April 11: Cap Formentor and Cami de Boquer

We woke up at 6:30, ate some granola, and then rode out with lights on as it was still dark at 7:00am. The ride through town was beautiful in the early morning with no traffic and surprisingly few cyclists. By the time we got to the first pass, we had two groups of cyclists pass us. They were faster than Xiaoqin on the climb, but on the descent I caught and passed most of them—they were clearly English cyclists who were not used to the kinds of speeds you can regularly approach in the Bay Area or Mallorca.

Riding up past the tunnel, a pair of male goats started fighting each other in the middle of the road in front of me. I stopped to take a quick picture and then Xiaoqin caught up and we kept riding with vim up to the lighthouse. It was so nice at the light house with no cars, and just a few cyclists. We took selfies and admired the scenery and then descended.

At this point, I wanted to get back to the hotel to ensure the kids could eat—they had been denied entry to the dining room when not accompanied by an adult at one point during the stay. So I put in a burst of effort and set PRs all the way back to the hotel. I worked hard enough Garmin to re-assess my FTP at 187W, which was a downgrade but perhaps understandable given that I was coming down with a cold and of course was fatigue with a week of fairly hard riding.

The others had already started their ride by the time I got to the hotel, where I parked my bike and started gathering food at the breakfast room. Xiaoqin showed up after a bit and we ate a leisurely breakfast before going back to the room and changing. We packed some water into our backpacks, and then took the bus towards Port Pollenca downtown, where a 10 minute walk took us to the trail head for Cami de Boquer.

The trail took us up high and granted us views of the seaside town before weaving amongst the hills. The terrain was a lot like a desert, wind up and around the hills, but when you saw the mediterranean it was glorious, with cliffs falling straight down to the sea. Even though the forecast was for rain later that day, it was sunny and warm. The thing about hiking in Europe is that you can’t expect a wilderness experience except in a few select places, and Mallorca was not one of those select places. There were lots of people no matter where we went, and on the beach even though there were buoys marking off the swim areas it was quite clear that the water was not yet warm enough for anyone to want to jump in and swim.

We hiked back to the bus stop, and once there, rather than getting of at the hotel, we took the bus all the way to old town in Alcudia, and explored the old town, stopping at a tapa place for Bowen and Xiaoqin to sample their Tapa platter, buying ice cream and eating it before taking the bus back to Club del Sol.

We got back to the hotel early enough to start packing bikes. We started with Bowen, this time with myself being smart enough to not remove the stem but instead remove the removable front plate of the face plate of the stem. As I took  his seatpost off his bike I noted that he had an inch or so left before the minimum insertion line. We had raised both kids’ seats during this trip. We packed his bike, and then started work on mine, which was straightforward and easy --- not having paint on the titanium bike meant that I didn’t even bother wrapping the frame with pipe insulation, trusting the hard metal to resist any scratches from the softer aluminum and steel parts stored in the same box.

After that, we did Xiaoqin’s bike, which also took in the chain oil and liquid wax, as well as any tools not needed to pack Boen’s bike, which we would save for the next day. When we were done we had all the bike boxes back in the luggage storage and the balcony was free of bikes except for Boen’s.

It was Mark’s birthday, and we scrambled around trying to find a birthday present for him in vain, until Arturo had the smart idea that he could sweet talk a waitress into finding a candle and presenting him with a cake.

So it was that at dinner we sang Happy Birthday to Mark, along with the rest of the dining room as a cake got served! I gave Arturo the wine that was in our room that was untouched. It was going to rain the next day so we had no regrets about having the bikes packed so early that there was no chance to ride the next day.

Review: Fundamentals - Ten Keys to Reality

 Fundamentals is written by a Physics Nobel prize winner (Frank Wilczek), and is an elegantly written paean to science as well as philosophy, which I thoroughly enjoyed. For one thing, he starts with principles about what science is, and how as a way of knowing it’s completely different all the other ways of knowing (religion and laws being two examples he raises). I enjoyed his compartmentalized approach—laws can only make sense if we assume that humans have free will, but obviously free will isn’t compatible with what we know about physics, but they are different realms of exploration and study and we should keep them separate! I appreciate the pragmatism.

Free will is an essential concept in law and morality, while physics has been successful without it. Removing free will from law, or injecting it into physics, would make a mess of those subjects. It is totally unnecessary! Free will and physical determinism are complementary aspects of reality. (kindle loc 2693)

As far as science is concerned, his description of the fundamental particles and forces in a small table is succinct and makes it clear how compressed the laws of physics are. (Don’t worry, he goes into detail about what physicists consider “laws.”)

