Judy and I live in a small town north of Seattle, named Mukilteo, and ride quite a bit in the states. However we'd never taken a foreign motorcycle vacation.

When my father became unable to care for himself, I did not have it in me to put him in a nursing home, so he stayed with us the last two years of his life. Although gratifying to be able to provide him with excellent quality of life his final years, it was still quite stressful at times and we were never able to really relax on a vacation. We decided that after he died, we'd take a real vacation. After considerable negotiation regarding geographical areas, transportation, etc., etc., we decided to take a motorcycle tour of Spain for a week, see the Catalunya MotoGP, and then motorcycle on our own for a week.

Our tour operator was Iberion Moto Tours, which is a very professional, knowledgable, and hospitable company. Our guide was Marti Cebrian, an excellent rider, freelance moto writer, and all-around good guy.

Perhaps because of the Madrid train bombing, there was only one other paying customer on the tour, so the entire week their were only three of us on motorcycles. The first day Marti met us at the airport, and took us to the hotel. Afterward, we met the guide, his assistant, Juan Pablo, and the other customer, Eric, for a brief of the trip and what to expect.

Sunday June 6: The motorcycle assigned to me was a near exact copy of one of my own, an R1150GS. Leaving town the first day was quite an experience, since I had never ridden in Spain, let alone in their traffic, which was quite wild by comparison. Eric was fine with it, since he came from Los Angeles. Between the lane-splitting, riding on the shoulder, round-abouts, and other thinks alien to our culture, I was fairly intimidated the first couple of hours. However I stuck to Marti and Eric "like a flea on a hound-dog" and made it just fine.