PowerCycle

10/17 My life is turning into the movie Final Destination. It’s like I cheated death at one point and now fate is trying to even the score. Only it’s not Death that’s after me; it’s happiness. I just want one little day where something doesn’t go wrong.

Today it was two things. It’s not even about the roads at this point. I’ve given up on them. It was actually kind of sad on the ride into Tucuman. Heading the other way were groups of spandex bike riders forced to ride on the shoulderless 4 lane highway. Those guys generally know the area pretty well and for them to be on a busy highway with no shoulder means I can expect more of the same heading out of the city.

I did get a shocking reprieve from the highway today. Shortly after merging back onto Hwy 9 at Tapia there’s an old railroad track that had been torn up and replaced with a bike path. The railroad track is a guess but the grade was minimal and it went the long way around hills to keep it that way. Anyway, the trail got weird after a bit when it curved into the heavy forest and I felt like I was the only one for miles. I smelled something dead at one point and looking into a clearing just off the trail I saw what it was. A pile of dead cows. There were 8 or 9 of them. It was pretty nasty.

The first thing to ruin my day is knowing that I’m never going to find a cheap place to stay in this or any other city in Argentina. This is more of a problem for my bike because my chances of finding a good bike mechanic are higher in a city. I suppose if I wanted to stay with other people options open up a little but I don’t so I’ll suffer because of it. The 2 and 3 star hotels were $38 US and higher. The only 1 star I could find was on a pedestrian avenue and a room was $50 US. I found a HI hostel (Backpacker’s Tucuman) but they had no single rooms. He sent me down to Posto de Vigeuo (sp). They had no single rooms and a dorm was $28 US (WTF). I don’t think there are any other hostels in this city. Maybe there are cheaper dumpy hotels but things aren’t laid out here like I’m used to. Normally cheap hotels are on the road heading into a city and clustered around the commercial areas. In Argentina the commercial areas are near the main plaza and hotels there are the are the most expensive ones. It’s a crap shoot to find a hotel outside the commercial area and riding in the traffic isn’t all that fun.

I was tired from riding around for 2 hours so I decided to stop at the first place I could find. That set me back $35 a night. Since it’s so expensive and the room is a small, cramped, humid joke for the price I’m only staying for 2 nights. Then I realized I left my electrical adapter somewhere so I had to track down a hardware store (the outlets here are EU). That ended up not being a big problem because I found one a few blocks away. I bought two of them considering my winning streak as of late.

I really don’t like it here and I hate bitching every day because of it. If I wanted to be miserable I would have kept working or stayed in Costa Rica. Truthfully 90% of my bad mood is because of my bike. The one good thing is that most of the people are extremely friendly. Jose brought over dinner last night (twice) which was very nice. It was at 10pm which made me laugh because they really do eat that late here. I was watching this crazy movie about WWIII called Threads (1984 BBC drama). A police officer walked me over to the 2nd hostel and a lady stopped to help when I was gazing at my map.

Just got back from dinner. Tucuman is probably the most beautifully lit up city I’ve ever seen. The cathedral and public buildings around the plaza looked incredible. I think it’s much nicer here than Salta.

Go Dolphins! I can actually watch my first NFL game of the year tonight.

GPX track