Tell It to Strava

31 December 2012

Bike Commuting, Princeton University Campus, 11 October 2012

(The camera is too low, but any higher and it'd have been all sun glare.)

I have a confession to make:  For the past few years I've totaled my yearly distances on December 31.  This is the first time I've not discarded the number from the previous year; this is the first time I've compared distances between years.

"So what?" some of you might be asking.  "I do that every year.  I record each ride," some of you might add.  Well, I don't, because I deal with enough competition and insecurity in my day job that the last thing I need is more of it on the weekends. 

In true Hill Slug fashion, and aided by my lack of ability to remember numbers, I've already forgotten the second half of the digits in my yearly total.   Because I have three bikes and cycle computers that keep lifetime totals, it's a bit of work to figure out how far I've gone in a year.  This will keep me from bothering to do the math again until the end of 2013.

Meanwhile, for those keeping track, tell it to Strava (I'm not even gonna link to it), and let's just have fun out there. 

Grinding to a Halt

 Christmas Dinner

 26 December 2012

I rode over to Cheryl's house with my antlers on and her present in a bag smashing into my knee with every pedal stroke.  Jingle!  Smack!  Jingle!  Smack!

While Ron and Cheryl got ready, I fastened her antlers to her helmet.

We weren't planning to go far, just up to the Wawa on 518 in Rocky Hill.

At the Pole Farm, three groups of turkey vultures were enjoying three Christmas venisons.  My presence only disrupted them a little.

We went through the northwestern side of Princeton, up on the ridge, gawking at the too-big houses made visible not just by bare trees but downed ones.

As we turned onto Cherry Valley, I felt a pull on my wheel and heard a grinding screech, as if I'd pulled on my brakes at high speed.  Only I hadn't.  I stopped to check the pads.  Nothing was rubbing.  I spun the wheels.  Fine.  I squeezed the tires.  No flats.  "Weird," I said, and got back on.

There was so little traffic that we took 206 from Cherry Valley to 518.  As we were dismounting, a woman called to us from across the parking lot:  "You still have some kid in you!  That's great!"  I jangled my antlers in response.

We headed home by taking Cherry Hill to the top of the Princeton Ridge.  The grinding screech happened again.  Ron rode up to me.  "Next time that happens, start pedaling.  If it stops, it's your rear hub.  It happened to me last year."  Great.

Cheryl wanted to try something we'd never done:  Province Line south of Drake's Corner.  We knew from seeing it that the road was gravel.  I'd been told by someone who'd tried that "at the end there's just a buncha rocks."

Well, one man's buncha rocks is another Slug's adventure, so off we crunched, dismounted, cleat covers on, through gravel that got big enough to be rocks, and then mud, and then mud giving way to boulders.

We peered over the edge.  "There's the road, down there," Cheryl said.
She started to walk through the woods, heading for a slope that needed hiking boots and free hands.  All that was left of the road was the power line.  Between us and two dirt tracks leading to blacktop was a quarter mile of brambles.

"It'll take you twenty minutes to get down there.  Forget it.  I gotta get home."  I looked back up towards where we'd come from.  We'd already put ourselves into the woods.  We turned ourselves around. 

The air felt colder now.  It was already close to 1 p.m. and I needed to be on the road not much later than 2:15.  "Go ahead if you have to," Cheryl said.  But we stayed together because we didn't really have much farther to go. 

We got up a good head of steam back on Cherry Valley.  That's when I tried to coast again.  Once more my rear wheel pulled and I had to pedal to keep from grinding to a halt.  I pedaled all the way down the Carter Road hill and up past Rosedale and Cold Soil to 206.  I tried coasting again. Same thing, so I just kept pedaling all the way home.

Miss Piggy, Miss Piggy, you're such a pain in the ass.  

Back to Hart's she went today, where I left her for a few hours while I went to the lab and Jack puttered around Princeton.  I picked her up again in the afternoon.  "I cleaned the hub and put new paws in," Ross said.  He then had to translate for me.  (UPDATE:  Yes, I know, it's "pawls."  I didn't hear Ross correctly, and, apparently, he didn't hear me correctly either.)

stolen off the web, of course

Pawls grab springs inside the hub when we pedal.  When we coast they release and let the freewheel spin.  My pawls were getting stuck, or something.  I just did one of my half-assed online image searches, hoping to find a diagram of pawls in action, but I struck out.  I'm sure one of you gearheads will set me straight. (And so you did.  Several of you.)

