Lets Ride Bikes! | Straight as an Arrow

June 9, 2016

Annoyance leads to bickering, bickering leads to anger, anger leads to rage, rage leads to…spicy food?

Cycling Stats

Start Point: Zacataculo, El Salvador
Destination: San Jose (near beach), El Salvador
88 km trip, 5:23 time, 39.9 km/h maximum speed, 16.3 km/h average speed

Route Description:

This is a flat route for most of the day with a good shoulder. Near the end of the day, you climb up to 450 meters and then back down to approximately 250 meters. There are lots of small stores along this route.

Accommodations:

We stayed at a Warmshowers host about 3 kilometers from the turnoff to the beach. The beach hotels are about another 10 kilometers further and we know one that was $18 USD per night. Before the beach area there are few hotels, so if this day is too long it is best to stay in the City at about the 50 kilometer mark of this day.

What happened…

Andrew writes: Amanda and I fought this morning, and that sort of put a damper on the rest of the day as we weren’t interacting a lot. There wasn’t much to write home about (yet here I am!) as the road was straight as an arrow, although there were sections of rolling hills. When I saw the turnoff for Playa El Cuco 21km, and it was only 1300hrs I just sort of figured we would ride there and connect with Ali and Liz, the British cyclists. We had a mountain, nay, a hill that we had to get up and over first, and as we were doing so, Amanda got a flat. It was decent enough, with about an inch of steel staple being the culprit. While we were wrestling with the problem, Jose showed up in his truck on his way home. Jose is a Warmshowers host here, and I knew about him as soon as he started talking to us in rapid-fire Spanish. He lived in Montreal for 25 years when he was younger, and even cycled from Montreal to El Salvador back in 2003. He receives a lot of cyclists, all year around he says. We took him up on his offer to drive us to the top of the hill, and to his nearby home where we met his wife Mari. Jose’s house is an ongoing project, as he has added a second story, and lots of cool stuff is going on. I think when it is done it will look really great, and definitely a step ahead of his neighbours. Jose made a great buffer between Amanda and I, and so I spent a lot of time talking with him about all sorts of things. Then I attempted to poison the three of us with a super-spicy pasta dish. No one could talk after that, as everyone was just sweating chipotle and it hurt to open our mouths. Whoops! Ahh well, it was just that sort of day I guess.

Amanda writes: I don’t even know what we were fighting about, but isn’t that always the case. Then you add in a flat tire and it just seems to go from bad to worse. When Jose rolled up I figured it was just another curious person and I was in no mood for small talk. The nice part was that as a cyclist he understood that my pissy mood wasn’t directed at him so much as the situation. So when he offered to help and I was beyond my limits, we decided to say yes and thank him for his trouble.

Later that night before heading to bed and went to him personally and thanked him for his patience with my mood and he was awesome. He proceeded to tell me that he not only knows how shitty it is to get a flat, but also that he’s been married a couple of times; and understands the moods of women. It made me laugh out loud and be thankful that no matter what Country or language, we’re all human.