30.9.2017 Zurich to Sitges
I start later in the morning, as I love to have breakfast with my wife, and we got talking, and at the end it was 9:40 before I hit the road.
Originally I wanted to travel today to Martao, a town close west to Barcelona. That‘s a bit over 1000km, and I thought that will be enough for the day.
There are two things I realized, once again, what I love about those long motorcycle travels. Yes, it‘s purely highway, and not really that interesting to ride. But, 2 things always seem to happen when i do that. Some might never understand why I ride 2200km from Zurich to Marbella, for 2 days, instead of just taking a plane.
First, my thoughts finally have time to wonder. No phone, no email, no „can i have a second of your time“. Only me, the bike, the road. It is true: boredom is the most important ingredient to innovation, to relaxation. Only when you have nothing to do can your thoughts come alive in yourself.
So I ride, and my thoughts drift to issues long forgotten, to ideas barely remembered, to incidents not resolved. I like that. I can hold on to some of that and make it better once I am no longer riding.
The other thing is that you see the world changing around you. I started in the Zurich, passed through the rolling green hills of the Aargau, down to Geneva. I see the hills change to the harsher, brutal rock-faces of the French Alps, which in turn give way to hillsides in France. Later that green, French hillside gives way to the more brownish, dry southern French countryside. That then turns to Spain, the majestic mountains of the Ardennes, where after hours of rain, the clouds are now pierced by light, like the fingers of the creator reaching down through the dark clouds to create pockets of beaming glow at the mountain peaks. Nature can be so amazing, another thing you do not really realise when you just hop in a plane, hop out and your journey is done.
On the bike, you see the landscape change, the architecture change. You get disheartened by hours of rain, and feel jubilant when you finally see sunlight breaking the clouds. You can smell the churro‘s in the air, you can taste the whine, the olives. It‘s a journey with an experience, not just a „visit“.
At the end of the day I continue on for another 100km and end my day in Sitges. The hotel booking.com recommended to me is directly at the beach, next to a seafood restaurant that had probably the best calamaris of my life, a nice few glasses of white whine and a cognac to finish it off. A good day, and it does easily beat airline food.