I tried to write this very informally and mimic the way I speak, sorry for the profanities in advance…

I am Currently headed from Madrid to Lisbon. It is my first night train experience, I was not able to book the train far enough in advance to get a bed…Damn. I was hopeful that I would at least be in a train where the seats faced each other and slid together a makeshift kind of bed… But no, I am in a normal chair that doesn’t even recline for the next 9 and a half hours to Lisbon, thankfully I bought at bottle of wine before jumping on board.

Also, you may be wondering how I could possibly stand writing messages this long using just my Iphone. I actually have a full size keyboard that I use to write while I am on the train, it connects via Bluetooth and works perfectly!

I was in Carcassone, France and completely unaware (some of you probably knew this already) but French people like to go on strike. God damned Frenchies, half of the trains weren’t running, they quit delivering fuel, and grounded most flights for several days. So getting into/ out of my little town near Carcassonne was quite difficult to say the least. But I think that it was worth the trip!

View from the hostel window (1st night)

Lunch in the town’s central square… Crêpe with curry Chicken and white wine.

Carcassonne Castle walls

Hopefully this will load, kinda funny, I really had no other option, I guess I could have back tracked…

King in his Castle

Inner set of fortifications for the Castle

Here is some of the Castle’s history… The site was original settled by pre Romans (BC times) then Romans took over, then the Moores took over after the fall of Rome then the Trencavel family took it over until the around 1200 AD the Trencavel clan and their pseudo-christian religion were declared apostates by the Pope, so the crusaders sieged it… Also Uncle Mike clued me into the fact that it was used as a safe haven in the 100 years war… People gathered there put all there supplies together and made a meal of it… Now known as a casserole.

Now this is a the story that I debated on sharing, due to (Mom/Dad) as I didn’t want you to worry that I was being too reckless over here…
But this is what went down, I finished an epic 3 coarse meal in Carcassonne, served to me by a smokin’ hot French chick, by the way, long dark hair, bright emerald eyes, AND a French accent… OH DAMN!!! Haha

It was getting a late so I started biking back from Carcassonne to the village I was staying in (Malves) about 10-15 miles away and got all turned around (probably  due to all of the wine the waitress convinced me to drink), the sun was setting, I didn’t have much time before dark to figure things out, the map I had was an absolute joke, and I kept taking roads that dead ended into either little dirt roads or vineyards with large fences… I knew I needed to cross a river, so eventually I decide to haul ass down this dirt road to the river bottoms… It was actually a really fun decent, pretty gnarly considering the bike I was on though. The bottom of the hill lead me to this

I climbed under a fence to enter this rock quarry, it was marked “do not enter”, (in French of course) in hopes that there would be a bridge to take me to the other side of the little river, No luck.

So I start to peddle back up the massive hill when…

I tried to remain calm about the situation, but really?? The fucking chain snaps on me at this precise moment, come on!! I just started walking back, trying to stay cool, after about 20 minutes I realized I was still about 10 miles away and still very uncertain how to get there, I could just see the tower of the small castle in Mavles way off in the distance…I was fucked!!!

At least the sunset on my walk was pretty, kept the spirits high.
As I was rounding the side of a roundabout to start walking down a road akin to highway 84 this happened…

Some dude and his dog pulled over and offered to pick me up. They were in a little truck with a box cover over the bed, he opened the back of the truck to throw my bike in and the truck bed contained a bed, for…sleeping…? Felt a little weird about it, hoped he wouldn’t demand all of my shit at knife point, then kick me out on the side of the road and keep the bike that was loaned to me by my hostel or try to tie me up to that mattress or something funky… Trust me all of these thoughts coursed through my mind, and a few more. Ha. But I obviously decided to take my chances, the other option could have ended with me sleeping in a vineyard/forest somewhere. I definitely would have been a little chilly.

So anyway the dude was super friendly and dropped me off at my hostel just in time for me to watch the sunset from my room. Hell of a night.

I really feel like this entire trip I have been in the right place at the right time. Had the chain not snapped, I still would have had to peddle all the back, it was mostly uphill and about 10 miles away. I only had a shitty little map that was printed on an 8X11 with a printer that was blatantly in need of some new toner, my phone was on 4%… Things were grim to say the least.

My Hostel was the blue dot, the rock Quarry from the video above was in the river bottoms of Saint Martin-Boulogne, and the only way to cross that river was by taking the D6113… I would have been on that bike all night, which in France is Illegal without lights. Or the chain could have broken at a different time and I wouldn’t have been on the roundabout at the same time as the friendly dude with the truck. What you think about is what you bring about. I remained positive, and even took a few minutes to just watch the setting sun over unfamiliar lands and everything worked itself out.

So the next morning the girl that ran the hostel (Line, that’s right her name was Line) arranged for her dad to take me to the train station his way into work. Sounded sweet to me. We were supposed to leave at 8:30 but wound up having coffee and shooting the shit, so we left at 9:10… I was supposed to catch a train at 9:27… We got to the train station at 9:30, which meant that I would miss the connecting train in Narbonne, France to go to Barcelona, which would have pushed my entire day back 4 hours until the next train to Barcelona.

However, once again I didn’t stress too much, just walked into the train station to figure something out… Perhaps get Gnar in Narbonne, ha, I didn’t have a clue, but for no apparent reason train was delayed 15 minutes! Things just slid into place. I wasn’t even certain that the train would be running with the French people striking and all. But I made it out of France and went directly to Barcelona and had lunch in my favorite area of the city, near their Arc de Triumph

Arc de Triumph, Barcelona

Croquettes are my favorite tapa in Spain. Super bomb, even though they mess with my insides, they are worth it.

Then caught the train to Alicante. It was super sweet there! Had a blast stayed in a hostel called Hukuna Matata… Which really lived up to the reputation of being the chillest hostel around.

 Lounged around all day drinking with people from Germany, Mexico, Sweden, Canada and a few Americans.

That night we all ate Paella and watched the final soccer game between Madrid and Madrid. Ha, I can safely say that Madrid won.

Instead of paying attention to the game I paid attention to the bottles of wine that were under a euro a piece. Wound up finding the bottom of three.Through a difficult translation one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever encountered, a blonde haired, green eyes goddess from Germany informed me that she had never kissed a man with a beard…

I woke up in the morning to the birds chirping, the sun a shining and surprisingly zero signs of a hang over. Made a huge breakfast and ate with everyone. I found out the gorgeous German girl doesn’t speak much English, I suppose it’s easier to communicate/translate while intoxicated…

After breakfast I went to the beach to play volleyball with some of the dudes from the night before. And now here I am, rallying through the night on a train from Madrid to Lisbon….Stoked to see my brother Chris in the morning! Hope my ranting didn’t bore you too much. But hey I’m just chilling on train for the next 9 hours, figured I’d get creative.

Can’t wait to fill ya in on some more of the crazy shit that Chris and stumble upon while in Portugal. Just finished the bottle of wine, time for a little night night while upright…

-Cbutter