If he's crackers, we're ALL crackers!

A slight diversion today to fill you all in on a great new (and definitely difficult) initiative. British Olympian James Cracknell is attempting an (almost) 1500-mile trip across Britain, France and Spain, riding, swimming and rowing, to get to Morocco in less than two weeks. I found out about this one through The Independent, who had a feature on the feat in the Cyclotherapy blog:

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/independent/2008/02/is-cracknell-cr.html#comments

For more information about Sport Relief and James's route, click here.

http://www.challengecracknell.com/index.html

It'll be interesting to see how closely his route through Spain echoes the Trans-Iberian!

I'm sorry. I realize that Cabra, Pozoblanco, Jerez, Algeciras, Ronda and Ubrique are NOT in Navarra.

Frkryssakes.

I've just spent six hours sending information on the Trans-Iberian Express to various cycling clubs throughout Andalusia, and I have just realized that, in the middle of the third paragraph, there's a sentence about when we're going through Navarra. As in, Pamplona; as in, like, THREE damn weeks before. I absolutely cannot believe this. If it weren't for the absolute exhaustion that I'm suffering from right now I would consider slitting my wrists for the shame of letting something that small and that stupid slip through in half of the damn e-mails.

I apologize, guys and girls. Not all foreigners are so clueless when it comes to Spanish geography. I've been working for twelve hours straight today. I've been working nonstop for the last seven weeks trying to put this thing together, planning, sending e-mails, preparing stuff and chasing people, and there are days when I have to go to bed because I don't honestly know which of the two computer screens in front of me I should be looking at. If I've sent you a message like this, I beg your pardon. And I promise not to send any more e-mails today.

Gawd, only three weeks until I start this thing...

Twenty-five to go, with giggle fits

I haven't been able to get much nap time in today. I only slept about six hours last night (nerves? caffeine? who knows?) and tried to set my head down about two hours ago. And I couldn't do it. I kept staring at the cardboard Ikea boxes on top of the cupboard and I lasted about twenty minutes before I pulled them down and started to practice packing. Which is kind of dumb because a) the rest of the clothing and footwear from Salomon Sports won't arrive until next week; and b) because I live in a very small apartment. How small, you say? Twenty-one, count 'em, twenty one square metres. No McMansions for this cyclepath. Which is probably just as well, because if I had the money to get a McMansion, God only knows how much cycling stuff I would get on the way.

But now the nerves are starting to set in. The moon is starting to wane, and the next time we have a full moon, I'll be in the Basque Country, drinking txakoli and eating my face off. The thought of being able to finally go and do this is making me smile harder than anything. This is freakin' frightening, to be honest. Candy and I went out for coffee this morning and I was telling her that it's like not being able to decide whether I should scream joy from the roofstops, or hide in my closet from Easter until May Day. I know that I'm not going alone; I'll be accompanied by Andrew, a buddy of my best buddy's brother. So there's going to be some male companionship as well. But half of me just wants it to be Palm Sunday, and half of me would love to beg for another three weeks to get stuff done. I don't know where we stand with the route-marker stickers. I never got around to having the bookmarks made. Trans-Iberian jerseys? I could only wish. And this is basically just organizing a trip for ONE PERSON to do - not fifty or five hundred. How the hell do the organizers of multi-day, multitude events get things done?? (Dumb question, natch: They don't do every single, stupid, niggly detail themselves.)

Here's the funny thing, though. The more I start getting really scared, the more people start pitching in to help. At the beginning, people volunteered to help, but in the end, an awful lot of them flaked out or didn't even bother to return calls or e-mails. But now that it's getting closer, so many people are starting to pitch in and do small but effective things without being asked. María Luisa from Onda Cero is going to do a story on the trip for Onda Cero Córdoba. Fernando stepped in and contacted the printers' for an estimate on the labels. Julián and Gon went over the Spanish version of the handbook and provided opinions. Stuart and Jools have offered to put me up for a night or two in Ordizia, on the way up to providing they're not going out of town themselves during Easter. And Pilar's put an abbreviated version of the press release out to the other members of the ConBici biking organizations, which will hopefully motivate more people to join us.

So...slowly but surely it's getting there.

Slowly being a matter of opinion and perception, naturally.

Easter Candy Panic

I just got back from the grocery store, where I had a slight panic attack. I was buying pens and turned a corner, and came face to face with an Easter Bunny. Easter. Four weeks away.

Four weeks away. I'm trying not to panic, I'm trying to simply focus on the fact that this is only 28 days away, but every so often I come face to face with something like this, and I don't know how to react. A very large part of me just wants to be GONE, already, and I know that a lot of this has to do with the fact that I'm going to be entering a new phase of my life. I know perfectly that this stage of my life is going to mean closure for a lot of things that, until now, haven't been working - relationships, choices, things that I should have done ages ago but which I've been putting off for a while.

