(Say good bye to grammar and spell check folks!)
This beginning part was written at Heathrow on the 6th.
A Paradise Lost and Found
It is four thirty in the morning in San Francisco, but it’s a quarter past noon here. I’m at London Heathrow International Airport. IT’S HUGE.
I should be dead tired right now, but I was blessed with the double aged sword of being able to sleep anywhere. I literally think I was awake for all of two or three of the 12 hour flight I was just on. The mini bottles of wine also helped.
The past 48 or so hours have been about as jumbled and tumultuous as they could have possibly been. Matter of fact, I think I’m going to resort to a lovely bulleted format to crack the egg of all of the ups and downs that have occurred. We’ll start with the downs:
• My much-anticipated Knog panniers did not arrive in time for me to take them with me. I waited until the last minute for them, but on Friday I knew it was time for Plan B—and it just so happens that Plan B did not exist.
• On Friday I was also informed that the bicycle I was planning to take, a foldable Bianchi that belongs to my friend Dave, was deemed unrideable.
• When booking my ticket I seemed to miss the finite detail that the goddamn Bay Bridge was going to be closed, not fun with a storage unit in Oakland.
• I locked myself out of my apartment two hours before I needed to be at the airport with three hours of errand running left.
• It is physically impossible to carry a guitar, four panniers and a bicycle box at the same time.
• Though it was in some perverse way a bit exciting, arriving at the airport 35 minutes before your international flight is suppose to leave in not a good idea. Whoever prayed that my flight would be delayed 30 minutes, thank you, thank you, thank you.
• I lost my tent and sleeping bags somehow, so now I will have to buy them in Spain… bummer. I also forgot my leatherman, cute little purple Maglight, and head torch.
• The food on British Airways may be the grossest airplane food yet. Surprise!…
• A car I borrowed to run errands with for the few days before I left came with a dead battery, so instead of being able to get shit done, I was stuck worrying about getting it jumped once or twice a day to avoid tickets.
• Lady time hit mid Friday to add to the ensuing grievous collision that was being nowhere near ready to leave the country for four months to travel by bicycle.
And for the ups:
• Jason Montano yet again proved himself to being one of the most awesome friends on the planet by putting up a Marin Muirwoods with racks to become my new tour bike. I was near disbelief.
(I’m getting tired of bullets and I’m sure you are too. I’m just going to write normal again)
So around Friday afternoon the official pre-trip panic set in. By about 2:30 the bike situation was squared away, and I called my friend Dave to tell him I was not going to use his bike. Dave was looking forward to borrowing my road bike, so he cracked and offered up his panniers in exchange for using it. OK, I had a bike and bags.
Dave and I got back to my place at about 8pm. We were both starving but I did a little space test, and things were looking a little more possible than I had foreseen earlier that day.
I packed the most important thing first. Dresses. Cute cute dresses! After my jaunt around Asia with nothing besides tech clothing, I learned… it does not matter where you are in the world, high heels and a cute dress is always a good thing. Though I did not bring blue jeans with me on this trip either, I did bring a cut off jean skirt. 
I got in some goodbyes of Friday night and drank wine with a couple friends until much later that I want to admit. Instead of crawling out of bed on Saturday at five am like I planned, I got up at seven thirty-ish.
I only had to move all of the things out of my apartment, pack, clean, do laundry, move my bicycle to a safe location, find a way to move my stuff to my friend Tara’s (who is a magical unicorn of last minute problem solving, and I would still be in SF if not for her), go by my storage unit in Oakland, pick up my bicycle from Montanovelo, and make sure I had everything I needed… all before my flight at four fifty five, no big deal! Right…
I think the most awesome thing that happened the whole day was when Tara, her roommate and I were all starring at my stuff in the back of her roommates car (with the exception of my bicycle) and realized there was no physical way for me to carry it. This was when Tara disappeared for a few moments and them came back with a black bag that we could have fit two bodies in, or all of my things, perfectly.
And somehow it worked. I’m almost there, and really for no other reason than having awesome friends, and some weird bastardized form of a culmination of the worst and the best luck in the world—probably awesome friends more than anything though.
I know that getting to the airport in Spain is going to be a whole other monster I have to unravel… i.e. hoping with every ounce of my body that I will be able to fit everything I have on my bicycle, and then hoping to make it to my hostel in time to enjoy the fact I have a hostel for two nights. I have a hostel for two nights!
AND THEN IT GOT WORSE.
After nearly three hours of f-ing off at Heathrow (mainly writing the first part of this blog, and shamelessly starring at strangers), I was getting ready to walk to my gate, which was about to post, and realized that my ticket and the gate had different flight numbers. This prompted me to hustle to the British Airways counter as fast as possible.
So I missed my connecting flight. When I booked it I failed to notice that It was into Heathrow and out of Gatwick. I honestly think it’s a scam. There was a flight leaving for Barca at the same time form Heathrow and I did not notice until the last min. They then carried on to tell me that I had to buy another ticket. It started at about, oh… only 400 pounds, and after talking to the supervisor it dropped to 190. There was no way I was, or could for that matter, pay it. So I did what any person in my shoes would have done and started to cry.