There’s a reasonable amount of speculation throughout the book, including the observation that electronics (computers and the like) have switching frequencies more than a billion times faster than neurochemical signals, so it only makes sense that when they get to a certain level of sophistication there would be no way for a human to keep up. Presciently, he notes that it probably wouldn’t take more than a century or two to get AI to the point where no humans can keep up other than providing direction.

The more I read the book the more I enjoyed the philosophy. For instance, he discusses living forever as being awesome, and that dying is a waste of all the learning and experience built up over a lifetime. I thoroughly agree!

Scientific understanding bears such abundant and delightful fruit that eating from its Tree of Knowledge can spoil one’s taste for other foods. Nonscientific literature can come to seem stale; nonscientific philosophy silly; nonscientific art pointless; nonscientific traditions hollow—and, of course, nonscientific religion nonsensical. (kindle loc 2753)

 

April 10th: Lluc to Sa Calobra via Bike Shuttle

We ate breakfast early and started riding towards the pickup location at around 7:30, with pick up time at 7:45. We rolled into Port Blue exactly as the shuttle bus was rolling in. Stephan and Otto were getting into their “private shuttle” as we rolled out of Club Del Sol. He would later tell us that the “private shuttle” was actually a rescue van that was delivering repaired bikes all over the island. Nobody had told the driver that he was to carry a tandem, and the driver had to do some work to fit that long bike into the trailer.

Unlike the Andratx transfer where Port Blue was the last stop, Port Blue was actually the first stop and the shuttle pulled into Port Pollenca where there were more bikes waiting for pickup. I used the rest room and got a nice picture of the shuttle.

The shuttle ride was relatively short—it being early there wasn’t a lot of traffic to slow down the van with its trailer. We were dropped off at the Respol gas station where Otto and Stephan were already cooling their heels (they’d grabbed some food and popped back into the shuttle) waiting for us.

With that, we started riding towards Sa Calobra. Arturo would later explain to us that the name meant “The Snake” in Spanish, an apt metaphor for the twisty curves the road would take all the way down to the Mediterranean from 2400’ up.  The approach was not flat, but a series of easy rollers along baby-bottom smooth roads that characterize that part of the island.

At the high point, I kept going, only to receive a text message from Xiaoqin later saying that the kids had reached the high point and refused to keep going. Arturo said later, “It was clearly pre-planned. Boen even looked a bit disappointed.” I assumed the kids would ride home from there, since they knew the route, but they had misunderstood and would wait there the entire time. I was willing to let them do this—one of the reasons Boen brought the single was so that he had a modicum of independence, and if you don’t give your kids any rewards for independence then they would just learn to dependent the whole time.

We made it to the Sa Calobra intersection, waited for everyone to gather, and then I gave instructions: if you’re going to take pictures do it on the way down, because on the way up you might not feel like doing so. There’s a climb to the saddle, and there’s a café at the bottom so we’ll regroup there so those who want to ride the entire descent in a flow state won’t feel obliged to stop for regroups. Watch out for traffic because there are places where the road turns into a one lane road and the cars will go in both directions.

We then started the 200m climb to the summit. Once at the top, it was so warm that I decided to just start riding down without waiting for the others. I might have stopped a few times to take pictures, but by and large I just took advantage of the relative quiet to enjoy the flowy descent. At 7%, it was just gentle enough to enjoy the views while still gathering serious speed between corners.

At the bottom, I parked my bike unlocked, walked into the self-service café, bought a cup of coffee and some cake, and waited for the others. They arrived just as I’d taken the first sip. I waved the folks over and we all had a snack at the coffee shop to fuel up for the climb.

Before starting the climb, I mentioned the beach to the group, so we made the customary journey to the tunnel, passed through both tunnels, and reached the beach. It was already bustling with sunbathers, swimmers—most wearing wetsuits—and tourists.

We took photos and walked back, except for Joe, who’d realized that with his speedplays he was better off riding to the tunnel. Once we were back, I told everyone to do the climb at their individual pace, and that the regroup was at the intersection where there was a café. However, if you got there early and got bored, you could turn right onto the main road and ride 200’ up to the tunnel. Past the tunnel, you’d get a nice view of the lake/reservoir.

