Los Animales
Las Moscas de Einstein
As a child I was fascinated that, driving along in the family car in summer, flies were able to zoom in through the open windows, hover around and annoy us, and then zoom back out again, changing the direction of their flight within an instant. I hadn't yet come across the concept of G force and the incredible stresses that these kind of changes must create in the physiology of the body, but I kind of intuitively felt there was something going on that might be outside the realms of human understanding. Certainly my own. So it is that as my route takes me inland I leave behind the kingdom of the lowland mosquito and return to the realm of Las Moscas, the Flies. Nature's garbage digesters. Without them our world would be a lot closer to walking round on the set of Shaun of the Dead. And I've discovered that these little varmints don't need the enclosed atmosphere of a motor car to perform the same acrobatic stunt. While I'm cycling along, admittedly not very fast, no more than 10kph usually, they hover in front of my face, find a nice place to land, usually on my lips or forehead, and then fly off, like backwards while I am moving forwards, they are easily capable of landing gently on my face again, or just as well flying round behind and landing on my neck. These kind of stunts, when you think about it, make Top Gun look like child's play. I have come to believe, maybe without good cause, that the humble house fly is truly a master of kinetic relativity. I might consider establishing a cult in its honour if one doesn't already exist.
Dogs
Most cyclists I've spoken to eventually end up talking about dogs. It seems that for some reason or reasons, certain dogs go crazy in the presence of bikes or certain cyclists. Some cyclists have been severely mauled and equally some dogs have have been fatally retaliated against by cyclists. Happily nothing like that has happened to me, but I would like to say a word about sleeping outdoors in Spain with reference to our four legged friends. I'm under the impression that most people in the rural parts of Spain keep at least one dog and there are lots of good reasons for doing so, to keep away human and animal pests being probably the most significant. There are a lot of wild animals in Spain, foxes, cats, weasels, boars, red squirrels and allegedly wolves in some more remote areas. During the night, and virtually every night, the movement of these wild animals can be tracked by the howling of the dogs as they loyally raise the alarm in their territories. Sometimes it goes on for hours and in the tent of course there's no insulation against the sound. This is one reason I rarely surface before 9am when I'm camping, having nearly always endured a broken nights sleep. I have never been confronted by a loose dog, but I keep my flashing bike lights close to hand in case any kind of animal gets so curious as to try and enter the tent. One night things did get a bit nasty. The howling had been going on for a good half hour but then it suddenly changed to something a bit more fierce and sinister. I fancied I could hear a lot of growling and jaws snapping. Wether they were fighting amongst each other, or they had caught a cat or some other poor animal I will never know, but it was a very disturbing moment. In Patanjali's yoga sutras there is the concept of Dwesha and Adwesha, (likes and dislikes) which hinder the evolution of the soul through attraction and revulsion. So hearing the attractive singing at the campsite in Vilafarmes is likely as much of a spiritual diversion as being appalled at the sound of fierce dogs.