The woman behind the counter seemed to take a certain pleasure in my situation, but the supervisor was a bit more sympathetic. He asked if I had a credit card, or any extra money, and I maybe stretched the truth a little and pretty much told him I had nothing. He still held the stance that there was nothing he could do. So I cried… and cried, and cried my way to the bathroom to have a sit in a stall for a while and put myself back together. After about ten mins I convinced myself I would be okay. I would e-mail my friend Owain I traveled with in Nepal who lives there. I had put him up in SF, and we are pretty tight. I know that if I needed him to come get me, he would. It just would have changed my whole trip, but life is crazy, and I was going to be okay.
When I came out of the bathroom the supervisor was waiting for me and he cornered me and asked me to be as honest as possible. He then said, “How much money do you really have?” I weighed the situation. I was haggard, and jetlagged. If I grew facial hair I’m sure I would have had a top-notch vagabond five o’clock shadow. My hair was messy, and braided and because of my hate for deodorant and the marathon of travel prep that happened in the hours prior, I am positive I smelled like a hippie (more than usual). I had on a little purple vintage dress and a brown hat that was somewhere between a porkpie and something someone who’s yodeling would be wearing. I still think the kicker was the guitar case I had clutched in my left hand. Thank god! I kinda looked like a bum.
In my still snotty and shacky voice I stuttered, “ta-ta-two hundred dollars,” and then released a mournful continuation of the cry I let out at the counter beforehand. I don’t think he believed me, but there was at least something close to warm in his heart, and he told me he’d figure it out… 15 minutes later he returned, and he did. Though the air lunch lady at the counter was still a raging bitch about it, and said a few things that had I not been at the mercy of another, I would have not spared my thoughts about her 1980’s General Hospital hair, bad makeup and improper grammar… which being a Brit and having an American correct your English, I’m sure it extra painful. Oh well though… I made it to Spain.
On my flight the guy across the aisle and I kept looking at each other. He was about my age and Spanish/Catalan. He looked like he was pretty interesting, and once we started talking I found out he was just in China learning acupuncture. He showed me where my guest house was on my map, and then offered me a place at his warehouse as of Thursday, and promised to teach me how to live here for cheap, and told me they have dancing lessons there… this is cool because I really want to learn to tango.
When I got in to Barca I was pleased to find out that British Airways had lost track of my bicycle. Of course… of course! They did. After starting to cry… again, and not believing that it was really lost, and dealing with yet another apathetic withered airline witch, I heard a beeping from the lost baggage conveyer belt thingy, and out popped my bike box, looking very much like it had just been on vacation in Bosnia in the early 90’s.
Upon opening and inspection, they both lost, and damaged quite a few things. All being mainly cosmetic, except losing the skewer to my front wheel, thus making the bike unrideable, thus leaving me with a 40 euro cab ride to pay for, and once again, totally unsympathetic airline people. This induced the third and final miserable cry of my getting to Barcelona.
I made my way to the top of the airport with the intention of snagging someone who was renting a car, and giving them some cash to drop me in the city, but the first person I got was an American who was also going to take a cab, so we just decided to split it.
When I got in I was destroyed but also quite hungry, and in serious need of a beer. I went to some British bar near by and the manager took pity on me and started buying me drinks. He was a Lebanese guy in his late 20s, who obviously had ulterior motives, but I was not susceptible to any of them, because I was pretty much a zombie at this point. He did ask me to meet him the next night, and I did because of lack of anything else to do… he totally tried to smarm on me, but I played it off.
He took me to some terrible nightclub that reminded me of the awful disco techs on Khaosan Road in Bangkok, and was ordering us Redbull and vodkas. This was obviously going nowhere.
So after being here for two days I got e-mail form this wonderful girl named Ann (a friend of my friend Tara… oh Saint Tara) telling me that her friend Matt had an extra room in El Raval (the Barcelona Mission) that I could stay in for a bit. I jumped on it, and he’s awesome! He’s a wonderful musician, and I can’t wait to jam together even more!
I also met up with my friend Marc who is here for the month. He’s a Brit I met on the last Wolves tour I was on in March. He was friends with and photographing Tombs, the other band. He’s a pretty awesome guy. Marc Holmes—a trained lawyer, turned international professional walk-about. He’s here brushing up his Spanish before he heads back to NY for our friends wedding, and then Montreal for a while.
We strolled around all day drinking Estrella and eating tapas, met with my friend Javi after his tattoo shop closed for a beer, and then met with some of his friends from school and proceeded to get 100% wasted. It was fun though.
SO I have pretty much decided that I want to live here. I mean it. If I can find a job within the week, that’s it. I’m at least staying for a month. Tomorrow I’m posting an ad for English lessons… I feel that my grasp of the language is probably better than most twenty somethings traveling around aimlessly.
This is actually how my fiend Ann lives, and she does quite well. It will also help with my tight financial situation. There is no way in hell I’m going to last four months without some type of cash flow. There are too many wonderful things to try and do. I’d rather travel for less time, and enjoy myself more than suffer and miss out.
People are great here. If someone is looking at you, and you look back, they smile. Eye contact is not avoided, but it’s not like starring either. Everyone kisses and hugs, and it’s sincere. There is a warmth, but it is not naive either.
The food is unreal. I can’t believe how good it is. Even the tiniest little place has amazing tapas, and always outdoor seating.
Bike, food and wine pictures and stories to come.
