PICKING UP THE RACE BIB

The weather last saturday was beautiful, decided to meet Jon at Glories and cycle to Granollers to pick up our race bibs for the Gran Fondo the next day.

From Glories we found our way down to the Besos river and the bike lane that would take us out of Barcelona, continued along BV-5001. Suddenly in a roundaboat a sign pointed out the direction to Granollers and C-17. We followed the sign and it turned out that the sign took us to a much bigger road, almost looked like a freeway, but no signs that bicycles weren't allowed, two lanes in each direction and the speed limit was 100 km/h big misstake, but it wasn't possible to turn back. Stayed on the C-17 to a exit that took us through a industriual area before we were back on C-17. After a while new signs pointing out the direction for N152-a and Granollers south and we were able to leave the very busy C-17. Reaching Granollers felt like a big relief, at least for me. Found a way through the city center on narrow pedestrian streets, a quick look on the map and there were no problem finding the bike store. Handed over my ID card to the personnel to collect my race BIB when they asked for my inscription. Inscription, I hadn't recieved any inscription and they couldn't find my name on the list either. There must have been some kind of error when I tried to conduct the payment a couple of months ago, no signs on the payment on my bank statements either. A phone call from the personnel to the organizer, and I was told that I could pick up a race number the following day, the race day. Jon was more succesfull and could collect his BIB without any problem. We were heading back to Barcelona following the road we should have taken to the bike store. 

The BV-5159 felt like made for cycling, a solitare road just outside Barcelona. Soon we were on the BV-5001. At Montcada i Reixac we crossed the river and then headed for the Cementary the Collserola, and a small climb which would then take us down to the Ronda de Dalt beltway. 

We followed the beltway to Placa d'Alfonso Comin from where we made our way down to a placa in Gracia where we stopped for an icecream, coffee and an excellent orange juice and a great time in the sun. 

The route on Strava.