With that, we were off. Today was the day my training program called for a high intensity of effort, going for 180+ watts for the climb. This proved to be challenging—while 180W seems easy at the beginning, after a few minutes my heart rate started to rise, and it would keep going until it hit pretty high intensity. I tried sustaining this, but after 20 minutes I fatigued and had to back off a bit before resume that intensity. It turns out that learning to hold this power for longer is one of the differences between a structured training program and “riding any old how” the way I’d always done.

At the top, I paused and sat down for a bit. Mark caught up and we rode together to the tunnel and visited the lake. Mark was feeling frisky and rode all the way to the end of the lake and back while I turned around and went back down, parked my bike. Arturo and Joe showed up, as did Mark, and we grabbed a table in the shade. Joe was in a hurry to get back to the hotel, so he left pretty quick, but I bought a couple of cans of coke for Arturo and Mike and a glass of fresh squeeze orange juice for Xiaoqin.

When Xiaoqin came back we started riding back, because Joe texted us that our kids had been waiting for us the entire time and were hungry. Unfortunately, I’d bonked and wasn’t making good speed, though by the time I got to the kids they were already reassured by Joe that I was coming, so they weren’t antsy, though complained a bit about how long we took. “I thought you were going to go straight back to the hotel!” “Mom told us to wait!” “Really?” “Um.. maybe…”

I rode the kids to the Respol garage, where we parked our bikes, and bought a bunch of food to eat. I immediately started feeling better, and by the time Xiaoqin showed up and ate her fill we were raring to go again. The ride back down Col de Feminia was easy, despite the headwind, and when we got to Pollenca I turned on the GPS and routed ourselves back to the hotel along another of Mallorca’s narrow, beautiful backroads, dumping us within a block of the hotel at the main road.

Over dinner, we debated what to do. Everyone was so tired that Puig Major was out of the question. Mark had a proposal, which was to do parts of the roads he’d missed on the first day of riding. That didn’t appeal to me, so I decided that we would do Cap Formentor again, but early in the morning so we wouldn’t get any traffic. The kids didn’t want to ride at all, so we’d get back, eat breakfast, and then take them for a hike.

The others debated options back and forth. Stephan wanted to take both kids on the tandem (Benjamin would fit on a WeeRide, but the constraint then became to get him back to the hotel before he fell asleep). The rest eventually decided on doing the reverse of the short loop we had done 2 days before.

April 9th: Col Feminia

My jet lag was almost completely over, getting up at a normal time and eating breakfast. We hit a snag—Boen had lost the key to his bike at the bike shop! It was a 5 Euro penalty for the bike shop to break the lock, but they were pretty forgiving about it. (I”d tried to pick the lock with various tools, but the lock was clearly of better quality than the locks I had picked on Montebello road 30 years ago)

Leaving the hotel at 9:00am, we rode towards Pollenca and then headed on the gentle climb after drafting a couple of cyclists. Boen was flexing his muscles again, riding hard up the hill drawing thumbs up from the many cyclists who passed him and yet were impressed by a 10 year old riding these big mountains on his own single bike. Whatever else you can say about Mallorca, the feedback from other cyclists were making Boen quite enthusiastic. Boen finally mastered drinking from the water bottle while riding, and then placing the water bottle back onto the bottle cage.

At the top of Col Feminia, I doubled back down to pick up Bowen, who wasn’t actually very far back. From there, it was a couple of climbs before we saw the Respol gas station, which had more cyclists than a typical century lunch stop in the US. The place probably made far more money selling food to hungry cyclists than it made from selling gas!

After that, we descended down to Lluc and followed the limestone cliffs. The road here made Serpentine switchbacks along the cliffs. I had to keep reminding myself to slow down so as not to goad Boen into exceeding a safe speed, but Boen crowed with joy when he caught up t the tandem by finally shifting into his big chainring and pedaling hard.

We rode down to the valley and then back again via the bike route we were now all too familiar with. We dropped the kids off at the hotel but made sure that they didn’t keep their bike at the bike shop, but rather in the balcony of our apartment unit, since we had an early ride the next morning.

Xiaoqin had decided that her shorts were too small, and Mark was also interested in visiting the Assos Outlet so rather than just stop riding I picked up a backpack, stuck Xiaoqin’s shorts and receipts in there, and we rode to the Assos Outlet, only a half hour by bike rather than a 40 minute bus trip wich interminable waiting times at bus stop. Arturo took a look at the prices on Assos’s website and complained that a full kit from them cost more than his bike (which was an exaggeration). I was too tired to explain that only the shorts are worth it for me (though Xiaoqin loves their jerseys)  and they were 40% off at the Outlet rather than paying inflated US prices.