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc, SUNDAY, 23 December

19 December 2012

Now, you might be thinking, "Curious.  Saturday's winds are looking awfully strong, and Laura's pushing the ride to Sunday.  Is she getting soft?" 

Um, well, yeah, 'cause I've been eating junk, but the real reason is that, since the mid 90's, Jack and I get together with a few of my grad school buddies some time around Christmas.  They're free on Saturday, so that's that.

The Hill Slugs will ride on Sunday instead, starting at 9 a.m. from the Hopewell YMCA parking lot on Main Street, across from Ingleside, in Pennington.  Extra-milers can meet me at my house at 8:30 a.m.  We'll aim for something in the neighborhood of 40 miles with a rest stop. 

There will still be some wind on Sunday.  I get to keep my title.

Rutgers in the Rain

Where the D&R Canal Ends at the Raritan River

"Crap!  Crap!  Crap!  Crap!"

Ed is jumping up and down by the trunk of his car.

Poor Ed.  He tries so hard not to be in this blog, but he keeps doing things that I can write a story around.

"Crap!  Crap!  Crap!  Crap!"

It's my fault, really.  I called Winter Larry at just past 7 this morning to ask if his ride was on.  We were both looking at the radar.  We both thought we'd miss the rain.  So I emailed Ed to tell him.

Now it's just the three of us in the Sweetwater parking lot in Cranbury.

"What happened?"  Winter Larry and I ask.

Ed's car, a VW with a touch too much intelligence, had decided that, because Ed had closed the trunk and then the passenger door, he must have wanted the car to be locked, and therefore did so with a defiant click, trapping Ed's keys within Ed's jacket pocket on the back seat.

"I have three choices," he says.  He could call the Cranbury police, call AAA, or break into his own car by smashing the vent window.

"Don't break your window."

He's wearing hiking boots.  His bike is leaning against the car; his helmet is inside.  "I have a spare helmet," I offer.  "You can ride in those boots."

He hesitates.  He's looking around for something to smash glass with.

"Don't break your window."

"How far away do you live?"

"Half an hour."  He lives, more or less, in Highland Park.

Ed calls his wife, Cathy, who gives him the phone number for the Cranbury police.  After a dozen rings, Ed gives up on that idea and calls Cathy back.  He arranges to call her again when we're half an hour from the end of our ride.  She'll meet us here with a key.

We set off on the usual southerly route.  We've just turned off of Main Street when I make a suggestion.  "We could ride to your house."

"Wanna do it?"  Larry asks.

He and Ed slow down.  We all turn around.  "This is the kind of thing we can do when there are only three of us.  It'll be fun," I offer.

I ride behind while Larry and Ed quibble about how best to get over Route 1 and Route 130 and the Raritan River.  It's a foreign language to me.  My road knowledge peters out at the northern border of South Brunswick.

I recognize where we are all the way to Dayton.  After that, I have a faint recollection of a few winter rides back when Kermit was still green.  I remember Riva Road and passing people ice fishing on part of Farrington Lake.

Kermit is running smooth and quiet.  He's just been thoroughly cleaned.  He has new bar tape (purple) and new tires (Michelins again -- others just don't compare).  Once in a while we pass through a patch of faint drizzle.  As long as the rain doesn't get any stronger than this, we'll be fine.

We ride through Deans, North Brunswick, then Miltown, and into New Brunswick.  Ed pulls into a parking lot to call Cathy.  "Put on a strong pot of coffee," he says.  "We've got coffee fiends.  We're talking Laura and Larry here.  We'll be there in about ten minutes."

Now we're in real rain.  Larry takes us down Livingston Avenue, past the public library, across George Street, and down to the river.  Ed snakes us over Route 18 and down into Johnson Park.  We ride along the water, Larry pointing out the once-fabulous mansions on the hill a quarter mile away.  We stop at a series of small, colonial-era houses carried from all over the state to this site.

"We're really close to where I work," Larry says, so we leave the park and ride up the hill, into Rutgers' Piscataway campus.

"I should warn you, I had a bad time in grad school."

"Should I schedule you a session?"  Larry asks me.

No need.  I only vaguely recognize one building, Waxman.  Microbial ecology?  The fluorescent microscope I used a few times?  My car parked in front, but I can't remember why I was there.  What's the name of the building my classes were in?  I've forgotten.  Completely forgotten.  Nothing we pass stirs memory.  We're on a part of campus that I don't ever remember seeing.

