Back in the Saddle
And it feels so good...
Hi friends,
We’re halfway through January already! Thanks to everyone who responded to my last email. Sounds like you all made the best of a wild December.
What have we been up to since the ball dropped?
My new ride
Dinner with the neighbors
Let’s dig in!
Buying a bicycle in a foreign land
Bicycling is one of my many passions. Before I moved away from Portland I had a mountain bike, a cyclocross bike, and a Peloton. I didn’t bring any of them with me, not knowing where I would land and what the situation would be.
Turns out that biking is totally a thing here, and I started missing it dearly. So I was on the lookout for a gravel bike - which would best handle the varied terrain and ever-present cobblestones.
I’ve always bought used bikes, and finding them in Portland was relatively easy. My naïve American brain just assumed it would be the same here.
Starting fresh in a new country with a nascent personal network and no idea where to begin looking was a rude awakening. Global supply chain problems and an ultra-tight new bike market compounded the issue.
Weeks of stalking local groups and OLX (Portuguese Craigslist) made me realize that it could take forever to find something, and good used bikes were selling for as much as the new ones. So I quickly switched to searching for a new bike.
I marched down to my local Trek/Scott/Orbea dealer to see what they could do for me. They didn’t have anything in my size, and nothing more coming in for months… some deliveries were even as distant as November.
After pouring over options, they asked if I had ever been professionally fitted. I hadn’t, since I had only ever bought used. So for the first time, I went through a fitting process.
It turns out that the numbers I quoted to the bike shop for my inseam and other critical measurements were all wrong. I should really be riding a size lower than I thought.
It took me until my mid-40s to learn a simple, key fact about myself.
The lesson? Getting out of your routine can help you progress. Or maybe I should pay more attention to detail? 🤷🏻♂️
Not only did they have a couple of bikes in my size, they had the one I wanted in stock. So for the first time ever, I got a brand new bike, along with a helmet, shoes… the works.
Then it rained for a week straight. When the sun finally did shine, I was able to get out for an amazing ride down the riverfront and up north along the coast. It was incredibly liberating, and I couldn’t be happier with my new wheels.
Dinner with the neighbors
Our future neighbors (where we are doing our apartment renovation) invited us to dinner at their place.
It’s a huge goal for us to meet more locals, and throughout our travels we’ve come to understand that food can be a great connector between cultures. But when they asked us we faced a bit of a dilemma...
Vegan and vegetarian diets are less common here in Portugal, and communicating across cultural barriers is a delicate thing. We’re hyper-conscious of not steamrolling in as entitled Americans, and we don’t want to offend anyone with an inadvertent social blunder.
So how do you accept an invitation to dinner at someone’s home and delicately ask for non-standard dietary accommodations? Hilary and I worked together to craft a thoughtful response, putting it on us and offering to bring our own food, go out to eat, or do whatever made sense.
Our ounce of thoughtfulness was worth a pound of understanding. While our new neighbors were vegan-food virgins, they offered that if we picked a recipe, they could get the ingredients and we’d cook together.
We chose feijoada, a traditional bean stew that’s usually very meaty, but can be made fairly convincingly vegan. Hilary found this amazing vegan alheira (traditional smoked sausage with an interesting history) and we brought it with us.
The dinner was a big win. Even as avowed carnivores, they were impressed with our version of their local dish, and we stayed until the wee hours getting to know our new neighbors.
How is your January going? Let me know!
This week in music, I have one track for you - from one of the most formative albums of my life. I got this on cassette single when it was released and I had the full album on both cassette and vinyl. After years of legal wrangling, it’s finally on streaming:
Until next time…
—Don
Love the new bike. I also have a Trek. I've had it for years and it is still perfect for me. I live reading about your adventures. The neighbors sound great!