It's been a long day. The flight was ok but I barely slept and more and more I find my body starts hurting in various places if I cannot move; feet, back and now right shoulder. The shoulder bagan bothering me when I wiped out on street car tracks in San Francisco just before the Pacific Coast Tour. Ever since if I don't use it and move it it gets painful. I think it is all because I missed a tackle in the York-Ottawa rugby game in 1984 or 5 or ? ... and sustained a pretty bad rotator cuff injury. I could not lift my arm up for weeks.
My seatmate on the flight was a Chinese guy working on a Ph.D. in process management or something in Milan. He was in San Francisco for a conference. All of his classes and works is done in English. He was impressed by the Chinese food in SF and says all the Chinese food in Milan is made by people from a Chinese province that has crappy food.
At the immigration line a lively discussion broke out with a bunch of people from the Bay Area. On guy bought a boat in Portugal just before the pandemic and was going to see it and work on it for the first time. His kids don't want him to sell it but they didn't want to come help get it in shape. I know that story. Another guys was travelling with his family - wife and a bunch of teenagers. He had a lot of travel stories for a lot of places; so did boat guy. I hitched onto an older couple who were getting a little panicy about making our connection to Madrid. We jumped about 50 places in line. We ended up waiting at the gate for 30 minutes so it was unnecessary but I was pleased to see how gracious the people ahead of us were.
All the Americans coming off long flights sat in the wrong seats (including me) when we boarded. I slept the entire way to Madrid.
For the first time I came into Madrid in a terminal not the big, beautiful Terminal 4. T2 is old style American type from several decades ago; cramped but somehow a large amount of walking.
It was a bit of a hike to the rental counters in T1. It made me rethink lugging the bike bag to the trains.
The drive to Alcalá la Real was uneventful except for the lightning show in the clouds as I approached and passed Jaén. I drove straight to the house and unloaded. I parked in the garage and was able to extend my 1 month pass far easier than I could have hoped. It helped I had the original contract and a entry card. He just updated the info and collected the money.
I had dinner at Casa Montañés in the park above the car.
Since it's not summer hot now and sunrise is at 8:30am I should be able to sleep in and get a short ride in. Tomorrow is probably an IKEA day as well.
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