Ed leads us down to the river again, Larry uneasy about his brakes in the rain.  "I've been caught so many times this year,"  I tell him.  "Kermit's going, 'What am I, an amphibian?'"

We turn off of River Road and climb the hill up to Ed's house.  Larry and I lean our bikes against the garage door, under the eaves.  Ed fusses with the bike rack on his wife's station wagon.  While Larry helps, I take a hard look at the hatchback trunk, lift Kermit up, front wheel off, swing him around, and fit him in.  I have plenty of time to clean the frame with my damp bandana.   Might as well get the rims too.  Not bad.  This wasn't a dirty ride, not like last Saturday.

Inside we shed our wet jackets and shoes.  My booties are soaked, but my winter shoes are dry.  My toe warmers are toasty as I pad across the floor wrapped in a towel, answering, "Black" when Ed asks me how I take my coffee.

But there's leftover steamed milk, so cappucino.  Cathy offers around a bar of dark chocolate.  I stir some in; mocha.  Cathy and Ed are emptying their pantry onto the kitchen table.  Larry is surrounded by scientists.

Ed should take Cathy to the Blue Rooster in Cranbury, we decide.  "Yeah," she agrees, as she pulls on her coat.  "I should get something out of this."

The rain has slowed.  We take Route 18 towards the Turnpike.  I haven't been up here since 1993, 1994?  Route 18 has changed, widened, fake rock walls.

The rain has stopped in time for us to unload and re-pack.  Ed and Cathy walk towards the Blue Rooster.  I turn on the engine and crank up the heat.

At home I piece together where we've been.  Ed sends corrections.

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/1993933

Nelson.  It was Nelson Hall.  We were one street away.

Larry says a tour of Princeton University is next.

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc, Saturday, 15 December

13 December 2012

Sun!  There's gonna be sun on Saturday!

Meet at the Hopewell YMCA parking lot on Main Street, across from Ingleside, in Pennington for a 9:00 a.m. start.  We'll go 40-45 miles with a rest stop.  Extra-milers can meet at my house for an 8:30 a.m. start.

December Fog

2 December 2012

The forecast said the fog would clear by 9:00.  As I made my way from home to the Hopewell YMCA I had my doubts.  I couldn't see more than maybe twenty yards in front of me.  It's at times like this that I'm glad Miss Piggy is fluorescent.

Nevertheless, there were three intrepid Slugs waiting for me:  Ron, Mighty Mike, and Ed.

His new compact gearing installed, Ed was having trouble with his chain. He'd removed six links when he'd put the compact in, but one link wouldn't sit straight.  Every third pedal stroke, pop!  From behind I could see the chain jump.  I hadn't given the route much thought, but I decided then and there not to put in anything too steep.  I need to learn how to fix a broken chain, but I didn't want Ed to have to teach me this morning.  We did get to hear him curse, though, running through four languages in fewer than twenty miles.

Maybe the fog was dissipating a little.  The ground was damp, even wet in places.  There were a few spots where I would have liked to stop for pictures, but we were chilly.  I knew I'd get some good shots at Mount Airy.  I've taken fog pictures there before.

My camera's battery, which was full when I checked before leaving the house, went dead before I could take one picture.   Damn rechargeables.  I used my cell phone instead.

The Mount Airy cows were elsewhere this morning.

I stopped again on Sandy Ridge Road. 

Ed, a shout away in front of me, stopped too, to watch a couple of deer in the meadow.  They split by the time I caught up to him.

We were the only bikers at the Sergeantsville General Store.  I can't remember the last time that happened.

 Sergeantsville General Store yard

Miss Piggy needs a bath.

I'd heard rumors that Sun was going to give up the place.  I asked him if he were planning to close it.  "Not close," he said.  "Sell.  I've been doing this for twenty years."  I thought about that, and about how long ago it was that I first stopped at this place.  I think it was in 2000, maybe 2001.  Geez.  No wonder Sun recognizes me.

We sat inside.  I put another pair of toe warmers on my feet, so that my frozen toes would be sandwiched by warmers.  We ate pastries, drank coffee, and dissed lima beans.

When we stepped outside again the air felt colder than it had twenty minutes before.  I chose the quickest route home, throwing in New Road because by then we'd warmed up again.

