Day 9 - Nov 23

Today was a 63 mile day with over a 1,000 meters of climbing.  It is the first of five days of riding before the next rest day.  The tour director says these five days will be the toughest of the trip.  I certainly started out day one with an added element of difficulty for the day.  More on that later...

We started out of Granada by taking a dirt road through the barrio.  It was a sharp contrast to the town that I experienced yesterday.  We road through the area where the locals lived.  It was quite sad.  Here are some pictures of their homes:

There were kids wandering around naked, dogs that were half starved lying along the road and insects flying about that were thick as fog.  The houses were ramshackle and thrown together for the basic of shelter.  Stagnant pools of slimy water perfect for mosquitos breeding were prevalent.  There was an old woman who was laboriously dragging a bunch of wood through the dirt to use for cooking.  It was a scene that painted a world much different from the other "city" we experienced.

Once we were out of the city section the road was dirt and sand with sections of deep mud because of the rains of the past day or so.  It made for challenging but fun cycling.  This is the part I will put in my favorite saying/life motto:

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intent of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming WOW!  What a ride!"

I put this quote in here to help explain or reason out the event that took place as a result of the challenging mud conditions.  As I was moving through the dirt road area that had been transformed into a mud pit, there appeared a section of the road completely covered in muddy water.  I tried to ride the fringe of the area to keep from going straight through the deep puddle.  I road up on the high side where there was a small ridge of mud.  As I was moving on the ridge it gave way sending my front tire out from under me.  This sent the bike into the puddle and me flying.  I hit a tree that's had been cut off catching a couple of the stub branches in the chest, thigh and hand.  That in turn flipped me and landed flat on my back in a couple of inches of slimy red mud water.  I laid there for a minute and took inventory.  My first thought was, Michael your luck has run out...  
My index finger was no longer pointing in a straight direction.  My ribs were causing me a disconcerting amount of distress.  And my thigh was doing a bit of complaining as well.  My mental and subsequent physical inventory showed a dislocated finger, bruised but not broken ribs and a contusion to my thigh.  So up I stood, popped the finger back in place righted the bike and proceeded on my way.  I was operating under the guise of ...  it is better to get things moving than to give the assaulted body parts time to stiffen and hurt.  I know what you are thinking, I did check in with the medic when I got into lunch.  He confirmed the ribs were not broken and finger function normal but swollen.  So I was still able to ride and finish the day.

It did add a bit of a challenge as all the climbing was in the afternoon.  And with the climbing comes a need for deep breathing as you try to conquer the ascent.  Deep breathing was not a possibility as the ribs would not allow anything but shallow breathes or they would set off a new assault of pain.

In addition to this I road with the Australian lady who had 7 flats through the afternoon.  That was soooo much fun as well.  But hey why not add a bit of fun to what was already a challenging day.  

This was change number six.

All I can say is tomorrow will be a better day.