pre-trip

Spain 2016 is the third supported bike trip I have taken.

In 2013, Mike, Vince, Marty and I went to Italy, Sicily to be exact on a trip by Vermont Bike Tours, VBT (http://www.vbt.com/tours/sicily-biking-the-southern-coastal-villages/). Details of that trip are in another blog (https://jeffreycchin.wordpress.com/category/cycling-in-sicily/). We had some adventures and a great time.

Last year, Mike, Walter and I went to France to ride in the Alps with the Tour de France with Duvine (https://www.duvine.com/tour/tdf-alps-to-paris-bike-tour-2/). I can't seem to get wordpress to show those entries right now. It was a trip of a lifetime.

This year, Mike, Jaime and I will be taking another trip organized by VBT to the Costa Brava of Spain (http://www.vbt.com/tours/spain-costa-brava-cycling-dalis-landscapes/).

We like VBT bike tours: they give us everything we look for in a bike trip and they are a very good value. As much as I think I would like to arrange one of these trips myself, I would be hard-pressed to do it less expensively and with it would be a lot more stress. I have become a big fan of supported trips, especially VBT trips.

The ramp-up to this trip was relatively uneventful. Unlike training to ride in the Alps, we will not be in the Pyrenees so we did not feel that it was necessary to train for this trip other than to stay in shape over the winter and be ready to ride when the weather made it possible to enjoy riding outside. Some of us did some computraining classes, some of us lifted, some of us cross-trained, some of us did not much of anything. I figured if I was ready to ride outside in Syracuse, I would be ready for Spain.

But things never go smoothly. Mike likes to call it the 80% rule. If things go right 80% of the time, that's a success. On our trip to Italy, three of the four of us had lost luggage (that's 75%). With our trip to France, Mike was recovering from pneumonia (67%). This year, Mike had a double hernia. But a double doctors' diagnosis gave him the green light two days before our departure. Then it was my cold. Three days before the trip I felt like death (33%).

But we pulled it together and on Friday, 4/29 we were on our way.