January 1, 2011
Benito Juarez - LaPrida.
I slept early and woke sometime before midnight to the crack of firecrackers. As the top of the hour drew near the crack crack crack became a continuous machine gun and I could see from where I lay in the tent flairs and fireworks go up in the direction of the town.
The excitement died down sometime in the early hours but there still remained many isolated sweeee...BANG through till dawn when tired as I was the tent and all was packed and I was setting off. At that hour the streets were deserted except for a car load of all-night ravers in a white VW golf with tinted glass thumping with bass speakers. Stopped at the lights a girl sat in a guy's lap in the backseat leans through the window and shouts in a slurred voice "hola, adonde venes" where you from. The driver nervously titches on the pedal bru..um. The next time he accelerated hard the lights had changed and after the Bass throb had died as the car disappeared, I's left to the peace of the morning.
This morning I had left the nice rolling countryside behind and it was flat and monotonous again. It was the day when my pedal, which had been creaking and clicking for days broke. It first seized up, I stopped and loosened it, it tighten up again and I repeat the loosening until the housing round the spindle cracks, the outer part of which comes off in my hand together with the pedals cage which grips the soul of the shoe.
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The part where the bearings were sticking was now gone, there remains enough of the housing though, which now spun freely, to provide a platform with which to place the foot and ride albeit "like standing on an acorn" as a famous racing cyclist once said in his column in a cycling publication when clipless pedals were introduced*.
It felt a little awkward to ride on at first, there was a slippery insecure purchase on the shoe but this intial discomfort soon subsided and I'd forgotten that it had broken by the end of the day.
I reach LaPrida at one, dehydrated and wilting in the sun but luckily today I don't have to indure cobble-stone streets, it being smooth ashfelt. And shortly after passing through the plaza I spot a Rotisaria take-away place so I didn't have to spend too much time cycling slowly out in the sun.
The owner's big dog, an Alastian lay stretch out on the shaded pavement by the door. While I sat inside eating, it lazily got up and came into the shop where it was cooler to the dismay of the owner. "Vene" he shouts, come out, he tries to coax it back out the door, but it stood firm by the counter, it's tougue hanging out panting in overdrive and it's head titching and eyes glaring in response to the owner's voice as if to say "no, no, no, too warm out" It was evetually gotten out but at that moment a firecracker was released nearby, it ducked and made into the shop again in fright.
Today too, noon is the time to have finished the day's ride. I find the camping-site in LaPrida and because of the New Year is full of people, all people with cars and there's mush starting and reeving of engines and unnecessary driving short distances back and fore as there's seemingly a lose of the use of legs and many as a result are over weight.
And so the afternoon was spend sat in the shade of a tree moving as little as possible, I slumbered a while but most of it I continued to follow the interesting story unfold in my book and trying not to be distracted by loud car sound-systems.
*If I remember right, Robert Miller had a column in a sister publication of the UK's Cycling Weekly during the early 90s. He had been a pro in the days before the then recent clipless pedal revolution and said in the column that he liked the old pedals best.
Today's ride: 108 km (67 miles)
Total: 7,788 km (4,836 miles)
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