09/29/2023 Bikepacking Spain Day 52 : Teleported to a Summer Day in Atascadero.

We started early today in an effort to try and beat the heat. High for today is predicted to be about 100F, or about 39C. 🥵

The scenery is quite similar to home, hence my title. In spite of the heat, we easily covered more miles today than any other day on the trip. There are several possible explanations for that. Maybe we were less excited to stop and take photos because it looked much like home. Or maybe it was because rolling climbing is much easier than the steep monolithic climbs we have been doing. Or maybe the air is much less dense when it is this hot with no humidity, so we have a lot less air resistance making it easier. 🤔

Janet avoiding potholes on one of the backroads. We are glad to have full suspension on this tour - even for the pavement. —

Last night we booked an interesting apartment. We have found that apartments tend to be the same price (or sometimes even a little cheaper at this time of year) than hotels. This place had walls that were 40cm thick and painted white. It had no air conditioning… but inside the room, it was actually comfortable… and Janet will tell you that I don’t sleep well with heat (dry heat by day is fine - or even good with me). It’s amazing what old world technology can achieve in this climate. It wouldn’t work if it were humid, though. —

Inside the room. You can see the thickness of the arches, which matches the wall thickness. —

We were wondering about these trees. I picked up pieces of the stripped bark and it feels light and spongy like cork. The tree looks like an oak. Janet and I puzzled about this, and then I made the connection that Quercus (Scientific name for Oak genus) sounds like “cork”. We didn’t have any celular data to confirm this, but guess what: now that we are at camp, I looked it up, and that is where the word “cork” comes from… so this is an oak tree that has been stripped to make corks. Wonder if this kills the tree? —

Today we have been bumbling about the 37th parallel. For friends in the USA, it’s approximately the latitude of Vacaville, CA.. and similar weather to an hot spell in August. We are quite used to this kind of weather in Atascadero, and even though I don’t consider myself a person who likes heat, I find it quite tolerable because it is so dry. For reference, we started this trip approximately around the 43rd parallel, which is like the latitude of Medford, Oregon on the US west coast. According to historical climate data, we were in the North of Spain as well as the South at the “perfect” times to experience comfortable weather. Average highs should have been in the mid 70s, and lows in mid 50s both locations/times of year. Using historical averages for optimizing trip dates is no longer working! —

We can easily make progress because the towns are about 20km apart, and each town has water somewhere. They seem deserted mid-day.. everything is barricaded (against the heat). No one is out except for us, so we can pour fountain water over our heads with reckless abandon. This works very well - for a few minutes. I do worry about my insulin, though. The “stored” insulin got refrigerated last night and is in a thermos which will eventually equilibrate with the ambient average… but the “active” insulin probably got up to 111F being stored in the black bikepacking bags. It’s upper temperature tolerance is 80F, so we will see what it does. The “ghost towns” come to life at 5pm when stores re open and people return to the streets to get stuff done. —

We decided to camp instead of hotel. Temps are slowly dropping. A whisper of a breeze just tickled me. The couple of flies that didn’t die in todays heat have started buzzing around. A good night to look up and gaze at the harvest moon. 🌚

♥️"A whisper of a breeze just tickled me".... nice words; sounds like it belongs in a song.

Boris F.