I’d been dreading riding the Playa du Mura strip, but to my delight our Garmins routed us onto beautiful backroads, including a gravel bypass which was a delight. Even the short section on the strip wasn’t oo bad as trains of cyclists dominating the road chased away annoying cars!

I was so impressed by the Assos half-shorts that I was determined to buy a second pair for touring use this summer. Xiaoqin exchanged her shorts for one sized bigger (despite the staff continually telling her that she really was in the right size), and found a nice pair of sunglasses as well as another item at a great price. We made it back to the hotel in time for dinner (and for Arturo to say that he would have come with us if we’d told him we were riding there instead of taking the bus) Mark didn’t find any tops his size but did buy shorts as well as the deals were really too good to pass up. We also bought cereal and lactose free milk for breakfast the next morning, as well as instant noodles and mortadella.

At dinner, we ate well. Stephan had managed to arrange for a private shuttle to take him to the Respol gas station the next day, since his tandem wouldn’t have fit in the regular shuttle and the regular shuttle was sold out anyway. He would report later that the “private shuttle” (which was not at a big premium to the regular shuttle) turned out to be a driver who was delivering repaired bikes all over the island.

The kids complained about riding the next day. I pointed out that the bike shuttle was basically giving us a free 1700’ of climbing!

That evening, Mark did extra homework and gave us a new route that started from the Respol gas station instead of Lluc proper. In addition, he noticed that there was the possibilities of using the backroads through Pollenca instead of the main road we had ridden the day before.

Review: The Beauty of Falling

 The Beauty of Falling is a memoir/teaser for Claudia de Rham’s theory about heavy gravitons I claim it’s a teaser since it doesn’t actually cover any of the math involved in her theory. In fact, I was nonplused by her statement that with a high mass graviton could exist, since my understanding was that gravity waves travelled at the speed of light and anything that had to travel at the speed of light had to be massless.

(A book I later read talked about how photons can have gravitational effect, since spacetime isn’t warped just by mass, but also by energy due to the mass-energy equivalence)

The memoir part of the story is pretty amazing—born in Lausanne and then having an international lifestyle, she spoke multiple languages with an accent, which apparently can be annoying as everyone you meet tells you it’s amazing how quickly you learned their language, not knowing that she was a native speaker.

A large part of the book covers her attempts to become an astronaut and making it deep into the selection process until she was disqualified for having a latent TB infection acquired during her time in Madagascar.

I happen to know professional physicists and I can attest to their extreme travel lifestyle. It’s definitely not an easy lifestyle that’s conducive to raising kids and I can only imagine doing so while attempting to qualify for the European astronautics program makes it even more challenging—she describes taking flying lessons as soon as she could afford them as part of her plan.

I enjoyed the book, but I’m afraid I didn’t come away with any more understanding of how heavy gravitons change how we view gravity than before reading the book.

April 8th: Emita de la Victoria

We all woke up late and had a leisurely breakfast. Before getting organized for the hike, I replaced Bowen’s front tire. I also took the time to rewax my chain and Xiaoqin’s chain rather than replace the chains with freshly waxed chains we’d brought with us. For the hike, Arturo was so impressed by Emita de la Victoria that we booked 2 taxis to do the hike. This was an out and back hike to the summit of the peninsula, which granted us a nice view of the area. Unfrotunately, Benjamin’s stroller couldn’t get up the super step stuff, so when we had all regrouped we elected to walk back to the bus stop at Bonaire.

The bus stop at Bonaire, however, turned out to be decommissioned, so we had to order taxis anyway though the taxi was cheaper this time since w’d walked a couple of klometers off the fare! Back at the Club Del Sol, Mark suggested going sailing on the Hobecat rental he’d seen in Pollenca. Boen was at first excited but as soon as they mentioned they were going to ride there Otto mysteriously got a headache and Boen decided not to bother. The kids definitely took the “rest” part of the rest day seriously.

Xiaoqin and I had spotted that there was an Assos Outlet and I determined that we could visit the Outlet by bus. It was a 40 minute journey, but once there I found what I had never found before in the US, which is size medium Assos men’s half-shorts (no-bibs) at 75 Euros. I actually test wore both the medium and the large and they both seemed to fit fine, but the staff there looked at me and said, “You’re a medium. Large is too large.” Xiaoqin had found some shorts, a nice jersey and a jacket as well. We spent our money and made it back to dinner.

