Story Time

I have this story that I never told you guys. Gather 'round, children. This fairy tale takes place (as all fairy tales do) in Europe, and spans three years.

After about two weeks in France only speaking to each other, Shane and I were ready to be in a country where we could speak the language, so we crossed the border into Spain a couple days ahead of schedule. Puigcerdà is a little skiing town smooshed right up against the French border. I had been here before to ride the Tres Nacions bike race in the summer of 2007. We planned to ride the Tres Nacions route the next day: an 85-mile loop through Spain, Andorra, and France that took us over the Port d'Envalirañ at 2408m (7900') it's the tallest peak in the Pyranees and the highest mountain we'd be climbing on the trip. It was also my birthday.

Back in 2007 when I did the 3 Nacions with the dirty old men, I had been drinking like a fish. It was June and I hadn't been riding in months. I was smoking a pack a day. But I really wanted to do this ride, so I pretended I was in better shape than I really was and got on my bike next to the boys. Half way up the mountain I got off my bike and refused to move until I'd gotten my breath back and every drop of lactic acid had cleared from my legs. I was like a wounded ferrel animal. I threatened to bite anyone who came near me or tried to encourage me to keep going. Once we got to the switchbacks above the treeline I was in such bad shape that I was screaming swears at anyone who tried to come near me. "Llegue cuando llegue, puedo hacerlo yo sola, ¡cono!" I'll get there when I get there. I can do it alone, fuck! "Déjame en paz, ¡hijo de puta! No te necesito. Vete a la mierda." Leave me alone, you son of a bitch! I don't need you. Go to hell... That sort of thing. When I finally rolled into the finish line I was exhausted and passed out with my head back and my mouth wide open for the whole ride back to Barcelona.

This time around, I didn't have to prove to the dirty old men that a girl could ride a course like this. I didn't even have to prove anything to Shane. On the Alpe d'Huez, we'd figured out that it was always best to be prepared. On the Col de la Croix de Fer I'd proven that when it came to long, long climbs, I could hold on to a hard gear for longer than Shane (I didn't have much choice! I was riding a compact and he a triple!). On the Col de Izoard, Shane showed me that he could lay the smack down when he wanted to and I wasn't such hot shit after all. And on Mt. Ventoux we had figured out how to work together in the wind, and how to each ride our own pace and experience the mountains in our own way. I also had to admit that on the downhills, I couldn't touch Shane, who was used to riding the hills outside San Francisco. (Right: I never got to catch Shane on the Col de Izoard because half way up the climb, the road looked like this.)

Going up the Port d'Envalira we decided that we would ride together on the flats, but each take the mountain at our own pace. The first 30 miles were downhill, so we swooped into the valley together and then stopped at a cafe to get some breakfast. "Shane, did you bring your passport?" I asked.

"My passport? No, why?"

Oh shit! "We're going through Andorra!" I said. "I don't think Andorra's part of the E.U. We're going to have to go through two customs checks, and you don't have your passport!" They hadn't checked my passport three years ago, but that was because I was part of a race. Who knew what they did the other 364 days of the year.

"Andorra's like the size of a postage stamp. Do they even have a jail to put illegal aliens into?" Shane asked. We decided that if they stopped us, then I could ride on alone since I knew the route, and Shane would ride back the way we'd come and we'd meet up later that day. I really wanted to ride this course again now that my body was clean and my legs were strong. It was my birthday and I could ditch Shane in an Andorran holding cell if I wanted to.

The border is a big, mean-looking tollbooth-like structure with men in uniforms standing around checking ID's. As we approached the gate, another rider came up and passed us as we hesitated. He didn't even slow down as he rode through the arches. "Just ride through like you know what you're doing. If they look at you, just smile, wave, and keep on riding," I told Shane. "They're not going to get in their cars and chase down a bike." He didn't need my advice, but it made me feel better to give it anyway. He thought I was crazy for even worrying in the first place. The Andorran officials didn't even bat an eye as we rolled through.

As soon as we were in Andorra, the road started to climb. I remembered one stretch of road that was so steep that my lungs burned and my legs felt like jell-o when I reached the top in 2007 (left). When I hit it this time around, it really wasn't all that bad. I stopped at the top, but it was to take a picture of a weird sculpture in the middle of a traffic circle, not because I needed to get off my bike. We kept riding, and before I knew it, we'd hit the gas station where I'd stopped three years before. That day we were riding in the middle of a cloud and I couldn't see where the road went in front of me. Today it was sunny and I could see that the grade was relatively mild. I wasn't even in my hardest gear. I waited for Shane and pointed the spot out to him. "What the hell was wrong with you?" he asked. "This is nothing!"


