Dave Z - New Dirt

By: DZ

For many years I’ve eyed the countless dirt roads here that shoot off the paved roadways and I’ve always wondered where they go. I’m an adventurer at heart so I brought over from the States a bike that is capable of any terrain. Now I can ride in my road bike position and if I see some dirt that looks promising I take that turn and explore.

I’ve always wanted to go up the dirt side of the Rocacorba Mountain here. So that was one of the first rides I took this new bike on. The way up was very scenic and calm. I had another dirt trail plan for the way down, but on the way up my suspension fork up front was acting a bit funny when I locked it out. So I went down the paved side and blazed back to Girona to a small bike shop that I’ve always had good luck at. They told me it looks like the lockout was a bit broken but it should be fine to ride.

So I continued my ride and hit some familiar dirt up Els Angels. I wasn’t that far up and I almost fell off the bike. My chain had snapped. I started getting out my multi tool to fix the chain when I spotted 3 guys coming down the trail. One of them was sporting some pretty thick dread locks. He stopped and saw my chain was broken and he wanted to fix it. His buddies kind of laughed at him. Was the joke going to be on me? Nope. He pulled out some golden chain links that would supposedly snap on and fix the problem, or in his words “click clack”.

It was taking quite a while to get this ‘click clack’ in place and at one point we had all of our 8 hands on the tiny links laughing. I didn’t understand a whole lot of their Spanish but the humor of it all was not hard to miss. We finally got it fixed and I was ready to go home when one of them points to his chain and says the ‘click clack’ is very strong, that he’s had one on for 3 years. Well, I thought, OK, I’ll just keep riding then.

I was going to follow the road I was on but got derailed by a wild dog and had to go up another part. I finally popped out on some pavement and had no idea where I was until I rode to the bottom of the road. When I got to the bottom I couldn’t believe I had never been up that way before. I think you could find a new ride here everyday there are that many roads criss-crossing the area. Obviously it helps when you can cut through dirt trails. It turned out to be a great day, the ‘click clack’ held strong, but I might get a new chain anyway.