At dinner, we discussed the next day’s route. I walked through all the options, including Ruda Cuda, which was an 82 mile ride. With fresh memories of the 83 miles the day before in mind, nobody was excited about that. I’d also suggested doing Cap Formentor again—in fact, everyone agreed that Joe who hadn’t done the lighthouse ride chose the next day to do so, and to do it early. With an e-bike, he could leave at 7:00am, bike to the top of the lighthouse, and get back to the hotel before the breakfast room was closed and avoid all the traffic we had seen on Monday!

We eventually decided on a short loop I’d designed to climb Col Feminia, and then descend to Lluc. I’d laid it out so that folks would have a chance to ride up Col Feminia which was the designated descent for Friday’s ride, where Sa Calobra would eliminate any desire to take the harder route back to the hotel if ridden at maximum intensity.

Review: Empire of AI

 Empire of AI is about OpenAI, with the inside story about how a couple of years ago over a weekend, Sam Altman got fired by the non-profit board and then got himself brought back. It's got all the juicy details behind that backstory, and describes a high level of corporate politics that I'm glad I've never had to witness first hand, despite having various toxic managers in the course of my long career in Silicon Valley.

The book is also about a lot more, such as the environmental and social costs of the scaling up of modern LLMs. The problem with the author's approach, however, is that she appears to be writing for a non-technical audience, giving you abstract ideas of the environmental costs of serving a gemini query vs a regular google search. I would have rather gotten absolute numbers. There's an entire section on how the human reinforcement folks in 3rd world countries working for scale.ai or one of those analogues suffered from mental health problems. But any skeptical reader would see that the fact that those workers continued working indicated that they didn't actually have any better jobs available, and that the AI sweatshops were actually the best jobs they could find!

Ultimately, I came away with an understanding of how Sam Altman could get so much resources to build massive data centers and consumer 40% of the world's RAM production. But if you had a computer scientist's mind, you'd also realize that the current LLM approach is already hitting their limits --- when you've already added all of reddit and 4chan into your training corpus and is already using video to speech to create more text for your LLM to train on, where's the next order of magnitude of scaling up going to come from? Sooner or later you're going to hit diminishing returns (assuming you haven't already), and I'm guessing that eventually the lawsuits about OpenAI and other companies illegally scraping content they didn't have permission to use will get to the point where those creators would have to be compensated.

Anyway, the book is good reading (but you need to read it with skepticism), and I'm guessing the OpenAI employees are getting paid so much so they will happily put up with a level of toxic politics that I've never encountered.

April 7th: Andratx to Club Del Sol

Waking up early, we ate breakfast in our room, which had a kitchenette so we could make instant noodles and a couple of coffee pods. Mallorca is on the far end of the central European time zone, which meant it would be dark fairly early in the morning, but in exchange it stayed light enough for cycling until 8:00pm.

The bus ride was  uneventful. I’d always assumed that people taking the bus were all going to do the gorgeous coast route, but in fact, the English cyclists who shared the bus with us were planning to use the easier inland route. They were very impressed when they heard that Stephan and Otto were also going to do the coast route.

The coast route to Estellences starts with a 1000’ 5% grade. Joe was worried about his battery lasting the entire day, so he chose to do the first couple of climbs without battery assist. Once past the first climb, the ride develops an undulating character, swooping up and down the contours of the terrain, granting beautiful views of the mediterranean that rival California’s highway 1. What made it better, of course, was that first, the road was in exceedingly good condition, amost perfectly smooth, as though repaved only in the past year or so. Mallorcan drivers are also far more polite than their California counterparts.

We stopped for coffee early on, and ate Empanadas and had coffee to fight jet-lag. After that we rode to Esporles and then towards Deia, where a supermarket lunch was the order of the day. At this point, the group was broken up—Xiaoqin, Joe, myself, and Mark Brody in the forward group, with Arturo providing support for Stephan and Otto on the backend.

Past Deia, the road does one final climb before descending to Soller where rather than ride Puig Major we would ride Col Soller, itself a 1600’ climb from almost sea level. What sucks about Soller is that the road pavement is terrible, and up until the auto-only tunnel, cars and bicycles share the same road. At the tunnel entrance, however, bicycles get to ride the old road rather than the tunnel. While this adds 1000’ of climbing, in the mid afternoon the shadows were long enough to provide ample shade, and there’s a café at the top that wasn’t there the last time I rode by 7 years ago.

