I know Martha from California but she is currently in Chile. Please forgive the lower case.


dear martha -

hope you're doing okay. are you still in chile? staying out of trouble? i'm sure you're busy having lots of adventures, seducing tall, dark, and handsome latin men.
as for me, i'm back in the land of the mangers-fromage (cheese-eaters) at my folks' house. i left mad about a week ago. i survived my year as elementary school teacher, bankrolled a few grand, and now, i am as i should be: sans job, house, bills, or steady girl. my only problem is my lack of a bike (or velo as they say here in france) but that is quickly being remedied. the weekend before i left i ran in an alleycat race and a ciclonudista rally, which is exactly what it sounds like. the attatched photo is from in front of the royal palace in madrid. the alleycat was not nearly so mellow: a scramble to seven "Corte Ingles" department stores scattered throughout madrid. roughly twenty five kilometers in length, seven stalwart bike punks and myself dodged buses, taxis, cars, and mopeds, generally ignoring traffic signals as we wove our way through rush hour traffic and 110F/43C degree temperatures on fixed gear bicycles (my buddy juan lent me his spare). i placed fifth out of eight. it was my first time not finishing dead last. i only rode so fast because i was in so much pain. my friend lori was there to witness the start and the finish (though she was a good two liters of beer in by the time i wheezed across the finish line at the okupa). she came to visit from NYC, as she got two weeks off her job as a techie for sesame street. she and i have history, but it's always been a fairly casual thing (except the for this one really hairy experience but that's another story). anyhow, she had a lot of fun, and my friend rike (remember her?) kept her company. speaking of rike, things took off with her. she became my steady girl of sorts, though she's a riot grrl and would totally break my kneecaps if i she heard me say anything like that (but it's true). i guess she liked my politics. hah! we took a weekend around valencia on the beach and we slept on roofs and abandoned lots. i never actually met a girl who would do that kind of thing before, just the ones who would talk about it. that trip was really great, actually. we caught the bus down to valencia from mad, kicked around for the rest of the day. the next day we rolled on to faro de cullera, and there it was fuckin' fantastic - white sand beaches, clear blue water, palm trees, the whole nine yards. we were smack dab between two small resort towns in an even smaller podunk with barely a grocery. there were eight people on the beach, and one of them passed me some hash. it was amazing. we slept there on the beach looking at shooting stars and rike told me about hitch hiking through patagonia. in the morning i woke up with the sun and ran ten kilometers down the beach only to find a giant statue of buddha standing at the mouth of a river. when i got back to our "campsite" i took a skinny dip in the ocean to cool off. people seemed pretty lax about nudity there. later in the day rike and i hiked up a mountain along an old pilgrim trail to an old castle, talking about fearlessness, stopping only to drink water and cry. we made it back to valencia for the festival de san juan (summer solstice to us pagans). thousands of people showed up at the beach to make bonfires. to the sound of pipes and drums, people drank themselves silly. at midnight everbody ran into the ocean to jump three waves and ran then back onto shore to leap three times over the roaring bonfires.
when we got back to mad two days later, spain was in the playoffs for the european football championship. rike, lori, my aussie friend josh, and i met up with all my mexican gang to watch the final game (spain won). during halftime i hit the streets and sold the all the scotch i had left to people smoking cigarettes outside of bars. i made enough to pay for dinner. it got so crazy in the streets later that the cops had to bust out the tear gas and rubber bullets.
it was kind of sad seeing rike off. she was good to me and more than a lover she was a very good friend. i learned a lot from her. i left her my bike; i wish i coulda left her more (or not at all). i gotta admit, i'm gonna miss mad a bit. for as much as it pissed me off, it had a lot of things going for it and the few friends i made were solid. i hope to see them again, but pedro is in india, conchi is wandering the pyrenees on bike, josh is walking to santiago de compostela...carlos will probably make it to lisbon in august, though, and my mexican homie panchito is gonna be in SF this winter. most likely i will meet up with him then. maybe if you're that neck o' the woods i can present y'all. he's a real card.
my last night in madrid i spent in front of an old convent where forty nuns were executed by a firing squad of anarchists during the civil war. some of my best friends from madrid were there: panchito, josh, carlos, rike. the next day lori and i caught an overnight sleeper train to paris. all my luggage made flying unreasonably expensive. i had a couple of old guys (70+) as roomies. they told me what life was like under franco and how bad the old spanish cars were. in paris we met a queer dude from louisiana by way of san diego, but we left him at the taxi stand. lori and i had to go on to angers and my parents. lori was there for a couple of days. my parentals gave her the obligatory tour of the local chateau and a french cuisine meal. lori split for rome and met up with my sister in a random turn of events. since then i've just been chillin' with my parental units, drinking beer and doing laundry with them.
i dumpstered two quality (but very old) bikes and my dad and i are working on getting them roadworthy for the portugal trip. it's taken us to every single bike shop in town. we even fell in with the local anarchist collective that runs a little bike co-op. today we got a contact for an old (60+) pro cycle racer who specializes in vintage bike parts. tomorrow pop and i will pay him a visit.
my buddy taylor shows up wednesday, coming in from berlin. it'll be a whole different kettle of fish then.
well, i think that's about it. take care of yourself. don't worry about writing a novel back, but it'd be nice to know if you're alive...

peace,
rafe