Oooh heaven is a bike shop on Earth

I woke up still weary from yesterday and, conscious that I had a relatively shorter day ahead of me - 75km - I took it easy. I got up at ten and went for a big, sugary breakfasts. It was a 2-coffee morning. Then I ambled round town and stopped off at the butcher´s for some lunch equipment. I turned down the free bottle opener which came with the chorizo on the grounds that "I´m on a bike trip and I don´t want to have to carry it with me." This made no sense at all to the butcher who warned me of a catastrophe he experienced once while cycling - he had taken a bottle of wine but no opener! I comiserated but demurred on the bottle opener and he chatted good-naturedly for a while about my trip.

I had planned to check my bike in to a shop in Ejea but that looked like a detour that I was in no mood to take so I asked at the hostel if the was a shop in town. There was so I stopped off for a few minutes on my way out. The place was a revelation! My local bike shop in Madrid (Calmera on c/Atocha) is very patchy. The service depends very much on who you get. There´s a nice lady in her forties who really knows her stuff and goes out of her way to help you find what you´re looking for or decide what you need but most of the staff feel like they couldn´t really give a damn what you buy.

Typically, the question, "And what is the difference between this product and that product," is met with, "Well you have this one which is 40Euros and the other one which is 50euros. It´s also red." They all look like they cycle but they have no enthusiasm for helping others.

Bikes Moncayo is in a different league altogether. The owner is clearly a real enthusiast for the sport. He seems to enjoy not just his own cycling but everyone else´s too. I picked up an extra rear light (I now have two) and some spare break pads just in case. I explained I was a bit concerned about the back wheel and he trued it for me, there and then, and refused to charge.

Then he zipped off to serve someone else. It occurred to me just as I was leaving that it might be an idea to get a spare tire in case I get a dramatic failure which can´t be fixed with a new inner tube. I was just paying the owener´s son for it, when the owner himself dropped what he was doing, leapt over to me, snatched the tire out of my hand and gave me my money back: the tire I was about to buy was no good for what I wanted - too narrow. He was right, I thought I´d read 32mm width but it was actually 23mm. Instead, he gave me a short roll of plastic from his workshop which would keep me going to the next bike shop in case of a big tire failure.

It is unclear whether Berlinda Carlisle was thinking of Bikes Moncayo - a bike shop in Tarazona - when she sang that "heaven is a place on earth" but I suppose that´s the thing about great pop songs, they hold a universal truth which speaks to all of us.

It was a brief, easy roll down to the town of Tudela, where I´m writing this. I was directed to the Locutorio (shop with internet access and cheap calls abroad) by an Algerian in his fifties who claimed to have cycled on Algeria´s national team when he was younger and fitter. He walked me to the Locutorio and as we walked we talked about cycling. His conversation leapt suddenly to the "crisis".

He was feeling it hard but it is better in France than in Spain, he said. The Spaniards don´t know how to run an economy he told me, with an air of authority. When everything is good, "bueno, bueno, bueno," but they don´t think that it might go bad. And when it does go bad it goes very bad, the worst in the European Union. I asked my what does he do?

He replied with a question, "In what sense?"
"For work, what do you do for work?"
"Work! I don´t work! None of the foreigners here work, except for the Ecuadoreans."

He then launched into a solliloquoy, which I couldn´t really follow, about human nature and that some Spaniards have white hearts and others black hearts. "It´s the same in Algeria, of course," he allowed.

I wasnm´t sure where he was going with this and, as we seemed to wind away into the backstreets of Tudela, I wondered whether I was being spun a line. There was something about the specific blend of philosophy and morality in his conversation which reminded me of the patter of the fishermen in Senegal who will accost you with speeches on life´s hardships and the brotherhood of the black man and the white man (we bleed the same blood*), the beauty of the human spirit and the honour in giving, before asking you to spot them a tenner.

Becming a little nervous now, I asked where the locutorio is and he replied, with a vague wave of the hand towards a narrow street, "Up here." I was just beginning to plan my get-out (In my view it´s much better to politely back out of these situations than to let them roll; if it gets to a confrontation there´s no saying how it will end up) when we arrived at the locutorio.

"Here you are, the Ecuadorian is here," my guide announced and with a cheery wave, he was off down the street.

I felt guilty for having misjudged him.

BC

*This is a genuine line given to me in a fishing town in northern Senegal.