3 de Julio

3 de Julio - Una Busqueda y Las Ramblas


A lady flashed me today, or was it yesterday - I always wanted to start a post that resembled Camus’ start to The Stranger. Las Ramblas really is a tourist trap, and she was a prostitute, as mentioned in yesterday’s blog post.

After our siesta, we headed out to find the World Cup match between Spain and Paraguay. We searched and we searched. We walked through our barri, and then to the next. We jumped on the metro and headed to BCN Sports Bar in Las Ramblas to find they were charging 10 Euros just to enter (about 15 U.S.). I knew there had to be a place to watch it for free. We found an Irish pub farther down La Rambla. We made our way in and watched the screens from the outer edge of the smoky pub. At half, when people headed out for a quick breather, we wormed our way to back of the pub. We didn’t hear one Spanish speaker in the entire crowd, so we bailed and watched the second half at home. Yes, we bailed. But what we got at home was much cooler than what we could have witnessed in a touristy bar.

GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLL! Fireworks! Screams from all the balconies in the courtyard. Yells from the street below us. When Spain scored, the city erupted. We watched the flickering lights of televisions from our balcony and the silhouettes of raised hands and kisses and hugs. When the game ended, we could hear the city open up. Doors flung open. The streets became avenues for celebration. When I woke up at 4:00 in the morning the next day, Spaniards were barely making it home, still waving the flag in the streets, and cheering for a goal that happened half a day before.

(We are already making preparations to find a genuine Spanish bar to watch the match on July 7th. We will not be put down. For those who are following my training - we hit the streets for three miles today.)

Views from the run.

El Segundo De Julio

July 2nd was really just an extension of July 1st, due to the fact we hadn't slept in more than 24 hours. But we felt good.

After checking into our apartment, we went out for wine, which ended up being beer because of the midday Barcelona sun and the sweat that dripped from neck to heel. The local brew, Estrella, fue perfecto en el sol. So we had two before heading back to the flat for a siesta. When I unfolded my body on the bed, I guessed I would be up in a couple hours to mosey around, drink some coffee, and stare out the window into the gigantic courtyard outside our living-room window, full of balconies and drying clothes that hang from wires outside windows, but when my eyelids finally broke free of the crust in the corners, my wristwatch read 9:30. We slept for seven hours and woke up hungry.

Barcelonites eat dinner around 10:00 pm, so we showered and headed to the metro (fantastic, beautiful, wonderful metro system that is sooo easy to use and right outside our door). We headed to the Borne district, a district known for great food and locals. We avoided, and will continue to avoid Las Ramblas - its high prices, prostis, and kitschy shops with shirts that read "My sister went to Barcelona and all she got was this lousy shirt."

We stepped out into the Born District from the Metro. Packed. Full of locals. Full of street side bars and restaurants. Full of life at 11:30 at night. We wandered. We gawked. We searched for food. And we found it - un botella de vino, seared squid, fried fish, and chorizo.

They kicked us out around 12:30 - full and happy.

El Primero Del Julio

July 1st we travelled. The early rise came so soon. I tried to sleep until 4:30, but the thought of the travel day pushed open my lids and kept them open. It was a day filled with planes, trains, and automobiles. Although I wanted to, I never got to say "You're messing with the wrong guy" or "You're f***d." We slung (hoisted slowly) our 45 pound backpacks over our shoulders, dropped them into the trunk of a taxi, moved them to the seat of an express bus from Tacoma to Sea-Tac airport, checked them in, slung (even more slowly hoisted) them over our shoulders at baggage claim in Barcelona, dropped them down in front of us on the train to Passeig De Gracia, threw (achily carried) them for seven long blocks to our new apartment, and finally set them down. It was a long travel day for our packs, but they did just fine.

The most notable part of the catalyst to our trip had to be the disconnect. By disconnect, I specifically mean the shutting down of the Blackberries for a month. The moment we shut them down in Toronto was the last moment they would be used for 30 days. This may not seem so interesting to some, but to Mary and I, it was unbelievably freeing. No texts. No emails, Facebook updates, or Twitter feeds sent immediately to our phones. No telemarketing phone calls. A disconnect. It felt good. It feels good. My pockets are lighter and I'm not checking the damned thing every minute. It took years for me to really use cell phones and texting, but, oh yes, I got sucked into the vortex of constant connectivity. Not now. Gone. Phew.

