Agus' Story

Some of those lower, shadier, more relaxed slopes; bah!

This is my current favourite cycling story; and it really is a good ‘un. The problem was that we had set out late and instead of doing the climbs early in the morning, like the Basque girls, while a nice warm sun burnt off the early mist, we were tardy and it cost us very, very dearly.

There were four of us; one was never seen again, one we lost to technical problems on the way and that left me and Agustin to ………. well, frankly, do the unthinkable.

In a Woodhousian way I think I’ve run ahead of myself a little here, so I’ll back up a bit and shade in the colour, much as he would have done it. Fat chance.

In Spain most cyclists wear lycra and go out early on Saturday morning, rush about the place very hurriedly, alone or in little groups of two or four or six, piling up the kms, before racing home so as to take the wife to eat with her mother by two, or if she’s very understanding three, which is the latest hour any self respecting Spaniard would consider healthful to consume his or her lunch. Those odd eccentrics who do not adhere to such customs are the mad fringe; we have an umbrella body called con bici/with the bike. In each city there is a local organisation of these odd cyclists who are prone to sally forth with large and heavy panniers buggering up their bikes and generally detracting from their efficiency. We tend to be very slow and tremendously unpunctual – which is odd here, as most Spaniards are far more punctual than the Brits. We have to stop and examine every small village; if it has a bar, and a village in Spain isn’t a village without a bar, it has to be tried out. Odd assortments of things are carried and even odder assortments of things are worn. Even odder is the fact that there are as many girls as boys in our ranks and kids too, fancy that! What these groups do basically boils down to two things. One; we fight for cyclist’s rights, and two; we organise rides and routes and social gatherings.

Sometimes these rides and social gatherings happen on a pretty big scale. So it was that thanks to the dynamic organism that is http://www.bizizbizi.org/ or the Bilbao branch of con bici, we were touring the Basque country for a week, both French and Spanish parts, seventy of us from all over Spain. I met Agus last year on the “encounters with bikes” ride which was held in Aragon. I’m tall and thin and like climbing mountains on bikes; Agus is short and sturdy and loves climbing mountains on bikes. He knows that its my Achilles heel; he knew, the bastard, that I just wouldn’t be able to resist adding another Puerto to my list. You see, what Agus knew and I didn’t, was that we were going to pass the foot of el Larrau, an ‘orrible mountain where Miguel Indurain, who lives hard by, lost the opportunity to win his sixth consecutive Tour de France to a Bjarne Riis who has since confessed he was doped up to the eyeballs. Well, who wasn’t in those days. Or now. The latest semi-serious, tinged with irony question amongst serious Spanish cyclists, is should Indurain be awarded the tour now that Riis has ‘fessed up………..?

Big Mig suffering ....

For some inexplicable reason I decided it was the time to ‘eff about with the length of my chain, which was a tiny bit too long and was making an annoying little clicking noise in certain gears that I hardly ever use. Long tall Pedro, who usually plays Quixote to Agus’ Sancho Panza, was attempting to replace four broken spokes – essentially rebuild a wheel, not in the comfort of a bike workshop but on the lovely green lawn that was the camping site that morning; we had to abandon him to his DIY. Eventually even Agus grew restive and having been into the village to shop and make his already bulging panniers even heavier, he decreed that we were for the off. We gathered Domingo, a Madrid University English Professor, and Yolanda a gorgeous blonde getting fit for the Himalayas and off we pottered. At the second village we had to stop, Yolanda had snapped a gear cable, fatal with all the big climbs of the day to come. Agus, who is to our troops what Florence Nightingale was to the boys in blue in the Crimea, fiddled valiantly while the sun got ready to burn. After a while Yolanda decided to go back and see what she could find, a bike shop, some friendly folk. Immediately the road tilted upwards alarmingly. Bigtime! And for 3 kms. This was serious folks, and according to my reading of the map we hadn’t even got to the village where it all started. After about half an hour of really hard climbing we arrived. Pretty place – all shut! At 1. This is a disaster for the Spanish, who are as dis-cum-knockerated by French hours as the rest of Europe is by theirs. We eat what we have in the shade of the Fronton wall, too quiet for words. Domingo opts to stay a while more to rest. The climb has really done for him, and we never see him again. Tho' he's alive and well and still cycling in Madrid where the hills just aren't that big, and we'll see him this summer!



The shady fronton.

By now its hot. Really hot. Very hot. Its hot just walking about. Its WAY too hot to even think about getting on a bike and climbing a mountain that reduced such a champion as Indurain to mere mortal levels. It’s the time of the day to find the complete cover of a beech forest's luxurious shade and linger over lunch, savouring the lush silence and thick pile carpet to doze away the heat outside while lulled by the hint of damp in the air and the silvery notes of a nearby stream. And they abound here in the Pyrenees, indeed we rode up thru one. We stopped to leave our panniers in a perfect one. And went on. And on. And up.

Its 13 kms is the Larrau, not the longest Puerto in the world by any means. But it’s the incline that kills. Its steep, it’s a bugger. And there’s no let up. Even the first curves were hard, although there was some shady spots to be had. That soon stopped and it was suffer, suffer, suffer. A stifling dry heat sucked the air from your searing lungs and soon I began to be aware of a distinct suspicion that the only other road visible, with a similarly steep ascent was the other Puerto still to be climbed after this. Lets just say that I wasn’t enjoying it. We got out of the shady bits and we got cooked; roasted we were. And we weren’t going to be rare, no blood; not medium, not even well done; we were going to be desiccated.

Agus could see by now that I was suffering, but more, that my heart wasn’t in it. So he decided to tell me his story. Here we go.

The summer before, Agus was in exactly the very same place, riding the same gear, suffering the same pain, a little woried about his companion - another friend who was suffering and dropped, lower down the mountain. Gradually, our hero - for he is nothing if not a hero, Agus - became aware, through the pain and the sweat dripping into his squinting eyes, aware of a sound, aware of a sound alongside his bike. Gradually he became aware that there were other bikeys riding with him. Peripherally you understand, you don't disturb the rythym, you don't move a muscle you don't have to, it wasn't till he heard the voice that he risked a glance across. "How brave; with mudguards and all!" the voice said ......... and sounded just a little familiar. Agus breathed deep, summoned all his reserves and properly concentrated, sat up and looked across.

And nearly fell off his bike! It was the great man himself, riding with a couple of companions on the historic site of his worst hour. And he was hailing our hero as a brave and valiant man  - literally in Spanish, "Que valiente!" Of course, after that it all seemed easy, "Here I am riding up el Larrau with Miguel," thought brave Agus quietly and with no little satisfaction to himself. and with a salute they were gone.

And so it was that Agus, my brave Pancho ( I had to be Quixote being so much taller; tho' I pointed out that if any one was irrational round there it wasn't me) made a present of his finest hour to me, to encourage me up the ramps. It worked of course. But by God we died on the next puerto.