The Rain in Spain...

The road seemed dry. This line echoed in my head as I slid across the rondpoint, sans velo, and just on the front of our group. We were on the Spanish side of the Alberes, riding with a combination of Bridlington and Club du Vallespir riders. I could hear both English and French conversations happening in the peloton and more than once mixed up languages while addressing someone next to me.

The morning had started out wet, rain was falling and plip-plopping in the gutters when the alarm went off at 6. By the time the oatmeal was ready at 7, the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing over Perpignan to the north. By 8, I was on the road north to Amelie, picking up a little slop on the tarmac down, but the roads were drying. My only worry was picking up some wet glass on the road.

Well that and my legs. I wasn't sure if how they would feel after a fairly hard ride the day before with the club. Overall, my form had been getting better and better. 'Miles in the bank,' Geoff was fond of saying, 'Can't take that away.' Indeed, I did feel the cumulative effect of 2300 miles of riding begin to fill up my bank account. Still, today was a question mark.

The Bridlington Cycle club was visiting Amelie for a week-long training camp and they were joining our Spanish excursion en masse. Geoff had belonged to the same club years ago when he lived in northern England. They were friendly and decent, if querky riders. One of their querks was a reluctance to wear helmets. Reading through the British cycling mags from Geoff, it was apparent that many British riders didn’t wear helmets. When I pressed one of the brits on the ride, she insisted she did wear a helmet occasionally, in competition.

A causal pace up to Le Perthus, left me feeling fresh and more confident for the day. Food wasn't a problem: I'd packed two sandwiches, a banana and some energy bars for the ride. That, and a stop at a café in Banyuls would preclude any bonks, or defaillance, today. And the roads were drying.

I picked myself up and surveyed the damage. A skinned elbow, through my long-sleeved jersey, a nice raspberry on my hip, and... that was it. My bike had slid on the brand new levers I'd picked up two days before. I looked up at Geoff; he put a finger to his lips. There were no excuses; I screwed up, hitting the rondpoint with too much speed, on a line a bit too tight and forgetting about that slippery mix of diesel exhaust and moisture that is like ice.

We rolled on towards the Col de Banyuls, revisiting the same climb we did a few days before on Wednesday. This time, the temperature had dropped with the arrival of the cold front and, as we ascended, the tramantine, the north wind began to blow.

'How are those wheels in this wind?' Geoff used some Spinergy four spoke wheels, carbon and aero, for training. Now I was thinking of aero more in terms of Bernouli's Principle of lift than of slicing through the wind. We were on the front, pacing the group up the col. Every few seconds a gust approaching forty or fifty miles an hour would push our front wheels to the side a foot or so.

A flat on the descent slowed down the group, but we stopped for a wonderful café crème at the same café in Banyuls.

A half hour later, the wind had become biblical. The climb out of Banyuls wasn't too bad, but just past the first rondpoint, the road passed through a cleft in the rock, open directly to the north. It was a wind tunnel and brough everyone to a halt. Traffic was still passing us as if there was no wind and I looked behind me to see Geoff holding on to the top tube of his bike, wheels lifting it skyward.

I wan't sure what we would do now. Ahead didn't look to promising, with a few miles on a heavily trafficked road, wind like an invisible hand pushing us backward, but we weren't going back either. I put the cleat covers on and trudged with the others over the top of the ridge.

Between gusts, we jumped back on the bikes and basically blocked traffic to have enough room to blow from side to side. I could see the surf below on the sea, crashing into the rocks, and decided not to look down again.

Of course, we made it, taking more time to safely arrive in Argeles and ride west along the relative calm of the Alberes. The temperature had dropped into the single digits Celcius, and this had the positive effect of numbing the road rash on my hip and arm.

Turning off in Villelongue, I considered the ride and reviewed my expensive but valuable lesson from the rondpoint in Spain.