At one point on the train ride into town, I thought I felt my pocket vibrate. I instantly dropped my hand down to check a text. But it was just a jolt of the fast train that rumbled down the Spanish rail line.

Las Hagias de Pan y Los Pescados

Without getting too biblical, most know of the loaves and the fish parable, where Jesus preached to thousands of people, but some forgot to RSVP, so his host ran out of bread and fish. Jesus, the giver that he was, miracled up. He provided enough fish and bread for those who forgot to reply in enough time for ample food preparation, and his disciples ended up collecting baskets of leftovers. (This parable has always perplexed me. Can’t people pick up after themselves?)

We always run into the loaves and the fish when we move. We get all the big stuff loaded into the truck. We feel great about ourselves. I may even crack open a beer in celebration of a successful couch maneuver. But then, on my return to the apartment, the loaves and the fish are dispersed throughout. The tiny things. The cords. The rediscovered socks that don’t match. The little things. When we start to pack them up, they begin to multiply. My beer was in vain.

It is the last day before we leave for Barcelona. And the loaves and the fish are upon us (ever since reading Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” I love the phrase “upon us”). We caught a big fish last night, Wednesday June 29th. Paz, our little toy-fox terrier wouldn’t leave her crate in the afternoon. She’s a little turd, full of energy, and mischievous as the coyote in Hopi Indian tales (pun intended). But she just looked out at us from her crate. She shook uncontrollably. We freaked when we pulled her out and saw that her right eye bulged outward and upward toward the right, and exposed the dreaded third eye (dog owners know what I am talking about here). It looked like the eye of a dead, bloated fish.

We called our vet. We tried some home therapy. Eye still weird. Dog still lethargic. She didn’t eat. She didn’t drink water. Paz is a dog that will eat chipped concrete on our walks, but she didn’t even want peanut butter. The afternoon of worry and our concern about the month ahead pushed us out the door to the after hours vet around six p.m. (so pricey).

But she tricked us (coyote, coyote).

When I was a kid, on days when I wanted to stay home from school, my mom used to call my bluff and say, “If you’re too sick to go to school then we’re going to the doctor.” For some crazy reason, I always rallied.

When we pulled into the vet parking lot, Paz came to life. We put her on her leash and she pulled like normal. She jumped up to say “hey!” So we packed her up and went home. She rallied. Five hours later, we sat in the after hours clinic a second time with a sad, hungry, eye-all-poked-out dog. It was just an abscessed tooth that pushed her eye up, but she needed medical attention. Antibiotics and painkillers for a week.

Too bad we won’t be here to watch her heal. (Thank the Lord for Mark and Vanessa. They are saints.)

You can’t plan for the exact loaves and fish when you go on a month long trip, but you can always plan to have them. Troubles rarely RSVP and problems don’t phone ahead, but not planning for them can ruin a start to a trip. Plan for them and deal with them. So when they ring the doorbell with no food of their own and don’t pick up after themselves, you will have allotted the time to do it yourself.

Mi Novia

I think the stains on Ben’s face made us leave the mountain early. Ben was my best friend and only friend in my neighborhood. Ben was a friend. He and his family were nice Mormons who lived behind us.

Ben and I told our moms that we were going to climb the mountain – it was really just a hill that led to Highway 89 in Ogden, Utah. The Rocky Mountains dwarfed the hill we planned to climb. We told our moms we planned to climb the “mountain” and have lunch and come home. But secretly, we packed our tent, our sleeping bags, and enough peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, dinner, and the next day’s breakfast. There may be a mother out there reading this thinking: “You mean you were just going to disappear for a night and not tell your mothers? You little shits.” The answer to your question is “Yes!” I was eight. It seemed like a just fine idea to me.

