Como se dice 'vrrooom' en espanol?

While I was doing my study abroad in Spain I rented a motorcycle for a weekend and took some rides out into the countryside north of Madrid and into the Sierra de la Guadarrama mountains. Here are some snippets from the GoPro video I took while goofing off.

A lot of the country side reminded me of northern California and the Sierra Nevada mountains. All I know is it was a fun adventure to be riding around in the mountains in a new country. How can you beat that for a break from studying??

M Proust

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust

I like this quote quite a bit but at the same time I don't like it because I want new landscapes. Not new eyes. I am choosing to read it as that I should not just view new landscapes with my old eyes but that new things should also be viewed with new eyes.

Change my scenery and change myself.

You know who else would ride a zipline upside down?

My mom! (Muscleman voice from Regular Show)

My mom would be proud of my upside down playground toy riding.


A joke I heard when I took a Skip Barber racing class went like this, "What's the difference between a rental car and a 4-wheel drive? A rental car can go anywhere." I kind of feel the same way about a rental a bicycle as well.

Sharks

What happens when a shark stops moving? It dies. To most who know me personally, you know I'm anxious to move away from not only San Diego but California. For a good handful of reasons.
-Income Taxes
-No Family Lives in CA
-Political Climate/Gun Laws/Land Use
-Desire for Change (And Hope! hahaha)
-Personal Growth that Comes with Change
-SD Makes You a Weather Wuss
-Increase in Personal Exposure/Opportunities in Shooting

Having been living in Spain for the past month has only solidified my desire to move as soon as is appropriate. Not that I am in love with Spain but it has been a bit of gasoline on my rambling fire living and studying here. As if I needed any more fuel......

What has Spain taught me though about all of these feelings and desires? Well that I am more of a country mouse than a city mouse. That I need trees, mountains, seasons. That I can live without the beach. I like the beach swell (pun intended) but not as much as I like mountains. Blame it on my up bringing. Also that I prefer to live on the edge of a city or in a middle size town. Living in a big city, Madrid has a population similar to San Diego at 3 million people, taking the metro and not driving, never seeing anything but concrete and steel, well that just doesn't give me the same inner happiness that even the suburbs do let alone actually living somewhere I can drive, have grass, a yard and such. White picket fence anyone?

I guess I'd prefer to live in a smaller town, more "rural" and go into town for travel or culture than I'd prefer to live in the city and escape to nature when needed. But that also made me ask myself, could I live in Spain? Though I have found the food frankly horrible for 80% of the time, I could. It wouldn't take much longer in study and full time residence that I'd be totally happy doing stuff all in Spanish. I've already adapted well to the timing and pacing of life here in Spain. Heck, I've been driving around and doing stuff without ever checking a map or metro table. And I can just dead reckon my way through town now as well. It used to be that I knew Rome, Baghdad or maybe London the best of foreign cities but now it is easily Madrid that I can operate in seamlessly. Which makes the prospect of coming back in October interesting.

Ramble ramble. I have some sleep to catch up on and a little bit of Spanish homework to do as well before my test at 1300 tomorrow. I'd be happy to get a C out of this class to be honest, but I'd prefer a B of course. An A is out of the question as I just haven't put in the time or found the structure that would have worked for me to accomplish that, all on me.

Want to know more? Email, text, FB, Instagram or whatever. I'm out there and approachable.

Spain blog photo dump

So it is a work in progress, but if you want a ton of photos without a lot of context you can get them here:
http://rowdyenmadrid.blogspot.com.es/ My Spain Blog