Penguins Bike

July 1, 2026 - biked 87 km (54 mi) - biked 618 km (384 mi) total

If day 8 was all hills then today is all wind. Open your mouth and just focus on exhale because the 45+ mile winds will force air and expand your lungs. If that seems invasive, it’s because it is. Today was beautiful but entirely miserable. We biked so much but also required twice the effort.

We left our little 200 sq ft apartment at 11:15am and arrived at our campsite at 8:15pm with only a few stops for food, water, bathroom, and surprise grave yard.

How to describe the wind.

I almost fell several times. David ran into the curb by the wind. I literally was pushed backwards by the wind while standing. We had to walk up one overpass and pedal hard to even get down the other side.

Biking over rocks with the wind was the worst because you swerve one way to avoid the rocks but a gust of wind could magnify that swerve and you go off the path.

It was brutal.

It took every ounce of mental and physical strength to forge on. In the morning, the ride was so assaulting and my mental space was not great. I went over the interview in my mind, that I had initially thought I nailed, wishing I had answered some questions differently. I thought for sure I wasn’t going to get the job and I knew exactly why. I tried some meditation and non-attachment style thinking. I tried thinking positive thoughts about me getting the job until at some point the wind pummeling my mind numb.

C'est la vie.

…all you can hear is the wind mile after self-defeating mile. So much effort to go so little. I’d take the heat and hills over the wind. The wind is erratic. Like we hear people say, “Ok, sometime turn off the wind machine!”

However, it can be cleansing in a way. Nothing securely strapped or necessary will be stripped away violently.

About mile 30, a text came through from the assistant principal. I borrowed some wifi from this one nice lady but couldn’t get a hold of her. I anxiously checked my email and texts. Until I stopped mid-road next to a beautiful canal, and read that I got the job! I screamed, I jumped, I kissed, I cried. When you’re biking and exposed to all the elements all your emotions are right beneath the surface. You have very little energy to filter or keep your mask up.

I kept fist pumping the air after I started biking using this adrenaline to keep going.

The wind kept whooshing loudly in my ears for the next 24 km we had to bike. It lulled me and all I wanted to was to be off this bike and at the campsite.

June 30, 2026 - biked 68 km (42 mi) - biked 531 km (330 mi) total

We left our cute little "hostel" and began our final day in Spain with a climb. We had met a couple touring yesterday who were doing the PX loop trail around the Pyrenees, which the Eurovelo 8 follows the same path over the mountains to France. They were coming the opposite direction, and said the dirt road to the border on the Spanish side was incredibly difficult. It was very rough and rocky and said going up it would have required mountain bikes. So we decided to skip that section and instead take the local highway, which is paved and less elevation, but more cars. Hopefully not too many cars as there's a parallel expressway that probably most through traffic would take.

But even before we got to that skip, we continued on the EV8 on a dirt road into the hills towards La Jonquera and that already was really rough. Baby head rocks, sand, brush. We had to walk our bikes up one section. Then we bombed down into the town to meet the local highway and got our first flat! There is some sort of thorny plant I rode over and found three punctures in my tube, and probably five more thorns in my tires. Sarah did a check of her tires too and found some but none had broken through. Good thing we had Sarah’s tweezers and an extra hour.

We were in a rush to get to France so we didn't eat breakfast, so we rolled down the rest of the hill into the suburban outskirts of town to a grocery to get a snack. But this grocery ended up being more of a huge liquor store. Sarah went in and got some wrapped sandwiches, and I discovered my tire went flat again. So we drank pasteurized orange juice from a box and I found one more hole in my tube. Good thing I had another patch kit and an extra hour.

The climb into France was gentle and not too bad, but pretty hot and exposed. The border is actually a funny shape. There's a diagonal line through the highway right after a now-disused checkpoint, and then it runs along the road for a kilometer in this border town. The parking on one side of the street you have to go to a Spanish machine, and on the other side, French. El Portùs / La Perthus is a town that feels like a duty free shop, but I don't really know if there's much border arbitrage to be had anymore.

We then bombed down the highway shoulder for the shortest 15 km of my life and it was great, then joined the route back towards the coast. France really kicked up the infrastructure on the Eurovelo. All the paths through the rolling hills were concrete paved and had consistent signage and labeled arrows on the ground. It was easy. France had way different vibes immediately: more suburban, more infrastructure, more people, more agriculture. France definitely feels like a richer country, but there are some things we immediately missed about Spain, like water being a human right and fountains in every park. More about these differences in later posts.

Once we made it to the coast, we started biking north looking for camping again. The coast here is just as fancy as north of Barcelona, so it was all four and five star "campsites" which were just resorts and many didn't take tents. We cooked dinner in a city park, onion, tomato, pasta, potato, tuna. A delight. Then as the sun was setting I did some scouting for guerrilla campsites. Everything around us was so suburban, though, and no options felt private enough to be appropriate. Bivouac camping is legal in France (sundown to sunup with just a tent) but we didn't want to attract attention. The best I could find was a dirt road that ended in the landscape shed for a golf course. And even though we've gotten buff and can climb a short mountain pass, we love a shower at the end of each day. Sarah ended up finding an apartment for rent online for a night for so cheap, surprise literally across from the park where we cooked dinner. So my extra riding was not for today, and we lugged our panniers up an unlit staircase in an abandoned apartment building to sleep on a pull-out couch. Worth it.