As Mike meticulously wiped down his bike in the parking lot, Ed explained to Ron the work he'd done on his chain.  This was a good one, he said, but not the highest-end, not the one with hollow pins.

"Sheesh," I said, thinking about the gram or two one might save with hollow pins.  "I carry water, y'know?"

Ed agreed about the supposed saved weight.  "That's a snot rocket!"

"Ha!"

"You're gonna put that in the blog."

"Yep."

A mile from home, the sun finally came out.  I wheeled my bike into the back yard, un-pinned Miss Piggy, stuffed her into one of my pockets, and hosed down the frame.  Miss Piggy got a soapy bath in the sink.

Unofficial Hill Slugs Ad Hoc, Sunday, 2 December

29 November 2012

I haven't been on a bike in three weeks.  On Sunday I'll  feel as if I'm kicking ass or I'll feel as if I'm getting my ass kicked. Either way, I'd like some company.

Let's meet at the usual winter spot, the Hopewell YMCA parking lot on Main Street in Pennington, across from Ingleside Ave.  We'll start at 9:00 a.m. and go for 40-45 miles.  Extra-milers can meet at my house for an 8:30 a.m. start; call ahead for coffee.

Contact me if you want to ride.  No contacts, no ride.

London: Crowds

25 November 2012

London is a big city.  It doesn't feel big the way New York feels big.  It doesn't tower overhead and block out the sun.  London spreads.  London is loud.  Like New York, London always has something going on somewhere.  I've been to London enough times now that I've lost count.  Jack and I have a list of places and people that we always visit when we're here:  the Design Museum, the Tate Modern, the British Museum; the shops in Covent Garden; Brycchan, Tiffany, Mazz.

Our first day was for loading up on coffee and CDs in Covent Garden.  We'd done some research to find a few small coffee roasters who also sold beans.  One of these places, called Notes, was a roaster, brewer, and purveyor of wine and jazz.  I walked out with a caffeine buzz and two small bags of beans.  Jack left with 50 CDs -- 5 boxed sets for about $18 each  (those are iTunes prices).

The next roaster offered me a taste of what I was buying before I took my money out.  I left with 500 grams of high-test and a kilogram of decaf.  "Packing just got interesting," I texted Dale.

We met Brycchan for dinner.  He's a successful English Literature professor in the UK has decided to get himself a biology degree on the side.  My world-weariness of the scientific universe is no match for his enthusiasm.  Now that I'm happy at work (two years and counting, unprecedented), his enthusiasm isn't irking me the way it used to.

On Thanksgiving day (it's just called Thursday over here) we visited the Design Museum and the Tate Modern, both of which were a little disappointing. While I'm better at museums than I used to be (one hour and I'd be ready to leave), I find myself getting annoyed at modern art labels.  I mean, really, if the curator has to describe in florid detail what the piece is claiming to represent, then the artist hasn't done a good job.  Our all-time favorite is a label we saw a handful of years ago on a bronze hot dog:  "This piece represents nuclear war."  Right.  Next?  This time around, Jack and I noticed a distinct positive correlation between the obvious lack of artistic merit and the floridity of the label.

We had dinner with Adam and Louise, during which I introduced Louise to the World of Laboratory Science though an old video on my old iPhone (pressed back into service with a shiny, new, UK phone number) that I'd done for Dale to show her what where I work looks like.  On our long bus ride home, one of my colleagues and his wife texted me.  We got into a long conversation about annoying contemporary art. That she, who has a degree in art history and museums, agreed with me, was a comfort.

Saturday's plans were less ambitious.  We figured we'd stay local and visit a few book shops, maybe the Natural History museum.

Those of you who've spent any time around me have heard me say "There are too many people on this planet."  Nowhere is this more obvious than on a rainy, late-November day in London when one finds that two Tube lines aren't running, climbs aboard a bus that turns off its route unannounced because a demonstration has closed a main road, steps out far from one's destination, and figures one might as well see Harrods  (no apostrophe, the place is that old) while one is in the neighborhood.

Penn Station at rush hour has nothing on this place.  Jack figured he might as well buy his mother some tea while we were here.  I inserted myself into the crush of the chocolate section while Jack waited in the cashier's line.  I'm glad that my suitcase is loaded with Spanish chocolate; I didn't feel tempted (well, maybe a little) to buy anything from Harrods.  Some people love the crowded rush of Christmas shopping.  Jack and I were looking for the exit.

