I’m in bed at the Casa das Penhas Douradas hotel, and it feels like luxury showroom. A kind of wooly fever dream of soft furnishings, and I want them all. I’m surrounded by lust-worthy products, all from the same boutique manufacturer that in recent years has become one of the stars of Portugal’s fashion and design boom.
If João Correia is the boss, then his father, Manuel, is the president, the mayor, el jefe … or rather, since we’re talking the Portuguese here, o chefe. Spending a day with him in Palmela, Portugal, where he lives half the year, is like wandering around with royalty. From the ladies at the morning coffee shop, to the local police, right down to the man preparing your dinner, everyone knows “O Patrão” – yet another fancy name for The Boss.
To butcher some lyrics from the old George Gershwin tune, it’s summertime and the riding is easy. A little too easy. I try to get out on the bike as much as I can, but with a family and a couple of demanding businesses … Well, I don’t need to tell you how that goes. So I’m really looking forward to taking some time during the season to join a few of my favorite trips and enjoy a bit of quality riding with all the guests and my friends.
Alessandro Stella makes shoes. Stunning, immaculate, breathtaking handmade shoes. What does a shoemaker have to do with cycling? Nothing. Everything.
“You go from fog-bound Big Sur, chilly, freezing, and then suddenly you’re on a high climb, above the clouds, it’s sunny, and then you’re down into a desert-like, drought-ridden frying pan that just about destroyed everyone.” Tom Vanderbilt summed up the Coast Ride perfectly. But then, you’d expect nothing less from a best-selling author.
Words that strike fear into the hearts of all men: “I was at Bloomingdale’s today and I found the most amazing [insert product here].” This time, it was towels. Or rather, Towels, with a capital T and a big price tag to match. It not being pay-day, I stalled the conversation just long enough until we moved on to something else.
Most people who ride a bike can remember, with the clarity of a spring morning, the moment they fell for cycling. Two strong thoughts linger in my mind about my first real ride, about six years ago, as I was already climbing the hill of my forties. The first was: Where has this been all my life? The second: What an absolute dork I was.
