"The Apartment"

Sound like a reality-TV show? Fortunately it’s not, at least not this one … yet. Instead, it’s about our main team apartment in Girona, Spain. While a few riders have places of their own, Slipstream has a couple of apartments scattered around town for our use. I’m on the long program this spring, roughly three months, and pulled a bit of seniority to grab one of the choice rooms (read: big-ish with some sunlight). With seven – that’s SEVEN! - riders in the joint right now, having a little spot that is all your own becomes increasingly more valuable.

First, a bit of history: This apartment, owned by our Euro-director Johnny Weltz, has been occupied by (predominantly) American cyclists for roughly 10 years now. Early in its life as a cyclists’ hostel, it fondly earned the moniker of "the Girona YMCA." While the mailbox still reads “Christian Vande Velde” it’s been a while since he was around. These days he’s married and living in style on the ninth green of the local golf course. Team boss Jonathan Vaughters made his mark a number of years back along with guys like Dylan Casey, Scott Mercier, Benoit Joachim, Frank Hoj, Anton Villatoro, and rumor has it that even big man Lance called the Y home for two brief weeks way back in the day.

In an ideal location, one block of the Ramblas (visualize a café-strewn walking mall) and within a short walk of just about anything you could need, we’re completely comfortable in town on foot power alone. Having rented a car this past week, searching for parking made me realize how lucky that is!

The entire “old city” part of town, which dates back to the 1200s, has been undergoing renovation and this is a building that is probably due. I’m guessing it’s been roughly 30 or 40 years since any serious work has been done and the space is some prime real estate waiting for a makeover: 20-foot ceilings, four “Romeo and Juliet” balconies, nearly 2000 square feet of character-laden tile floors and a location that would add 20 percent to the value over some less desirable spots not far away. The lack of an elevator, however, is a big negative and I’m certain that the neighbors are pretty cracked with our twice-daily clicking up and down the two-story stone spiral staircase in cleats.

One bonus is that the trek up is a great judge of form and how hard the ride was. Legs are good and you had a chill cruise when you make the full two floors and are comfortable. Most of the time, however, after one or two flights, the pace slows down significantly.

Aside from the stair issue (really, how lazy are we?) the biggest challenges this dorm/reality-TV-style life poses revolve around the kitchen and bathrooms. The kitchen is equipped Euro-style with a fridge most Americans would think of as a toy, an oven you couldn’t fit a cookie sheet into even without the racks, and one mini sink.

Dishwasher? Hah!

Disposal? Good laugh there, too.

Should I even get into keeping it clean? Take a guess how easy that is with everybody “forgetting” a dish/bowl/cup/mug/pan/entire meal’s worth of dishes from time to time. Wiping down the counters? I’m pretty sure that somebody else is just about to cook and they’ll probably do it after they’re done, right? The same theory applies to the bathrooms.

Let’s just say that when my wife came over this past week and stayed Y-style one night before we headed somewhere with a bit more privacy, she characterized our lifestyle as “camping … indoors.”

Below us on the ground level is a great little bio/organic grocer that must love the added business. For us, it’s the best convenience store we could ask for.

On the first floor is the Pensione Perez and for some reason I don’t think they’re quite excited to have us around. Not to say we don’t try, but I think that when what is already the grumpiest old couple you can imagine caught Vaughters lighting off bottle rockets from the balcony many moons back, things started off on a slightly sour note. Thanks, boss!

Just around the corner is the City Hall, and while you might imagine, “Gee, pretty swank spot they’ve got,” you haven’t heard the protesters. These vocal Catalans surround the front entrance day and night and have no trouble at all expressing their opinions, loudly, in unison, and are well equipped with pots, pans, drums, megaphones, sirens and horns. Most days they wait until about 7 a.m., although today there was a crew going at it by 6:30. They take a mid-day siesta before returning for another bout late afternoon. While the main theme seems to be Catalan independence (the last vote for this movement had a less than 25 percent - very vocal - voter turnout), from time to time things change up and we’re pretty sure they’re now protesting the fact that cheap flights bring in too many Americans. We’ve discussed going down and joining in the fun one day just to see what happens … but probably shouldn’t.

One last little quirk worth a mention that always stumps American visitors the first time in town is the trash situation. Every evening little tied-up grocery bags start appearing on every corner and doorstep of the city. First thought: “What slobs! These people just throw their crap outside wherever they damn please.” Then you emerge in the morning to immaculate, shiny-wet cobbled streets. Over the course of the night little three-wheeled mini-pickups, comical little things without domestic comparison, roam town collecting the garbage, and then every few nights the streets are hosed down fire-truck style. All told, this slightly bizarre (to us) system results in one of the cleanest old cities anywhere. You just have to figure out that it’s okay to simply throw your nicely wrapped trash out on the street and that it disappears. I don’t think my neighbors in Boulder would be so down if I tried it that at home.

With too much time together in the apartment over a little break this past week the pet peeves and bad habits each of us normally hide have started to rear their ugly heads. Today, however, that is all behind us as we’re back on the road and getting ready to start the Critérium International. The coming months are busy and our time together in the apartment will be limited, with fresh faces in and out often.

With the focus of the Slipstream Sports program moving more and more Euro-centric we’re starting to look around town for places of our own and before we know it the days of this crew’s residency might come to an end. Hopefully, some day years from now, another young American mid-stint at the Y will stumble upon this journal in the archives and get a good laugh.