A Nice Picture of Mary and I From Mallorca

A Tough Bike Ride Ends With A Nice Picture

I wrote about our trip to Mallorca in a recent post on my landscape photography blog, but wanted to share a couple pictures here. Even though I brought my trusty Fuji XT-5 it was too heavy to bring on the bike rides and the scuba diving we did after the eight days of really hard bike riding around Mallorca, Spain was way to wet to risk. So most of my pictures were done with an iPhone.

This picture is from the point at Cap de Formentor way on the northeast corner of the island of Mallorca. It was our last ride of the week at around 45 miles of riding and maybe 3,000 feet or so of climbing. In the eight days we rode over 400 miles and climbed over 31,000 feet. So if you were thinking the camp was a 20-miles-per-day of riding with evenings filled with tapas and sangria, you’re sorely mistaken. The company we trained with indoors on our Wahoos all winter and then joined on the trip to Mallorca is run by an expert coach named Tim. It’s a super professional organization called BaseCamp. We’ve actually done BaseCamp before in 2022 and somehow I agreed to come back for more pain and suffering this year. My idea was to get ready for a big race in Omaha this June.

My favorite part as always, including with doing portraits and weddings, was meeting all the great people at the camp. A more welcoming crew of smart professional people all wanting to have fun riding and be together in an amazing location could not be asked for from me.

The hotel where we stayed in Alcúdia, Viva Blue, is really well situated and built for big bike weeks. It has an underground bike parking garage where people can rent bikes or bring their own and lock them right there. Plus they have a bike mechanic shop with some essentials, like water bottles, for when people like me forget one at home. PLUS! It has a great all-you-can-eat cafeteria serving breakfast and dinner. Let me tell you, when you ride that much you can’t eat enough food to stay going. The food they serve really hits the spot.

Mallorca itself really blows me away with how stunningly beautiful it is to see. To the south and west it’s rolling hills and plains with some steep hills rising to the north. Even though the tallest peak is only around 4,000 feet, we did a couple rides with 8,000 feet of climbing in a day. By the time the picture at the top of this post was made my legs had done enough riding for the week.

We met a retired ER doctor named Greg Smolin, from Pennsylvania and Mary asked if he would take our picture real fast on the overlook next to the lighthouse at the end of the peninsula. He’s a landscape photographer based out of his state and has been able to visit some cool destinations. Have a look. He shot is both vertically and horizontally. I loved the horizontal picture.

Seeing it of course makes me want to get back out there at sunset with my Profoto and a big softbox and do some pictures. But seeing as we were halfway through our last ride of the week, I’m super happy he was there and Mary asked him to get a really nice picture of us.

Still, to this day, the best sangria is in Valencia at the place that says “Best Sangria in the World.” Sorry Mallorca. My quest to top the Valencia sangria continues.

Here’s some more pictures from the trip.