But this is a good thing. I know it is: I know that change is always scary, but it's always necessary, too. "Will", after all, is not a verb tense in English: it's a modal verb that can show determination, future results of present decisions. It's also a noun which shows strength, decisiveness, being fixed on a goal.

Thanks for the pretty pamphlet, but...ANSWER YOUR PHONE!!!

A couple of weeks ago, the FITUR trade fair was held in Madrid. If you're lucky enough to have spent the last ten years living in an abandoned village somewhere, and don't know what FITUR is, it's probably enough to say that FITUR is probably Spain's largest tourism trade fair, if not Europe's. Not being much for crowds, I'm not usually wild about the idea of getting into a situation that's packed with people, and at 1:20 in the morning of Friday, February 1st, I made the executive decision not to go. I couldn't find the file number for my ticket. I'd spent quite a while fighting with (and, to be honest, yelling at) my computer printer; and when I started to weep from sheer exhaustion from the effort of changing languages in Word for Windows' grammar checked, I looked at the computer and thought: Why the hell am I doing this to myself, when I know that I'm going to get claustrophobic and irritated, and, in the end, I'm not going to get what I want?

This blog entry is not meant to be a criticism of FITUR. Obviously, if you're the president of multi-million-dollar travel company, FITUR gives you a great opportunity to meet and work with a decent number of people in a protracted time frame. But one also has to accept the event for what it is: It moves money in the world of tourism. And a person who is in charge of a project which doesn't represent lots and lots of money, someone who represents a project which is much more modest, probably doesn't have the chance to connect with people and be able to work with the necessary tourism authorities. Why should they pay attention to you if if your project isn't going to bring in millions of Euros? Maybe you'll get lucky and come across someone who's got the conviction that it's worth developing green tourism initiatives. Or maybe you won't. And if you aren't lucky, what do you have, in the end?

A couple of years back, I had the opportunity to be a participant in a conference on tourism development in the town of Priego de Córdoba, in Andalusia. I'd already given a speech the previous summer at Estepona's City of Journalism summer programme; I'd been asked to do a presentation on marketing to an English-speaking clientele, and I called it like I saw it (after all, isn't that the reason they invite you to these things?)

I didn't offer criticism as much as I tried to offer a cross-cultural assessment of the difference between domestic tourism and tourism that comes from other countries - mostly small things like the paying for quality translations (don't get a translation from the cousin of the guy whose brother's step-sister owns the town bar)...don't assume that "quality tourism" has to always mean "rich tourists" (why is it that when towns announce "quality tourism" initiatives, it almost always involves a golf course? Hasn't anyone noticed that there's a drought in this country?)...take care of the small details (answer your e-mails in a 24-hour period)...invest the money to do a good job of the existing infrastructure...not necessarily expensive or time-consuming things; just things that show that you give enough of a damn to do things properly.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that presentation this morning, as I spent most of the morning trying to get ahold of the authorities in towns whose names, as "Don Quijote" says, I do not care to remember. Thank God I have a flat rate phone plans where all national calls are free, because I have the feeling I'm going to be spending a LOT more time working the phones in the next couple of weeks.

To cite but one example: I sent an e-mail to the tourist board of one province back at the beginning of January, and finally heard from them on Monday. "Call this number," was the answer in the e-mail. I call the number. "No, ma'am," they told me, "we handle all queries by e-mail. You need to send us an e-mail with your query."

See what I mean?

The Trans-Iberian handbook is ready!

It's done!

I'm very pleased to announce that the Participant Handbook for the Trans-Iberian Express (the English version, anyway) is now complete and ready for downloading at:
http://www.scribd.com/full/2061102?access_key=key-29qqvkpc4kll5e41vl34

Like the old marketing tag says....if you like it, please tell all your friends.

And if you don't like it...please tell me!

When you gotta go, you GOTTA go...

SIGNS THAT YOU NEED TO GO ON YOUR CYCLING VACATION NOW:

a) You live in a 20-square-metre studio apartment and you start thinking, Hm. Rather roomy, this.

b) You've sworn at the noisy neighbors once today. You've sworn at your laptop three dozen times. And it's only two in the afternoon.

c) The manager of your gym complains that you've worn out two static bicycles since Christmas.

d) You're cooking on your Campingaz stove for the sheer hell of it.

e) You're using your camping towel for the sheer hell of it.

f) You find yourself spending far more time than usual in the dried-pasta-and-soup section of the supermarket.

g) You can't find anything wrong with the idea of spreading cream cheese with your index finger.

h) The only clothes you find you wash on a regular basis are black, black, dark brown, washed-out-black-going-to-grey and the occasional red garment (for visibility, natch).

Any other signs that I've missed?

How do you know when it's time to leave your "normal" life and head out on your bike?