I was feeling bloated and mildly nauseated from having eaten so much over the day, so all I did was order a lemonade to share with Xiaoqin. Mark came by, and then we all elected to ride together the rest of the way. Mark had routed us through Bunyola, where we did decide to give the Orient valley a pass for lack of time. From there, it was not 10 miles of riding before we hit the bike path we saw 2 days ago. Since I now knew all the short cuts I took over navigation duties. I even had enough energy for a finishing spring kick.

We made it back to Club del Sol just in time to take a shower before dinner with the kids., who had gone for a ride with Adria Bauza, a guide highly recommended by Brad Silverberg. Ironically, the kids had ridden the Orient Valley via ar shuttle (which had newly paved roads) , and they would be the only ones to ride the Orient valley on the trip. Bowen even had a flat which highlighted that his front tire had worn out. Good thing we had a spare tire with us!

Arturo, Stephan and Otto would make it right after dark, giving themselves 15 minutes to load up their plates for dinner. That night, Arturo's call for an after dinner walk got no takers.

The kids had had a great time with Adria, and they considered the ride with him one of the two best rides on the trip.

April 6th: Cap Formentor

The last time I’d gotten to Mallorca, I’d ridden every road I could, but at the last minute Linus Gerdemann had informed me that I had neglected to include Cap Formentor. This time, I was determined to rectify that oversight. Rosie would join us today so Stephan and Otto had a chance to rest up in preparation for Tuesday’s cross island tour.

We rode North from the hotel, through the beach area of Port Pollenca before finding the main road to the Formentor lighthouse. Stephan had ridden this route earlier, and said that he’d never seen so many road cyclists on one road. Indeed, even though the hour wasn’t late there were cyclists in both directions (the route was an out and back).

After the first climb, the road descends almost all the way down to sea level before winding away around the Peninsula. As we started the second climb, Bowen rode up and said, “My shifter doesn’t work.” One look and it was obvious that his shift cable was a goner, along with the barrel adjuster on his downtube. Arturo happened along, which was fortunate. He ripped the cable away from the stop and make-shifted a knot. The chain settled onto 4^th gear, which would let Bowen finish the ride albeit without the ability to shift.

To Bowen’s credit, he refused to let this obstacle stop him. He kept going on a single speed, demonstrating that even if he kept professing that he didn’t like riding, once he got started he had the will to finish. The ride passed through a tunnel, and then a final descent before a short climb to the lighthouse itself. The final approach had turned into a parking lot—there’s no metering for parking at the lighthouse, and despite it being a Monday the parking lot was already full and cars were now jammed up along the road, with many drivers making the ill advised decision to do a 3 point turn on a single road adding chaos to the clutter. While everyone agreed that the ride was gorgeous, we all agreed that the traffic was the least favorite thing about the ride.

I started descending from the lighthouse but then I heard Mark shout “Piaw, wait up!” A cyclist caught up to me and asked me if I had an 11s quick link. Normally I would have an extra quick link, but because Formentor was so short, I had swapped out my normal saddlebag for my extra small saddlebag which did not have any spare quick links! I was flattered that everyone thought that I was the kind of person who would have such spares and normally I did, but not today! I would remember much later that I actually did have a spare quick link in Xiaoqin’s saddlebag but she’d already gone on ahead!

The return felt far easier than the outbound leg of the journey. Part of it was that Xiaoqin was going to pace Bowen while I paced Boen. Boen had elected to bring his single bike on this trip and he was making the most of it, attacking each climb with vim and working for all he was worth, able to stay in any draft on the flat.

At the top, we waited for Bowen before doing the hike and then doing the descent to Pollenca, where we went to find a bike shop that could replace his derailleur cable. It took 2 tries since the first one we tried was about to close for lunch. I had also assembled the crank wrong, leaving too much space on the left crank, and I tried to borrow a Shimano tool to fix it, but the shop mechanic said he’d just fix that as well.

Boen wanted to head back to the hotel to play with Otto, so he rode off with Arturo while Xiaoqin, Bowen and I had lunch while waiting for the bikes to get fixed. Just as we had finished eating, the bikes were done. The charge—15 Euros including the replacement cable.

We rode back with no incident. To my delight, the buffet dinner was different every night and would remain so every day of the trip. Joe had arrived and picked up his rental bike. We had to get up and leave at 7:00am the next day for the shuttle to Andratx for the ride across the island. We discussed various options. Mark suggested that we leave out the Orient valley to save about 1000’ of climbing, and that appealed to most people.