Life from an outsider’s perspective… » 2007 » August

Top 10 reasons you know you’re CYCLING in the Canary Islands:

You only ever seem to wear out two gears in your rear sprocket: the 25T and the 12T.
You realise that you need to replace your brake pads again, but you only changed them less than 6 months ago.
The only other bike frames you see are one of the following brands: Orbea, Decathlon, Giant, Scott, Specialised, diTec or Goka.
You’re riding within a 10km radius of the Parador Hotel at Altitude and you see professional cycling teams training for the Tour de France.
You’re climbing somewhere and people start cheering you and yelling “VENGA!” on the side of the roads.
You’ve climbed 1000m already, you can see the Atlantic ocean, and there’s still 1300m to go.
You suddenly have to manouvre around a goat-herd.
You’ve only cycled 100km at the end of the day, but you feel like you’ve cycled twice that amount.
You’re cycling through La Orotava, and some crazy guy in thongs starts chasing you to hand out a www.Tenerife-Training.net business card.
You see hard-core downhill bikes in every bike shop which actually get used for more than street-curb-jumping.

You see people are only just getting ready to go out at 10:00pm.
Every week there seems to be another weird festival or holiday.
Everyone at the table rips into the bread with their bare hands and then starts peeling potato skins.
After the meal, the olive oil dressing gets transported directly to the refridgerator, but the actual food is left on the kitchen benchtop all day long.
Someone says “pass the Gofio”… but in spanish, and with a thick Canarian accent.
You can speak speak perfect castillian, but still can’t understand what the spanish locals are saying.
You’re walking on a pedestrian crossing, and all the drivers switch on their left indicators at the sight of you.
You need to attend 30+ hours of lectures just to pass the intitial driving theory test.
You forget what a messy desk looks like, and everyone starts cleaning spontaneously.
The only piece of carpet in the entire house is the bathmat.