before wouldn't be repeated. We had a small mountain range to cross, and another set of climbs that didn't appear on the map even before that.
When we first started riding, I was feeling really quite dead-legged, but after 20k or so, the corpuscles started realigning themselves and the glucose from my breakfast began to be shuttled to my trillions of mitochondria, and before you could say “My-that's-a-nice-hat-you-got-there”, I was putting the afterburners on up the hills and leaving Luke far behind. It was a nice sensation being able to keep going at a decent pace up the hill. My mountain legs have emerged from their chrysalis and are getting stronger each day:) I think Luke's definitely improving too – I don't think he stopped to walk at all today!
We stopped for lunch at 2pm and proceeded to eat not only the loaf of bread reserved for lunch, but also the one for dinner. Oh well, we needed the energy! There were still 50km to ride and precious little time to do it in, so we needed to be fuelled up for maximum performance.
The mountain range appeared not too long after the lunch stop. It really wasn't too bad, even with tired legs. I remember thinking 'Is this it?' when I got to the top, expecting the road to dip down a little bit before revealing an even steeper mountain to climb. But that really was it, and we went whooping down the other side, waving at a farmer herding his sheep.
At the top of the climb
Downhill woohoo!
The pay-off from the climb wasn't as great as it usually is sadly. There was a long flat section afterwards that we'd normally be cruising down at 35kph, but a headwind made it into a hard slog for me at the front. Still there were some really great views extending way out into the distance over the quasi desert and the weather was still excellent.
...at least until suddenly without warning, this tremendous fog enveloped us.
The ambient temperature went from about 13 degrees to close to freezing within seconds. The world seemed very bleak to me, everything was dark and the sun looked feeble, almost like it was dying... Then I realised I was still wearing my sunglasses:P It was a little better to look at after that, but it was still freeezing! I wore my balaclava for the first time ever and wished I had my warmer gloves in an easy-to-locate position instead of at the bottom of one of my panniers.
The final 10km to Sarinena really were not much fun. We got there eventually though, and after quizzing some of the few people on the street, a nice man and some kids led us straight to a hostel. My fingers were so cold I actually could not remove my helmet before going inside, so I just left it on and arranged a room (very cheap – 23 euros) from behind the smoke-filled bar.
Dinner tonight was lentils, tomato sauce, lots of nuts and not much else.
*at the Turkmenistanian department of Patents
**Is it going to be a nice day today?
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