Another great week Spring Break week at the parents’ timeshare in Palmas del Mar, an annual family reunion this time including my father’s two sisters from Paris.  For me, long morning rides followed by our daily lunch get-together around the patio table before a couple hours of afternoon beach time – not a bad routine!  Days tend to alternate between 5hr killers with steep sustained climbs in the rainforest mountains, and shorter recovery ones closer to the coast with only one or two big climbs.  Though I stick almost exclusively to the narrow pavement, the hardtail MTB with highly-pumped slick tires sems to have been a good choice over the years, with even the granny gear seeing pretty regular use on many of the climbs.  I’ve been highlighting on the map the routes I’ve been hitting, and over the years everything within a ~5hr loop from Palmas has been covered, rides have to start getting more ambitious now to encounter any new ground.  This year I’ve put in a 30hr week, and have attached a pic from each day’s ride (eight of them, from arrival Saturday pm March 7 to departure Saturday am March 14).  My bike seems to be the principal character in each shot, sort of reminding me of that movie “Amelie” if you’ve seen where she arranges for her father’s garden gnome to travel the world and have pics of him taken in various locations shot and sent home.  Unfortunately my bike hasn’t learned how to reciprocate yet with the taking of the pictures, but trust me…I was there too!