travel blog

Tandil, Argentina

"Quiero ser un pendejo, aunque me vuelva viejo."
so nice to be back on a bike! i didn´t realize how much i missed my bike (lies: every time i have to walk somewhere i yearn for my two wheels) till i got on one. those familiar with my slightly bruised and battered department store bike will know that i was of the opinion that i had the worst derailer shimano makes. i now know better. they save their crappiest ones for argentina. this 18-gear thing i have here is amazing in how much it just doesn´t work. like my bike, the front gear won´t shift up from the middle gear. unlike my bike, it also won´t shift down. fine fine, i´m used to it, my baby generally stays on the middle gear as well.

BUT. the fact that the front gear doesn´t really work does not imply that the rear gear works. out of 6 gears, i got 3 to shift. and i say "i got" because i lost count of how many times the chain simply fell off the bike as i figured this stuff out.

one more thing about this marvelous bicycle. i was riding along, thinking "i wonder how much travel this fork has, cuz it´s awfully bumpy..." ha. travel what? the "shocks" on this thing consist of the squishy black things over a completely static fork. seriously totally, utterly, and absolutely for show.

anyways, the ride around the lake was nice. reminiscent of lost lagoon. after peddling around there for a bit, stopping to have lunch at a lil´ place that was playing the argentine equivelant of goldfinger (see title), i took off towards the nearby 2.5 million year old mountain range. didn´t make it too far tho. i left the town and my surroundings very quickly turned rural. i met some of the famed argentina beef...
and pedalled up some steep hills (toronto, think bathurst to st. clair; vancouver, think up lonsdale from the quay). as i crested one hill, another would emerge up ahead. it got to the point that neither i, nor my quads, nor my bike wanted to have anything to do with the hills.
and then...it began to rain. torrential downpour style. i made an executive decision, of the kind that only a solo traveller can make, turned tail and went zooming downhill back to town. competely drenched, of course, but at least i wasn´t going uphill against the hurricane style wind.the town is tranquil, quaint, cobblestone streets...a nice change from the tourist laden coast. and by tourist i don´t mean foreigners...buenos aires, with some 18 million people, empties out onto the atlantic coast in the summer, as the inhabitants that can flee the oppressive heat.
this is their public transit ...and i think most people move around on bikes. this has been the only place where i´ve seen bicycles on the roads...take a montreal driver and multiply their dangerousness by reckless squared, and you´ve got an argentine driver. needless to say, bikes don´t last long, generally. not here tho.
took some pictures of tourists, had them take my picture...yay old buildings.
just in case you didn´t get it the first 10 times, this place does photocopies...first time a plane flew over this city was on the 14th of july, 1914, flown by ed olivero. awwwwww...how nice for him."place where old people live." literally. saw another one where young boys live. i wonder where all the girls are.warms the heart to see that at least they´re trying. yay alternative energy sources!!!

posted by sr @ 03:30