No safer place for my ride than right next to my bed
Usually nastiness leaving Cartagena, loads of traffic, exhaust, and trash
Then a short while later, on the open road, enjoying the calm and scenery
Then things like this start for km's at a time
Lots of great campsites recently
Tasty break, courtesy of mom, Thanks!
Thinking about having Thanksgiving early...
Being Irish, I have this inherent love of anything potatoe. Roadside snack, fried potatoe with some kind of curry. I had 3 of them, how delicious
More stretches of open road, and open country side. Real nice.
More traveling cyclists, they're going North, from Patagonia. Shared some of their past for lunch. Thanks!
Keeping my sailing stoke alive. FIND YOUR PARADISE
Following the river upstream, and into the Andes I go
Natural spring fed pipes all along the road. How nice to have on a long hill. I stopped at this one, stripped to my bike shorts and immersed myself in the refreshing water. Instantly cooled off nicely.
Line of cars and trucks, for a few km's. How cool to slowly cycle past them up the hill.
Reason for the problem. Instead of getting a tow truck, they're just fixing the motor in the road. Looks like putting a new cylinder head in, wow quite the road-side job.
Late into the night the cars were all still parked on the hill, waiting for the jam to clear up. By morning everyone was gone.
After climbing up into the clouds, there was nothing but fog. Waking up in the morning to this view. Nice chilly moist morning - great for riding.
Still long ways up, with switch backs
Getting so high up, in and out of clouds
Already on a hill, I had sections like this to get up. May not look like it, but really steep.
What I thought was the top.
Feeling the altitude, out of breath but with cleaner cooler fresh air. Much happier.
Lightweight instant meal. Indian dish, another treat from my mom
10 degrees C and raining, cold morning, thought I was back in Canada or Alaska. First time using my shoe covers that I made from some booties I got from my uncle Don.
SUCH great riding weather.
Andres. Nice local cyclist, we stopped had a break.
Amazing view looking down into the valley towards Medellin
Riding the freeway in the valley towards the city - yuck
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
Nataly and Andrew, awesome couchsurfers that gave me their apartment to use while they went out of town on vacation. Muchas gracias amigos!
Helping make some tasty arepas
The view from the flat, with Poblado in the distance and Envigado in the foreground
Driving up the mountain to take Andrew and Nataly to the airport. About a 45 min drive from the city, to the only place where they could have enough space for an airstrip, so mountainous everywhere else.
Halloween 2012. Envigado, Antioquia, Colombia
May not look like much, but this is the site where "la catedral" was, the prison that Pablo Escobar was locked up for a short time.
Long climb up, and bit cold at the top. View of Medellin
The night time cycling crew
Hiro and Mauricio making my bike suaaaave. Regreased the hubs, new chain and casette, new cables, housings, grips. All cleaned up, proper tune up, rides like a dream
I forgot to put in some videos in my last post, so there's a few extra:
Awesome pictures. Those hills like narly bro. Yeah budddy lightweight! Btw I met the inventor of lightweight at the mall. He was signing autographs at GNC. I asked him to give a shout out of light weight....he did and everyone was laughing! Keep up the thoughtfull blogs.
Difficult to describe the difficulty in the hills. Definitely more than once, in various sections of hills in different countries, had to really pull it together. These hills were def up there with some of the most challenging (also with how much ground I was still covering)
How cool you got to meet him. I would have been laughing just hearing him speak!
Awesome pictures. Those hills like narly bro. Yeah budddy lightweight! Btw I met the inventor of lightweight at the mall. He was signing autographs at GNC. I asked him to give a shout out of light weight....he did and everyone was laughing!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the thoughtfull blogs.
Difficult to describe the difficulty in the hills. Definitely more than once, in various sections of hills in different countries, had to really pull it together. These hills were def up there with some of the most challenging (also with how much ground I was still covering)
ReplyDeleteHow cool you got to meet him. I would have been laughing just hearing him speak!