On we rode. We passed signs for the Andorran University, the Andorran penitentiary (guess they do have one after all) and rode by smiling, waving police men on every corner. As we climbed higher, the discount outlets, car dealerships, and liquor stores gave way to skiing chalets. Riding through the last town, two old ladies and an old man were picking their way down the steep sidewalk. "¡Venga! ¡Ánimo!" they cheered. "Eres muy fuerte," You're very strong, one of them said to me. Then to the other woman she said, "Vaya, una nena delante del hombre," Would you look at that, a girl in front of the man. It made me snicker. The Spanish of that generation are still stuck in the era when they thought that if a woman ran more than a mile, her uteris would fall out. If women rode bikes, it was of the sort with a basket in the front. Come to think of it, the dirty old men weren't too far from that attitude either. "¡Es mi cumple!" It's my birthday! I yelled over my shoulder. I wanted to share my party with everyone, even the little old Spanish ladies in their orthopedic shoes that I passed on the street.

Just outside the last town we went above the tree line.

I still felt great. We were up above the snow line now, and about to hit the bald part of the mountain with the switchbacks. I told Shane I'd see him at the top and we both attacked the last chunk at our own pace. "Mush! Mush! Mush!" I would yell down to him when I saw him on the road below me. We'd adopted the dog sledding chant somewhere in the snow on Alpe d'Huez. It made a good mantra, but I didn't need anything to get me to keep pedaling. I couldn't have been happier. The mountain was disappearing under me and I barely felt myself pushing the pedals at all. I really didn't want the climb to end, I just wanted to keep winding up, up, up into the sky. Last year at this point I wouldn't let anyone within 100 yards of me.

There was a car that kept stopping on every switchback. Whenever I passed them, the guy in the car would be filming me. Then he'd drive past me, his wife filming out the window, and wait for me at the next turn. "¿Quién eres?" I asked the first time I passed him, giving a bit of a scowl. The next time I saw him I tried Catalan, "Qui ets?" Still no indication that he understood me. "Qui êtez vous?" I tried in my attrotious French. "Who are you?" I tried in English the next time I saw him. He gave me a smile and waved. I only knew one more language to try, "Chi sei??" I asked, dredging up what remained of my Italian from the dark corners of my memory. Still no sign that he understood me. I have no idea what he wanted to film me for, but if it was a lesson on how to say "Who are you?" in five European languages, he got it. I just pretended like I was going to be famous.

Getting to the top of Port d'Envalira again wasn't just a victory over the mountain. It was a victory over my past, and it was perfect symbolism that it happened on my birthday.

Finally I reached the summit and sat at the side of the road to have a snack. Of all the mountains we'd climbed on this trip, this had been the highest and the easiest. The cameraman came over and said something to me in a language I didn't understand. I smiled at him and waved. He was only three feet away, and I was supposed to say something back, but I had no idea even what language to speak to him in, so I just stuck my hand in his face and wiggled it around. He looked confused and walked away.

Shane came over the crest behind me, and we snapped a few pictures before launching ourselves down the other side. Riding downhill for some 10 miles is pretty chilly business when there's still ten feet of snow on the ground. As we descended, my muscles tightened up from shivering and my eyes watered from the wind. Up ahead in the road I could see someone walking. With my eyes watering she looked topless, but as I got closer I could see that she was wearing a flesh-colored skank tank. Still, it was 40 degrees up here, there was snow on the ground, and she was wearing a skank tank. She was obviously a hooker but how the hell did she get up here?! She was 5 miles from the nearest village on the French side, and about 10 miles and a mountain peak away from the nearest village on the Spanish side. I mean, I know that hookers in this part of the world hang out at the side of the highway, but shouldn't mountain hookers wear a parka or something?

We came around the final sharp corner and nearly rode up the ass of a Citroen as it slammed on its brakes for the border control. The Frenchies were much more diligent about checking incoming cars than the Andorrans, and if Shane got stopped now, he'd be stuck in Andorra until I could ride back to the hotel, get his passport, and ride 40 miles back up the mountain. We rode around the cars through the lane where they make suspicious vehicles pull over. Three French officers were staring suspiciously into one car's trunk. Doopy, doopy, dooooo... we rolled through the border trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. The French officials didn't even look up at us as we rolled through. I breathed a big sigh of relief and my muscles tightened a fraction (not much though, it was still cold!).

One final small climb and it was straight down for 20 miles back into Spain. Three years ago it had taken me almost eight hours to cover the 85-mile course. This time (not including stops) it had taken me less than five and a half. Later, when I told one of the dirty old men about it, he told me that I had only been about half an hour behind the girl who won the 3 Nacions this year. "And she rode in a pack!" he told me.

I knew I was stronger than any of the dirty old men gave me credit for, but now I was going to get a chance to prove it. Back in the day they had seen their role on our club rides as practically carrying me over the distance. It drove me nuts! As I'd gotten to be a faster rider stateside, I'd checked in with the club's web master from time to time, telling him my results. When I told him about one race, he told me I must have the conversion rate wrong. "34 kmph for 93 kilometers sounds too fast, but congratulations for doing so well," he told me. I was so mad I could spit, I sent him the results, but I don't think he ever checked them. Now I knew I was stronger than they'd ever seen me, and I couldn't wait to show those boys what a nena could do.