Ben and I headed up the steep blacktop hill that led to the “mountain.” We stood there momentarily before walking into the wild. The PB&J’s were weighing heavily on my back. But they would be worth it. I squinted my eyes and looked at Ben. He looked at me with a stain on his lip and smiled. I don’t remember if the stain was milk stain or a Kool-Aid stain, but it drove my tiny tolerance for stains on kid’s faces crazy.

We hiked slowly up the dirt-bike path and along the edge of the hillside until the trail ended. The sounds above our heads on Highway 89 vroomed in the background. We called them jungle animals and did our best to avoid them. This way it seemed more like an adventure than an ill-planned and non-permisable campout above our houses. We trekked through the brush, the thick, dry trees of the Utahan hillside and found a bare spot to lay down our tents. We both sweated heavily in the 90-degree June weather. The stain on Ben’s lip started to run down his cheek, and he did not wipe it off. I watched it drip to his chin and gaffed at his sad attempts with his tongue to lap it up. That was all the effort he gave, oblivious to the pain he inflicted on me.

We set up our tent and rolled our sleeping bags out inside of it. We were proud of our plan. We decided on lunch: PB&J. When I pulled my sandwich out of my bag, it was warm and squishy. The jam got sticky on my hands when I ate it. Ben crammed his sandwich down his throat and had layered a jam stain on the previous milk or Kool-Aid stain. I knew it was only about one in the afternoon, and we planned to stay the whole night, to share another two meals of PB&J, and sleep over in the woods beneath the wild animals that night.

“Let’s go. That was fun,” I said to Ben. I packed up my bag.
“But we just got here,” he said with a jam and milk stained mouth.
“It was fun, let’s go,” I said and he agreed.

My traveling partner did not suit the length of travel. He began to get on my nerves immediately, so I cut the trip short.

Since that day, my tolerance for traveling companions has grown. A little. Multiple times, while out of the country, I have shared a room with someone I couldn’t stand or a flat with seven people I couldn’t stand.
But this trip, I am so excited to share a room with my best friend and wife. She’ll be sick of me long before I’ll get sick of her. But we’ll have wine to cure her of that ill. It just stains teeth.

Gettin' it Back - La Idioma

A aprender una idioma neuvo podria ser dificil. Aprenderlo una tiempo segundo podria ser frustrado.

To learn a new language can be difficult. To learn it a second time can be frustrating.

There was a time when I could have said that I could speak Spanish really well. That time is not now. That time was more than 12 years ago. After finishing a minor in Spanish and spending a quarter in Mexico in 1997 and a quarter in Costa Rica in 1998, I could carry on a conversation, not just about food and weather, with native Spanish speakers. I wasn’t nearly fluent, but I could butcher all the Spanish verb tenses pretty thoroughly. I could get “the ball over the net” most the time.

I visited Barcelona with my rag-tag group of friends during our backpacking trip around Europe in 1999. I called a tiny hostel to book us a room. I found a tiny pay phone in Warsaw and dialed up the place to make sure we got a nice room in the center of the action, in a place we could explore the city and not have to stumble too far home at night.

“Bon dia, quisiera reservar una cuarto por sinco personas, sinco hombres. Por favor.” I talked quietly into the phone. I was still a little nervous the communists might be tapping the phone. I stood in front of the giant wedding-cake structured government building in formerly communist Poland. “Lo siento, no tenia la tiempo a practicar mi Espanol por hace un ano.”

“Su Espanol es bueno, no,” the sweet lady on the other end of the line told me. We had a room. And it was even there when we arrived. Four years of Spanish didn’t let me down. Barcelona was awesome. We drank sangria, ate tapas on the avenue, and checked out the multiple museums. I was nervous about my Spanish. The Barcelonans really sounded differently with their ‘th’ for their ‘c.’ I did my best to lead our group through the city without problems.

On the day we left, one of my friends lost his camera in the hostel. He thought he left it in the washroom.

“You gotta go talk to the owner,” my friends told me. So I did. The owner and I talked for a good hour while we looked for my friends camera. She corrected me when I made mistakes and looked at me oddly when I pronounced ‘c’ like ‘s’ or ‘ll’ like ‘ya.’ But we became close.

