Kristen P. flew in from Frankfurt to visit me in Madrid.

The first night, Friday, I took her to Pio to look at the city from the top of the buried trash heap. The view was magnificent; one could see from the river Manzanares in the south all the way to Plaza España in the far north. We went to bed fairly early as Kristen was tired from the flight. In the morning we got up around ten. We smoked and went to the Retiro for a stroll through the Bosque del Recuerdo (the Forest of Memory). Art at the Reina Sofia took up the rest of the afternoon. I took a nap at siesta while she read Thoreau. The race was the "Yeti" Allycat and I came in dead last but a kid named Juan offered me a spot as a bike courier. The courier service is called Trebol. I was wanting to make some extra money. I don't know if it's worth risking life and limb though. Kristen took some photos and I talked about fixed gear bikes with the couriers. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sunday morning we caught the train and two buses to Manzanares Viejo where the Piedriza is. The bus took us through plains and past lakeshores to the little city center. We jumped a fence and climbed around the old castle. It was completely empty, standing over the lake below. Kristen and I sat in the plaza and ate a Spanish tortilla from the cafe, drinking sangria. Then we walked up through town till we got into the hills and kept climbing up through the boulders strewn about. When we got to the top of the hill we sat down to smoke and watch the sun set behind the lakeside city and the old castle, the mountains off in the distance.
It was pretty cold waiting for the bus on the way back but after the long haul in the early winter dark we walked up the hill to Lavapies from Atocha and went to the place with no name to drink Te del Bosque. Later, when we were at home and about to fall asleep, I thought about 30,000 miles ago to the last time I'd fallen asleep with her. It'd been a February morning and I'd set off through the frozen snow down at the end of Ohio headed for Chicago. I told Kristen "Feels like my life is going by real fast, sometimes." Looking at me with her big green eyes she said "Only when you look behind." That made me chuckle. She is twenty-one, now, and full of thunder, ready to storm. It's a wonderful thing watching her grow up.

This morning when I kissed her goodbye underground at the metro I said to her what Bones said to me: "I'll see you when I see you."

It's a long way back to Germany.
It's a long way back home.

peace.