We decided to try to walk back to the hotel, in the rain.  After half a mile of what would have been a 3-mile walk, we got into a taxi that got us near, but not to, the hotel.  The driver, who provided the most entertainment we'd had all day, finally gave up and let us out in the middle of a traffic jam.  We were just a few minutes from the hotel at that point, and we walked faster than the speed of traffic all the way to the front door.

The day ended well, though.  In the evening we met with Mazz and Graham for dinner at a posh restaurant.  We got home smoothly, too.

So.  Pictures.

I haven't taken many.  Those that I have taken, though, are for those of you who really only read this blog because you want to read about bikes and biking.  These pictures are for you.

Painted bicycles border an outdoor cafe:

This one was here just because:

This is not a bike shop.  It is the commuter parking area outside of the Euston train station:

Today is our last day of vacation.  We'll wander a museum or two, then meet with Tiffany for dinner.  I'm going to sign off now.  I have to make all the coffee, chocolate, and books fit into my suitcase.

See y'all on the road next weekend.

Bilbao: Bent Metal and Fat Paintings

11/23/12

Being a vegetarian in Spain is not easy.  That I do eat eggs and cheese makes life somewhat easier.  Even then, there are only so many tortillas (Spanish omelettes) and only so much goat cheese I can handle in a day. I get around it by packing protein bars and a sense of humor.

I already knew that ham is a vegetable in France and Spain.  Being served a "vegetable salad" that included a lump of canned tuna was a new one on me, especially since it came on the heels of a long conversation in broken Spanish during which I said, "solamente verduras" (only vegetables).  What calories I lacked in protein I made up for in carbs and sugar.  There were a few days where I went to sleep not feeling too well.

We'd be in Spain for only two more days before flying to London, where a pig is a pig, a fish is a fish, and a plant is a plant.

Signs in Barcelona appear in two languages:  Catalan and Spanish.  In more touristy areas the third would be English.  Catalan is enough like French and Spanish that Jack and I could usually figure out what the signs meant.  When we got to Bilbao, Catalan was replaced by Basque.  Basque is unintelligible:

This is from an introduction to a cookbook.

Bilbao's main attraction is the Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry:

The topiary dog is souvenir fodder.  In full bloom, the greenery is covered in color.

A specialty beer shop stocked labels drawn by Ralph Steadman:

The street next to our hotel (which was across from the Guggenheim) had a view of mountains on one side and the museum on the other.

There were recycling bins every few blocks too (bottom right in the picture above).

The inside of the museum reminded me of the inside of the Perelman building at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  Fair enough that HUP's architect echoes Gehry, but to me it evoked memories of MRIs and mammograms.  This place has curves, though.

We saw the Claes Oldenburg exhibit.  Anyone who has spent time in Philadelphia knows his enormous clothespin sculpture.  Anyone who's been on Penn's Locust Walk has seen the broken button; anyone who's been a student there has played on it.  Bilbao's exhibit was of his early work and soft sculptures.  The soft sculptures were fun.  As for the early work in cardboard, well, let's just say he improved with age.

The drawings of Egon Scheile were interesting in that I'd never heard of the guy before.  The exhibit that was supposedly on modern interior architecture, which turned out to be about three colossal wastes of space, was a waste of time as well.

We had fun walking through the Richard Serra sculptures.  The second one from the front, with its walls slanting in parallel, was disorienting.  By the third sculpture we'd pretty much gotten his shtick.

It was raining as the sun set.

We spent about an hour at the nearby museum of fine arts, where we saw an exhibit of Fernando Botero's paintings.  A one-word Botero summary:  fat.  Fat people, fat horses, fat, fat, fat.  Comically fat.  Beyond American fat.

From there we went back to the hotel.  On the top floor is one of Bilbao's finest restaurants, and Jack wanted to eat there.  Fortunately for me, the waiter understood what I meant when I said, "solamente verduras y quesos"  (only vegetables and cheeses).  He replied that I would have to have wild mushrooms, in season now, that the chef would gladly prepare for me.  Jack ordered pigeon.  Jack ate pigeon.  I teased Jack about eating pigeon.  Jack cooed like a pigeon.  I texted my English friend, Mazz, who'd we'd be seeing soon, that Jack was eating pigeon.  She replied that I should keep him out of Trafalgar Square.

Two days later, Jack and I were in Trafalgar Square.  I kept an eye on him.

I don't tend to take many pictures in London.  I've got three so far, all of bikes.  I'll post them soon.

