Every street in San Miguel is roughly the width of a single conveyance, is expertly and generously paved in cobbles, intersects nothing but a hazard of blind corners, and either terminates in an abrupt and terrifying uphill or commences in an abrupt and (even more) terrifying downhill. The last skateboarder (probably an urban legend) reportedly perished on the cobbled downhill from Calle Hospicio into El Correo when the vibrating projectile he clung to intersected a bus simultaneously in three places. This urban terrain is extreme.
Bicycling is possible in San Miguel, given that bicycles have the advantages of tires and brakes, with all their damping and modulating possibilities. But the accommodations required for riding the notorious 'pave' in the Tour of Flanders are as nothing to those required to navigate the narrow tracks of San Miguel. First, be prepared to dismount and walk your bicycle up the hillsides on the east side of town.There is no escaping this - even the fabled Cippolini was heard to mutter an unbecoming Latinate noun while attempting the hellish slope of Calle de Huertas in a gentleman's wager.
The cobbles do not suit the uncompromising frame of the typical road bike. High pressure tires are impossible. The only bikes that really succeed here are old steel-framed, mostly rigid mountain bikes, tires maintained at a pressure some purists might deem flabby. That old nostrum of bicycling magazines, "vertically stiff yet laterally compliant," will not work in San Miguel - these streets will eat the bike and the proud old fool who dares too much. Even the native San Miguelenses, experts (if there are such) in navigating these cobbles on two wheels, vibrate themselves by in a kind of ethereal blur as though they are mere auras passing in the street. The local cycling confrerie dresses in a manner calculated to preserve as carefully as possible the integrity of each rider's foreordained allotment of hide. Heavy cotton and denim trousers are de rigeur, the absence of lycra shorts and $90 PrimalWear jerseys is both palpable and uplifting.
The serviceable working machine - the cargo bike, the velocab, the delivery cycle - are as uncommon around town as the expensive road bike. Two wheels here are, much as in the United States, a fate reserved for the exigent and the sinner. This specimen of a working bike (below) is the only example of its kind I've spotted in nearly a month, and always with the mysterious roll of rattan roped to the rack. (I'm not actually certain of its function, nor that it's actually rattan, but my only other guesses are pork rinds or a large mat for rolling sushi.)
Bicycling is possible in San Miguel, given that bicycles have the advantages of tires and brakes, with all their damping and modulating possibilities. But the accommodations required for riding the notorious 'pave' in the Tour of Flanders are as nothing to those required to navigate the narrow tracks of San Miguel. First, be prepared to dismount and walk your bicycle up the hillsides on the east side of town.There is no escaping this - even the fabled Cippolini was heard to mutter an unbecoming Latinate noun while attempting the hellish slope of Calle de Huertas in a gentleman's wager.
The cobbles do not suit the uncompromising frame of the typical road bike. High pressure tires are impossible. The only bikes that really succeed here are old steel-framed, mostly rigid mountain bikes, tires maintained at a pressure some purists might deem flabby. That old nostrum of bicycling magazines, "vertically stiff yet laterally compliant," will not work in San Miguel - these streets will eat the bike and the proud old fool who dares too much. Even the native San Miguelenses, experts (if there are such) in navigating these cobbles on two wheels, vibrate themselves by in a kind of ethereal blur as though they are mere auras passing in the street. The local cycling confrerie dresses in a manner calculated to preserve as carefully as possible the integrity of each rider's foreordained allotment of hide. Heavy cotton and denim trousers are de rigeur, the absence of lycra shorts and $90 PrimalWear jerseys is both palpable and uplifting.
The serviceable working machine - the cargo bike, the velocab, the delivery cycle - are as uncommon around town as the expensive road bike. Two wheels here are, much as in the United States, a fate reserved for the exigent and the sinner. This specimen of a working bike (below) is the only example of its kind I've spotted in nearly a month, and always with the mysterious roll of rattan roped to the rack. (I'm not actually certain of its function, nor that it's actually rattan, but my only other guesses are pork rinds or a large mat for rolling sushi.)
One other thing I should mention that is paramount to survival. San Miguel is, like much of the surrounding country, a dusty place. A fine film of dust collects on the streets. The cobbled and flagged streets are in some instances older than the century, worn smooth by years of rubber tires and a lapidary film of oil. Each morning the housewives and cleaning ladies of San Miguel sweep a cascade of soapy water from every rooftop and sidewalk onto the pavement, making a treacherous paste of soap, fine dust and oil across flags and cobbles already polished with the traffic of the ages. Even by the standards of a professional downhiller, it is a white knuckle ride from the Salida de Queretano down into El Centro on one of those polished, soap-slick tracks, and no guarantee that you'll still be wearing the skin you left home in at the bottom.
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