Tom and I have considered the proportion of untroubled pleasure on any given motorcycle journey. We agree that it’s rarely over 50% of the time that you’re not hot or cold or wet, hungry or thirsty or having to piss, sore, bored—or wishing you were bored, because you’re worried about low fuel or a mechanical problem. (Like a cooling fan blowing hot air onto your leg, only partially resolved by an improvised “heat shield.”)
But it’s the way that the relief and joy comes that compensates.
On the road to Alméria, we were blasting through a hot-gusty desert furnace when we suddenly felt a little cool on our faces and down into our open jackets. We knew we must be getting close to the sea. Mustn’t we? Half a mile later we tore up another hill, swung around the thousandth curve of the day and suddenly The Whole Mediterranean Sea sat below us, and the blue sky straight ahead.
A few motorcycle-exclusive moments like that—there would be several on this trip—make up for a lot of discomfort, hassle and worry: on the day, and in the memory.
***
In Alméria, we ate and drank like Hemingway at Casa Puga in Alméria, a 1906 bar and restaurant, the happiness of whose room cannot be described except to say we were there on a Monday night and it was jammed and roaring with locals in the spirit of a payday. We exulted at finally, for the first time since Barcelona, feeling we had found Spanish Life, and the time to enjoy it. (Already we had arrived at the Santa Barbara castle in Alicante 10 minutes too late to catch the tram to the top; later, we would walk hot and huffily through Alhambra in Grenada—a place too vast and beautiful to reward Idiots in a Hurry with even a false sense of comprehension. But at Casa Puga, we were in the right place at the right time, in the right frame of mind.)
Tomorrow would be another story. A few, in fact.
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