A dream come true!

After more than a year waiting for the moment when I could start participating on the low-cost mountain bike Portugal crossing, I finally was able to join this amazing journey.


The VPBTT (Portugal Crossing on Mountain Bike) began in the end of 2007 and has been crossing Portugal from Lisbon through the South Portugal littoral, it went across the Algarve and now it started to rise north through Portugal`s interior. Of course this has been done during several weekend stages because we all must work to afford the expenses (even being low-cost LOL).

Now that I am already able to ride my mountain bike I finally joined this group of great friends on this country traversing. And I can only say that Portugal it is really BEAUTIFUL!


This last weekend we started at Vila Real de Santo António, near the southeast border with Spain and we headed to Mértola where we all slept on a gym before heading to Serpa during Sunday.

Packing my sleeping bag after a good night sleep.

During my first stage (it was the 11th for the rest of the group) we made 115km and on the second day we rode 70km. But, even though the terrain was not easy or plain, I would make it all again just for the fun, the views and the fellowship. From now on there is nothing that will impede me from going through the rest of the stages, and when it gets to Lisbon I will go through all the first stages I couldn´t participate because of my injuries.

You can find more pictures on the following links:
11th stage (VRSA-Mértola);
12th stage (Mértola-Serpa).

Next stages will take place on May 30th and 31st and I will be there to enjoy every kilometer.

It is finally ready...

Well, in fact it has been ready for almost a month but as soon as I got my new full suspension mountain bike assembled I couldn´t let it go so I have been riding since then LOL.

OK, I am kidding. The truth is I have been really busy with work and I have not been able to post here.

My new assembled mountain bike

Now that I have rode more than 300km I can say that I have found my new lover and it was love at first sight.

A couple weeks ago I decided it was time to attend my first mountain biking event with my new bike. It was a 4 hours mountain bike race which went really well and where I had lots of fun riding on very interesting and enjoyable trails.

I hadn´t have so much fun in a long long time.

This weekend I entered on a 24 hours mountain bike race and I had lots of fun riding it even though the course was really tough with steep uphills and some technical downhills. If I hadn´t this marvelous piece of machinery I would never be able to go around such difficult track, specially because of my handicapped wrists.

Can you tell I was having a fun ride just by my smile? This was more than 20 hours after the start of the race.

The most difficult for me was the night riding. Even though I had very good lighting system the risk of falling made me stop and rest until the morning.

In the end I achieved all my goals:

• Do better than I had made back in 2007;
• Finish the 24 hours riding;
• Avoid falling;
• And most importantly, have lots of fun.