Haro: Wineries and Men of a Certain Age

22 November 2012

The train from Barcelona to Bilbao took 7 hours, most of it in the dark.  We pulled into Bilbao after 9 p.m. and had dinner in the hotel at the fashionable hour of 10:20 p.m.  The advantage of eating on Spanish time is that, with the six hour time difference, dinner at 10 feels, if anything, early.

Unfortunately, early was also when we had to wake up the next day for a 7:30 a.m. bus to Haro, something between a town and a village in the heart of the Rioja Alta winemaking country.  An hour later we stumbled out of the bus, the sun having risen only a short time before.  There was a cafeteria in the station.  It was patronized by men, most of them small, some of them bus drivers.  We decided to look for something more substantial.

We found another cafeteria a few blocks away.  Again it was populated by men, small, and of a certain age. After two espressos and a tortilla (what we'd call a Spanish omelet), I began to wake up.

After getting turned around a few times on winding streets, we found the winery that Jack had chosen for the tour.  He's fond of R. Lopez de Heredia's Vina Tondonia rioja's, aged far longer than most winemakers would find necessary, and weird-tasting enough for Jack to adore.  It's one of the few wines I don't spit out, which doesn't mean I actually like the stuff; I just don't spit it out.

We were early, to I took pictures to pass the time.

Is there a day care center for the kids while mom and dad take a tour?  Or are we going to have to sit on these?

The tour group consisted of me and Jack, a handful of New Zealanders (two who had qualified for the New York City Marathon and gotten there in time for its cancellation), and a few from the UK.  We got lots of questions about the hurricane once we told them where, exactly, we were from.

This is the room where the wine first ferments.

Burlap covers the only window:

The winery, 130 years old, has been keeping harvest records.  Grapes used to be picked at the end of November.  This year the harvest was at the end of October.  Only once before has it been earlier, in 2003, when a hot summer forced an early September harvest.

Two wine presses:

While the tour guide answered questions, I took pictures.  I hang around Jack enough when he's talking wine that I have a pretty good idea of what's going on.

This winery has its own coopery -- its own barrel-makers.  The guide led us in.  Here, a barrel is being made from planks of oak imported from the U.S.

Old, wine-stained staves:

A cooper's tools:

An old barrel being repaired:

Deep in the cellars, barrels are stacked in a long hallway, a set of rails in the middle for moving the barrels:

The building was once a warehouse.  Rail cars took loads from the river.

The Ebro (in English, "Raritan"):

Vina Tondonia, one of four pieces of land the vineyard owns:

Inside again, we were taken to the "cathedral," where the oldest bottles age.  Mold -- Penicillium -- covering the bottles and hanging from the ceilings like cobwebs, is welcome here.

To eliminate sediment after the first fermentation, egg whites are added to the large vats.  As the whites settle they take sediments with them.  The winery used to have its own chicken coops.

Sediments are cleared again in a process called "barrel racking."  Wine is poured from one barrel to the next,  its clarity checked against a single light bulb as it passes through.  The sediments stay in the first barrel and the second one is topped off.  This is repeated several times as the wine ages.

Outside, metal rails aid rolling barrels:

Another winery:

Haro, Hollywood, same thing:

Close to 1 p.m., Jack and I were back in the center of town seemingly populated by men of a certain age, small, round, and unhurried.

A butcher, in a white butcher's coat, passed us, a slab of meat hoisted over his right shoulder.

We were looking for the wine museum.  We found it, but it was closed.

At an outdoor cafe we had lunch.  Jack ate octopus with potatoes while I faced a plate of pickled leeks.  Then Jack had something meaty while I had goat cheese topped with tomato preserves.  As we ate, more unhurried men passed by.  One caught our attention especially, but he was too close to us for me to have pulled out my camera.  He was dark-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, small, mustachioed, well-dressed, a suit jacket draped over his shoulders.  He held the lapels as he sauntered past us, first uphill, then, ten minutes later, back down, still in the same pose.

We'd run out of town, so we sat in a park, where the sycamore trees, like the men, were small and round.

The vineyard is on the upper left side of this map.  The town is on the right, and we pretty much walked all of it.

At the bus depot with more time to spare, there were a few things worth photographing.

Back in Bilbao, we wandered the old city, bought some chocolate, and ate dinner (more goat cheese for me) in a near-empty restaurant at the fashionable hour of 9 p.m.  Museums were in tomorrow's plans,