{"id":52,"date":"2008-05-28T07:18:40","date_gmt":"2008-05-28T06:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/blog\/?p=52"},"modified":"2008-06-04T06:58:30","modified_gmt":"2008-06-04T05:58:30","slug":"week-41-may-28-to-june-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/?p=52","title":{"rendered":"Week 41 — May 28 to June 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 28, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 We woke up to a sunny day, which is not what the forecasts say, calling for rain (60 % chance).\u00a0 Of course, for once the forecasts were wrong.\u00a0 I attended a soccer practice, as usual, on Wednesday and took some near end of season photos<\/a> including my conversation partner, Jose.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jose\u00a0admitted to me today that he was in the Communist party in Spain when it was very dangerous during the 1960s.\u00a0 He even trained on how to set up meetings and organize in Checoslovakia.\u00a0\u00a0 Meetings were held in churches, where they were somewhat protected, but you had to be careful since there were spies and only some churches were left-leaning — some were with the Fascists and Franco.\u00a0 It was a dangerous time, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anne witnessed a dog fight in the park where a non-Spanish person escalated it to a human fight (well — name calling with lots of bad Spanish words thrown in).\u00a0 Unfortunately, I was not there to witness or learn from the vocabulary lesson.<\/p>\n

May 29, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0\u00a0 I drove over to Girona, about an hour, this morning to go riding with a guide I hired there.\u00a0 I told him we had to\u00a0speak Spanish, so I got that out of it too.\u00a0 The drive was interesting since it was rush hour and traffic was slow but motorcycles and scooters were riding down the lanes between the cars a full speed.\u00a0 It was just insane.\u00a0 Anywho, I managed to get there in about an hour and a half, find the meeting place, change to cycling clothes, meet the guide I found on the Internet (easier to have a guide for one day than try to figure out where the best riding is).\u00a0 The guide Jaume is a chemical engineer by training but likes bikes so he guides bike trips (seems like the two interests could be combined).<\/p>\n

Off we went and rode some very good roads with mild climbing and descending, for the most part.\u00a0 Some of the descents were very technical with turns that are hidden, narrow roads, rocks, etc…\u00a0 We ran into a bike tour put on by Marty Jemison, a former 7-11 team rider with 22 riders.\u00a0 That didn’t look like I would have enjoyed it — too much waiting.\u00a0 But I did see a nice selection of rear-view mirrors hooked to helmets and glasses.\u00a0\u00a0 Marty was very nice — I chatted with him — “Hey, where are you from.”\u00a0 “Colorado, we have some people here from Colorado”, etc…<\/p>\n

A nice lunch was had in a Catalan town, who knows where but it was mildly charming with lots of stray cats walking around.\u00a0 It was sort of deserted, actually.\u00a0 Good sandwich, though.\u00a0 Sandwich is entrepan in Catalan, bocadillo in Castillano, and sandwich in English.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the ride, which ended up being about 130 kilometers, we caught up with a girl who passed us and who Jaume, my guide, thought was a pro.\u00a0 So did I and there are a lot of them in this area, which is why there are bike tours around.\u00a0 The roads are relatively empty of cars, and have a variety of climbing and descending, including some super technical descents where you can’t see the end of the turns.\u00a0 Anywho, we caught the girl after I gave Jaume one of those “let’s chase” signals and went up a hill managing not to be dropped (me) as she chatted with Jaume in Catalan like she was out for an easy ride.\u00a0 She turned out to be a Mosses, which are the cops.\u00a0\u00a0 Photos are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the home front, the boys’ school is infested with head lice.\u00a0 Today a number of kids were sent home from each class the basically the entire second grade was sent home.\u00a0 It is still light here really late, I’m writing this at 9:00 and it’s light like late afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

May 30, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Head lice have taken over the school, it seems.\u00a0 Another three kids were sent home today (they were three of the four that were sent home yesterday — apparently their parents didn’t git the critters).<\/p>\n

May 31, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Ellen and Matt, Anne’s sister and her husband, arrived today to a ticker tape parade and laudable press.\u00a0 Well, we picked them up at the airport.\u00a0 They were just in Portugal riding a motorcycle through the country and reported a good trip, having taken a lot of photos.\u00a0 The place looks pretty backwards, more than Spain, with mountains and nice roads but a poorer population.\u00a0 There isn’t the ubiquitous trash that you find on the side Spanish roads.\u00a0 The mountains don’t seem as high, and the landscape seems more arid when compared to the Pyrenees.\u00a0 They had a nice trip.\u00a0<\/p>\n

June 1, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 It rained most of the day today.\u00a0 Anne and I had a lunch at one of the BFIS people’s houses that lives here; Ellen and Matt went sightseeing.\u00a0 Then, in the evening (late!),\u00a0we all went\u00a0to the fountains of Mont Juic, which are the thing to see for every tourist (music and water show).<\/p>\n

June 2, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 We went to Montserrat today with Ellen and Matt, thinking at the last minute.\u00a0 It was warm in Barcelona so we went to the mountains (Montserrat) which is about 45 minutes away.\u00a0 Of course, no jackets and we’d just hike.\u00a0 As we approached the range, there were clouds hanging over them and we realized forgetting our jackets was probably a mistake.\u00a0 We hiked anyway, unprepared, hoping we would not need jackets.\u00a0 Three hours or so later, we emerged from the hike, having gone up the mountain in hot, humid conditions, then eaten lunches and descended in fog and humidity.\u00a0 Here are photos<\/a> (lots) and a movie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

June 3, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Ellen and Matt got another chance to visit Barcelona’s many sights.\u00a0 They reported lots of interesting stuff and at the end of the day, when Matt had enough, Anne, Ellen and Joshua went to Segrada Familia, the church-like structure that is\u00a0Barcelona’s icon.\u00a0\u00a0 Ellen and Matt also joined us for what is perhaps the penultimate lunch with Dan and Amy here in Barcelona; we were all just a hooting and a hollering while reviewing all the good times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 28, 2008.\u00a0 We woke up to a sunny day, which is not what the forecasts say, calling for rain (60 % chance).\u00a0 Of course, for once the forecasts were wrong.\u00a0 I attended a soccer practice, as usual, on Wednesday and took some near end of season photos including my conversation partner, Jose.\u00a0\u00a0 Jose\u00a0admitted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}