ALWAYS HAVE A PASSPORT

I am here with another chapter about Kent Mills, the friend who's DeRosa I just sold. I had four days to get ready to go to Spain, and I had not been to Europe for over 20 years. I had two bikes to pack, install racks on the bikes. Kent had already gotten me a ticket so I was ready. The question is Would you have been ready? You see I had a passport, I had gotten one a couple of years before because of a story I read about being ready to travel. Mine was just sitting in our file waiting to be used. Let me tell you, it is hard to get a passport in 4 days. Make sure you have one for when the time comes. 

I spent one and one half days in Madrid. I went to Museos, Palacios, Plazas, I must have walked 20 miles. We were going light. I only brought one pair of shoes. Shimano spd shoes with cleats. Bad choice for walking around Madrid. I met Kent at the airport pretty late and we went to the hotel. He was impressed I knew my way around Madrid. He would have taken a taxi. I said no they are too slow so we took a bus to the Puerto de Sol and then got on the Metro (subway) and got a ride to our hotel door. I had to have Kent's bike fixed because it was damaged on the flight over. The bike store I took it to was a mess. I figured they were into some serious remodeling. I found out a year later that it had been bombed by the ETA (Basque Separatists) a week before I was there. 

Early the next morning we collected our bikes at the airport ( I installed the repaired fork) and flew to Malaga to begin our real trip. The road in the photo on the left is the first small road we found. It is so typical of Spain (and Europe). I thought I had died and gone to road bike  heaven. You can see from the photo of Kent that he was quite happy. He told me this was the best trip he had ever done. This was quite a compliment. He had a done a few trips. I was a little nervous but after this road and the smile on Kent's face I knew this trip would be fine.  I have one more chapter on this story I will get to later. I hope you have enjoyed me remembering this. It brings a lot of smiles and a few tears to my eyes. Kent's DeRosa is going away and it all seems so final.

Don