Never Retire: The Two Biggest Mistakes We Made Before Moving To Spain
Maybe you can help us out
We accomplished a lot on Wednesday. For starters, I found a bike.
I’ll tell you more about it after I pick it up. Now, we just have to find a ride for my wife and we will have our second mode of transportation ready to go.
It’s nice to finally live in a place with a vibrant bicycle culture that’s not molested and upended 24/7 by an inane car culture and its endless, wasteful and inhumane infrastructure.
You can only half-ass attempts at making American cities more bike- and pedestrian-friendly. Even in San Francisco—where I fell in love with bikes—the prevailing attitude places the car at the forefront of a lopsided transportation system that renders alternative modes of transportation something worse than second class citizens.
More on my bicycle roots in San Francisco, how and where I got my new (used) bike—she’s a beauty (!)—and what I learned in the process soon, in conjunction with the wraps being pulled off a new Substack I plan to start later this year. There is a connection between the two.
Everything about the process of getting the bike and how we will use our bikes connects back to the extremely high quality of life here in Valencia, Spain.
The way our day turned out on Wednesday highlights what an incredible city this is. Maybe I will point-by-point it tomorrow. Then, on Saturday, which is a day where we have what should be fun and very local Spanish plans, we will do a little bicycle talk.
But today—
Last night, my wife and I reflected on just how much we have done over the last month and a half to set up life in Spain. I know that several subscribers are asking for detailed how-to posts on all of the aspects. Don’t worry. They’re coming. I just want to get them right without repeating the same information the same way as I have seen it—at least—dozens of times before.
For as much as we love it here—(I really can’t imagine a life in the United States again)—we haven’t done everything right. Some stuff that went wrong—and, knock on wood, but there hasn’t been much—was beyond our control.
However, we messed up on two closely-related tasks.