We never found the camera, and when we left, she told me to have a safe trip back to Portugal, a safe trip home. I thought I heard her wrong and told her that Portugal was not on our route. I told her I was from the states.

“Creia que era Portuguesa - su pronunciacion,” she said. She thought I was Portuguese

I took it as a compliment. Not because I wasn’t proud to be from the states, but because she thought I was from Spain’s neighboring country. While I understand that Portuguese and Spanish are different, my 2004 honeymoon in Portugal taught me that, the languages are much closer than English and Spanish. It seems to me I butchered the language pretty well. I am not that good anymore, however, but for the last three months I have been trying to get back there. I’ve been studying everyday. Listening to Spanish in the car and talking to myself does not do as much as living with a family in Costa Rica or Mexico, but I’ll keep trying.

There will be stumbles. I will let you know about them.

El Vino, a 7.5-minute mile y Sir-Mix-A-Lot

I love wine. No surprise. I love to run. No surprise here either. So let’s move on to something you don’t know. Mary signed us up for the Tacoma Narrows Half Marathon on August 8th. The 8th is exactly six days after our viaje de Barthelona. This poses a problem. Nine times out of ten it is awesome to combine two things I love. Tica and Paz. Afternoons and naps. Weekends and steak. But in this particular case, I am scared to death to combine two of my most beloved pastimes: drinking Spanish wines and training for half marathons.

En Espana, I plan to be Spanish. Vino at lunch. Siesta in the afternoon. Vino con nuestra cena en la noche. The purpose of the trip is to live a Spanish lifestyle. Initially, training for a half was not on the agenda. While Sir-Mix-a-Lot sang about liking big butts, I sing about big, bold reds, Spanish riojas (and I cannot lie). Here, in Tacoma, I don’t drink red wine when school’s in session. I can’t teach with a tannin headache. From September through early June, I’m relegated to buttery chardonnays if I know that I might have more than two glasses of red wine. Chardonnay season is difficult for me because, “when a red walks in…I get sprung.”

“So, what the hell to do?” To quote Mike Watt.

“Just wing the race. Chillax. Run it easy and just train when you can in Barcelona.” Pero, este es impossible.

Experience has illustrated this impossibility. In July 2008, the Tacoma Rainiers season was in full swing. I worked from sun up to sun down. And I didn’t have the chance to train well (all runners know what this means: interval work, tempo runs, LSD, and proper recovery days). The baseball team sponsored the Narrows half and gave anyone who worked for the club free registration. I said “Yes!” – in early June, very optimistically. Too optimistically – before I fully knew how taxing a minor league season can be on a front office employee.

Race day came, and I stood at the starting line. My long run, in preparation for the half, was six miles, and it had been done more than a month before race day.

I’m just gonna sit back, relax, and run ten-minute miles, I told myself. The starter gun popped, and 18 minutes later I passed the three-mile marker. I felt better than I thought I would. Six minute miles felt fantastico. I died on mile six. Stopped on a hill on mile ten. Finished at one hour and 53 minutes. So slow. I could barely walk for a week. The nightly trek to the press box on the top of Cheney Stadium, to say the least, reminded me of my poor training and inability to chillax during a race. Walking stiff legged up 100 stairs just plain hurts.

This coming August 8th, I will not be able to hold back. The flow of the pack will pull me with them. So I have to train well for the race. I have to do my three longest training runs of 11, 12, and 14 miles along the streets of Barcelona. My 12 miler falls smack dab during our trip to Pamplona for the Fiesta de San Fermin and the running of the bulls, a revelry that matches Mardi Gras. And I plan to partake.



Here is a video of the Fiesta de San Fermin.

I will have to find a way to join two things that I love together, like big cups of coffee and College Gameday.

So sing along with me to Sir-Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back."

I like big reds and I can not lie
You other runners can’t deny
That when a rioja gets served with a nitty gritty taste
And an aroma in your face
You get sprung, wanna swirl on your tongue

So, runners! (Yeah!) Runners! (Yeah!)
Has your blogger got to run (Hell yeah!)
Tell ‘em to train it! (Train it!) Train it! (Train it!)
Run that tempo run!
B-Town got track?!