| Thursday May 23, 2002 Hello all, It's been a long absence from writing. Suffice to say I've had a rather busy month. First the bike trip, which I'll describe later, then my girlfriend visited for 10 days, and since I've been working hard makin end-of-year tests for all my classes. So the bike trip was GREAT! A total of 520km done in 15hours over 2 days. 5 flat tires (none of them mine) and one health problem (mine! I felt rather sick at lunch on day one and couldn't eat much, but it cleared up and I continued with no problems). We left in the cool fog, but by 2 hours into the ride we were in the sun (though it was still cool at 9:30 in the morning!). The rest of the ride was in the sun and it just got hotter and hotter. Lunch on day 2 was in Ourique, about 80 km from our destination, and it was blistering hot! Luckily on our bikes it was much cooler - we had the wind cooling us off and we we're pushing to hard, so we weren't getting too hot. The Algarve was beautiful and sunny - we spent a day on the beach by the cliffs (the whole place is cliffs with beaches below them!) and, just for good measure, did a 36km ride to limber up. I guess we felt the ride was too easy. Well, it was! We were in really good shape and we just took it easy and arrived wanting more. Yay for training hard! When we got back I went quickly to the airport to get my girlfriend and we spent a great 10 days together, seeing Porto and getting down to a beautiful town near Lisbon called Obidos. It's an old walled town with plenty of it's original character and charm. Lovely people (we stayed overnight in a woman't home - she rents out rooms - which was much better than any hotel), lovely food and lovely scenery. We also spent an afternoon on the coast near Obidos at a place called Peniche. Saw some surfers (I SO wanted to go surfing) and spend a relaxing time chatting and sleeping on some rocks by the ocean. My next mission is to get surfing, which I'm hoping to do this weekend. We'll see. There's also another bike trip planned for the middle of June, from here to the Serra da Estrella and back. It's about 200km each way, I think, but rather than being flat like going to the Algarve, it's up and down several mountain ranges. The Serra da Estrella is the highest range in Portugal, reaching 2000m. And the end of the Portuguese adventure is in sight, too. I fly home on July 10! It seems so close and the time will fly, I'm sure. At that point I can look forward to seeing a lot of you. Yay! Take care, Phil |
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