I wound up staying a few days longer in Girona because I was enjoying the strong bike culture so much.
So I went on a casual bike ride around town in the minimal casual clothing I carry with me (ie. no helmet, no spandex). Since mobile cell data seems to be scarce and expensive for me so far in Europe, I stopped into a nearby cafe called La Comuna to mooch some WiFi for a bit.
While I was there my friend Ben chatted me asking where I was, and I told him Girona. He said, “Hey, I think Jan Frodeno lives there now,” and I was like “oh how cool!” and immediately googled [jan frondeno girona]. One of the top results was an article about how Jan Frodeno had opened a cafe called LA COMUNA! I was totally shocked by the serendipity of me being at the cafe owned by the famous triathlete my friend just happened to mention to me over chat from San Francisco.
While I was still in astonishment, a few cyclists started gathering in front of the cafe, and I soon realized that there was a group bike ride forming. I hesitated a bit about joining in because I wasn’t really prepared to go for a ride (wrong clothes, no helmet, no water or food) and my bike was really suited for bike touring, not road cycling, like all the other riders in the crowd had. I thought: screw it, what do I have to lose if I go, I’m in Girona, I may as well join in with the local bike scene if I can!
So I approached the organizer (Luisa who was a recent sports management graduate student working for the cafe/apparel store, hoping to use her skillset in Jan Frondeno’s wake somehow) if I could join in. She looked at me kinda weird due to my casual clothing and said, “Well yeah if you wanna go suit up you’re welcome to join us!” I told her I didn’t have time for that. Instead, I filled my water bottle at the cafe, grabbed a to-go pumpkin bread and hopped on my bike for the ride.
Thankfully the ride was truly social. We rode a nice 50k route that had excellent roads and views. While I felt self-conscious about not having “the bike look”, I think others in the group were impressed I was there with them. I talked with Luisa a bit, met a singer/cyclist from Australia who warned me about bad weather coming in the next few days, a few guys on the same cycling team from Dubai who were visiting Girona to train and a pro triathlete, Christian Trunk. The cycling community was diverse and strong.
The next day there was a lot of rain in the forecast so I decided to stay in Girona yet again. By mid-morning I felt like I had made a mistake in staying because the rain didn’t seam that bad, in fact it was just cloudy where I was. Latso, my hostel-mate (who was in the process of moving to Girona just for cycling), gave me a Komoot route to ride. I decided to take advantage of my time in Girona and geared up.
As I was headed out, I rolled through Plaça de la Independència and one of the fellows from the ride the day before, Salem from the Dubai cycling team, caught up to me and invited me to join his group of friends going on their own ride. I loved this moment and said “YES!”
We went over to the apartment they were renting and waited for them to finish suiting up for their ride. Salem was very friendly and gave me coffee, snacks and even made me put on some perfume haha. We finally got rolling and that rain finally set in. I was pouring pretty bad and after inspecting the forecast a while we decided to all wait a few hours to try to ride again.
Salem and I went back to to his hotel a while, which had an excellent bike room with a “wash area” where we got to give our bikes a bath. Soon after the other guys decided to to not ride that day due to weather. Salem wasn’t gonna let the rain stop him though, so we decided to get going, despite the remaining light rain.
We decided to ride the initial route that Latso had given me and after a few miles the rain got pretty strong. I stopped to give Salem a chance to bail on a rainy ride, but he was not having that. He was determined to to ride! I didn’t want to chicken out at this point so I withheld my reluctance and we rode. We had a wet and beautiful ride together. He told me about his girlfriend and how the courting culture was in U.A.E, which was pretty different than what I was used to in the U.S. He tried to get me to come to visit Dubai, which he was very proud of.
Overall, I was just so pleased with the cycling community in Girona. The number of pro and wannabe-pro cyclists, the access to great routes, great weather, number of great bike shops. It’s definitely the best I’ve seen so far. I’ll be back there again some day.