09/20/2023 Bikepacking Spain Day 43 : Desde la casa sucia hasta la casa apestosa con la belleza en el medio

by Brian · Published September 20, 2023 · Updated March 3, 2024

Photos:

Last night I spent 45 minutes just standing and staring - savoring the view of this valley. Then it completely changed and put on a new show this morning. --

Janet leaving the "casa sucia". Actually, it wasn't too bad once we cleaned it up. --

Wait? Who is that? Another cyclist? Yup... down below our little Refugio we met a bike packer named Andy from Scotland. He has a rather ambitious itinerary. He is on his 4th day and plans to do a good sized mostly dirt loop in Spain. --

Janet has to have some of the hike a bike fun! --

I rode with Andy for a while. He's also a rock climber and we had many things to talk about. Yesterday, as I was pushing my bike for 3 hours through those passes, I thought to myself, "no one would go through here on a bike." Later, I saw that only 20 people had ever done the segment leading up to the hike a bike section. (Not sure how many people actually did the hike-a-bike because it becomes a "choose your own adventure" after that segment). Well, it turns out that Andy did it yesterday too! As he was pushing for 6 hours, he thought to himself, "Nobody would go through here with a bike!" Haha! --

Happy time! For the last few weeks, Janet's phone has been talking randomly and rapidly while she types. It is weird! Today I decided to try and fix it... why not toggle "Voice Over" on and then off? Seems like this was a voice over issue. The problem was that once I toggled Voice over into the "on" position, I lost control of the phone. I rebooted it, and once I did, I couldn't even enter the pass code and the phone got locked. "sorry Janet, i think I killed your phone!" Janet decided to walk away and get water - her solution to the problem. I knew we had a spare phone (I got 2 spare phones; one for each of us right before this trip). But before I quit, I looked on my phone how to use Voice Over. It is extremely tedious! It is a feature meant for people who are blind, which must be difficult enough... trying to operate a phone that is barking words at you and not responding is just more frustrating. I got the hang of clicking things but never figured out how to scroll to turn the feature off. It all came down to Siri: I said "turn off voice control" and her phone came back to Earth. Whew! --

Andy climbed El Capitan on a trip to the USA. --

Today we had more pavement that usual so even though it was a slow moving morning, we finally made some good mileage - perhaps the farthest we went in a single day on this trip. We did a route redesign to go through a congosto and to get to a booking - and the reroute was worth it for the great scenery! --

I did a careful drone flight in the congosto; a very narrow canyon. Not the easiest place to fly a drone due to lack of GPS and things to crash into. --

Strava Comments:

DogMeat Q.

Omg! That sunset shot!!!

DogMeat Q.

Or sunrise 😁

Ann L.

Sounds like you and Andy are kindred spirits. Nice to know you aren’t the only one crazy enough to do this at stuff. The drone video is quite impressive, great job navigating that! Happy to see coffee, a donut 🍩 and Janet-Happy Hour!

Janet W.

Thanks DogMeat QueenⓋ and Ann Luce, I’m always happy when we plan something new and big and I can make to our goal=house+rest day!

Carol D.

Perfect video between the rock walls, and excellent choice of music.

Shred C.

Wow 🤩 what a stunning set of photos! Funny thing, “Churros y chocolate” was the name of my high school Spanish text book.

Shred C.

Assuming that’s not a coffee and donut, which maybe it is, but it also looks like the picture in my head from high school. 😂

Nancy P.

Every video I want to ask how you choose the music. Are all the songs in your memory bank or do you research by theme? The fans want to know 😉. How/where did you catch the lizard in hiding?

Nancy P.

So I didn’t resist looking up the lizard 🦎. Best guess is Ocellated Lizard (Timon lepidus) these guys are big like 1-3ft and like holes! Does that fit what you saw?

Janet W.

Nancy Prier the lizard we saw was about 1 foot long and peeking out of a rock hole by the road. Brian Lucido spotted it while riding by - uphill. It might have been an Iberian wall lizard. I don’t think it was green enough to be the Ocellated lizard. Thanks for promoting our learning about Spanish lizards!

Janet W.

Shred Chic, that’s impressive you can remember the name of your high school text book! It was a good one. That could have been a churro and chocolate, but it was a donut and coffee. Mmmm! My Spanish text book was Amigos sin Fronteras - only 7 years ago.

Janet W.

Gracias a ti Brian Lucido and to Siri for fixing my phone! And for divising a route to town for a day of rest out of the ☔️.

Nancy P.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/73972-Timon-lepidus if you look closely at Brian's photo you can see blue spots on the side/back of the lizard in the hole. the description of Iberian wall lizard says its much smaller.🤷‍♀️

Doug C.

Outstanding sunrise photo!

Brian L.

Nancy Prier - I think you might be right! The blue spots seem like the giveaway. I think it may have been 1.5 feet long. I saw it’s whole body briefly before it went into the hole.

Brian L.

Oh, also Nancy Prier - the music depends. Sometimes the scenery makes me think of a song and then I listen to it for inspiration while riding. In this case, however, it was more forced. That means I searched my playlist for something related to rocks. Usually I can slap a video together in one or two minutes… but today I spent way too long thinking about it. 😖