We drove into Barcelona that night, and the next morning I got up early to go on a club ride with the dirty old men. "You're not riding that old Decathlon anymore!" one of them said, sizing up my carbon bike and clapping me on the back.

"You've lost weight," said Domingo, who I don't think ever even knew my name.

"You came on the perfect day!" the webmaster said. "Today we're doing a hill climb time trial for club points." Perfect! This was my chance.

We rode about 20 miles outside of town. A slimy toad of a man named Miquel who was always grabbing his crotch and making cock jokes over lunch kept trying to break away. He did this all the time, just to show the rest of the club what kind of balls he had. Every time he did it, I would shoot off after him and pass him. I could never get much of a lead, though, because I had to stop at every intersection to make sure I went the right way. "Hey, Clara," a guy named Salvador told me, "slow down, we're all a bunch of old men!"
"Save it for the climb," the webmaster advised. I know how to save it, old man! Just you wait and see! If he thought he was escorting me up this whole hill, he had another thing coming.

Eventually we reached the spot. Everyone stopped at the bottom of the hill, and the webmaster counted heads. There were twenty of us, including me. "The first person who gets to the top tells the person behind him what number he came in and so forth," he explained. Remember your number and we'll write it down over lunch.

"Hey! Where are they going?!" Salvador yelled, pointing up the road. The club president (a 70-year-old ape of a racist troll) and crotch-grabbing Miquel had already taken off up the hill. "Disqualified! Cheaters!" everyone yelled. "GO!" someone else yelled. I was already clipped in and took off like a shot.

"Hey, wait up Clara!" the webmaster yelled after me. "Remember, this hill is 4 km long!"

The hill was a steady 6% grade from bottom to top, and I found my rhythm almost right away. Quickly we passed the two cheaters, and by the 1km mark, it was just me, the web master, and a guy named Lluis huffing shoulder to shoulder. Lluis had the reputation of being one of the best climbers in the club, and he had finished hours ahead of the rest of us three years ago at 3 Nacions. He was the one driving the car where I passed out and snored the whole way home from Puigcerdà.

We pushed harder and harder, and between two and three kilometers, the webmaster cracked and blew out the back. At three kilometers I started to pull ahead of Lluis, and slowly opened a 50-yard gap on him. I knew that the end must be near, so I thought I had it in the bag. My lungs and legs were on fire, so I decided to let up just a bit in the last 500m. Suddenly I looked behind me and Lluis wasn't there. I looked over my other shoulder and there he was, closing fast. We sprinted for the line, but he already had more momentum than I did and won by a couple of bike lengths.

"¡Me cago en la leche!" I gasped, patting Lluis on the shoulder. Me cago la leche roughly translates to 'I can't fucking believe it,' but literally it means 'I'm shitting myself in the milk.' "De verdad," Really, I said, clutching my stomach and gasping for air, "¡me estoy cagando!" I'm shitting myself. "That was a dirty trick!" "Quizás te hubiera ganado," Maybe I would have beaten you, I joked with Lluis, "si no hubiera hecho el recorrido de las Tres Nacions ayer" If I hadn't done the 3 Nacions route yesterday.

"The whole thing?" he asked.

"The whole thing."

Luckily I didn't shit myself, and I was feeling better by the time the webmaster turned up about two minutes later. "¿Quién ganó?" Who won? he asked.

"I took Clara in the last few meters," Lluis told him. "But I had to fight for it."

"I was leading most of the way up!" I made sure to let him know.

Everyone asked the same thing as they crested the hill. "¿Quién ganó?"

"Lluis, but the girl was right behind him," they said. "Lluis almost lost."

"¡¿La nena ya está aqui?!" The girl's already here? slimy Miquel said in disbelief when he saw me.

"Nos ganó a todos," She beat us all, the webmaster explained.

Now that I was recovered, I leaned on my bike watching the last of the riders reach the top. At one point I looked over my shoulder up the road and saw someone going off down the hill. It was slimy Miquel who didn't like losing to a girl. I got on my bike and went after him. "I'll meet you at the bottom!" I yelled over my shoulder.

Miquel was always one of the stronger climbers in the club, but where he always beat everyone was on the downhills where he was drunker and more fearless than everyone else. I pounded the pedals till my gears spun out and then crouched down over my handlebars and started closing in on him. Soon enough I passed him on a straightaway and swooped across his path to cut into a tight turn. When he got to the bottom of the hill I was already standing at the side of the road leaning against my bike. He gave me a look and rolled by to find the restaurant. I had him.

Victory was oh-so-very sweet. At that point in the trip I was desperately homesick and really didn't want to be in Barcelona, but to have zoomed up the Port d'Envalira so much faster than before, and then to have dropped all the boys who had been so adament about always trying to be footmen rather than teammates, it was the best birthday ever.