Monday, July 16, 2007

"the future" demonstrated poor performance in round one, but seems to have made a pretty solid recovery since.

two trains and a bus later, i was on the side of the highway in the outskirts of madrid. unfortunately, the highway itself has no shoulder and no exits. the service road has exits, but they are very small, and it seems that all of the traffic on the service road is local. i walked around 12 miles looking for a good spot, and the best i could do was a gas station. every trucker i asked - and they were few and far between - was not going much outside of madrid. had i the patience, i probably would have gotten a ride eventually, but given that i had a plane ticket out of barcelona in 4 days, i figured i might as well cut my losses and take a bus, because i'd hate to waste the time i could be in barcelona on the side of the highway in madrid just because i was stubborn. oh yeah, the signs on the bus stops said that it was in the high 40s celsius, which is above 110 farenheit. it didnt seem quite that hot (maybe the bus station thermometers are too close to black metal strucutres and err a couple of degrees high or something) but it was hot enough that when i put on a light-colored long sleeved shirt i felt cooler than having the sun directly on me. and there was no shade.

so i got back into the city around 7, feeling sheepish, and got a 7:50 bus to barcelona. i watched angels in the outfield dubbed and was pretty proud to unerstand most of it, and got to barcelona around 4. julio came to meet me and walk me back to his place, and the next morning we took his scooter to the skate/nike store where he works. chad got there around 1 in the afternoon. so far: parc güell (the unfinished gaudi housing developement), the beach, lots of the closer on dvd, walking around, fantastic vegan food, good people, hanging out, and fucking transformers, which was awesome. today chad and i are going to find some more gaudi stuff while julio is at work, and then i think we might be going... out. to a club or something. we'll see.

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