08/13/2023 Bikepacking Spain Day 5 : God coded reality; AI is the universe’s tech support

Today would end up being a big day for me. My new Tailfin-brand fork-mount water bottle cages would rattle loose… 🪨

We traversed some challenging but beautiful “sound of Music” type terrain. The cowbells always help to soothe out the rocks. 🪨

After going down this rocky descent, I discovered that my water bottle was missing. It isn’t just any water bottle - it’s the Camelbak AllClear, which is our primary purification device. We use it every day here in Spain after having become ill too many times on previous trips. Not only that, but they no longer make this wonderful device (or anything like it). I was determined to get it back. 💦

I went up and up, pushing my bike back up nearly 1600’ - without finding the bottle. Half way up, I did see a bottle in the road from a distance. I prayed aloud, “God, please make that be it.” As I got closer, the bottle had a blue hue; it wasn’t mine. So, I entreated God again: “Please make me find the bottle right near here.” I didn’t want to go any further, hence the new request. I still didn’t see it, and kept trudging up another 800 vertical feet - just short of the top when I finally saw someone coming the other way. He confirmed no bottle in the road. I turned back sullenly and continued to look off the edges and arroyos. After quite a while, I suddenly saw it in a gully! It wasn’t broken either. I climbed back onto the trail… and looked: there in the middle of the dirt road was that bottle with the blue hue: Right where I had asked to find it. God listened and as usual, came through. That’s the tricky thing about God, though; God is kind of like AI in that you really need to word your requests correctly. 😇

Speaking of God and AI, I had AI make up the title of this ride. 💻

It is customary for places in Spain to be closed from 2pm until 4pm. Sometimes, the closure can be longer - from noon until 5 in places. We came here as the one spot on our map to maybe get food, and were fortunate that after knocking and a very long wait, a woman came to the door - happy to sell us some stuff! The selection was mostly the type of things you might find at “Casa de Fruta” near Los Baños California, with prices to match. Jars of jelly, and fancy preserved meats. We made it work.. including a purchase of some bitter almonds, which are illegal to sell in the US. It’s understandable; they taste like crap… poisonous in fact. But at least they get the calorie job done. ☠️

How do Janet and I plot out routes? Step one is to find cool places on the map. Step 2 is to draw a line connecting them on roads or trails. Step 3 is to say, “crap. That’s a lot of climbing. Oh well.” Here is our live tracker for this trip which includes the proposed route: Often we deviate from the plan because everything looks easier sitting at a desk behind the computer.. but we will try to do as much of the plan as we can! ⛪️

Whew! Relief in the shade. It was 90F on the shade, so we decided to “sleep high”. We could have dropped off the mountain, but instead selected a dry camp on the side of the road. 🏕️

It is remarkable that you have enough willpower to coerce a discarded water bottle to lose its hue and become the one you lost. Now, who is God?

Osman I.