France II

So once into France, deciding to take the superhighway to see what the fuel situation was like, instead of a different route through the Pyrenees again which is what I wanted to do, I found there were no line up’s or any of the stuff I’d heard on the news which doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but I thought I’d check first to make sure. Regardless and for the same reasons, I didn’t take any pictures cause I was busy thinking about my recent old quandry’s, bored and sad just the same, until I met this guy at the petrol station. Just before I pulled the nozzle out of it’s cradle, this guy was walking deliberately toward me and I was thinking wow this guy is either going to yell at someone behind me, but there is no one there, or punch me in the face, or he really wants to ask me something about my bike or where I’m from or something (I’m exaggerating, but not really when you remember the past, even though I didn’t feel the punch part I still think it was in the past/present/future maybe I don’t know) . So I already developed a sly knowing grin before he surprised me and asked immediately if I had a puncture repair spray for his punctured car tyre. Yeah, I do. After pumping the fuel we were walking inside and he was saying he wanted to pay me for the repair can and I said no it’s okay please take it really it’s my pleasure. When we got inside he went to the counter and said to the guy using his French on me even though I knew what he had said, and paid for my gas. Really please I said, I wanted you to have this, many people have helped me so much along the way it’s my pleasure and my duty. Well then you can buy me a coffee he answered like he’d pulled the wool over my eyes. Yeah okay. Anyway, Jean Phillipe and I went outside to see if the old can I’ve been carrying for a couple years would work and it didn’t.

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The tear was too big. So I offered him the super tyre wall patches Birgit had given me back in South Africa, but he said they wouldn’t work on the outside, and of course he was right, but we could always stick it from the inside I suggested. But Jean Phillipe already knew what he had to do, I was just facilitating his brain to make a decision, that kind of sounds like looks like sort of game, charades. In the end we changed the tyre, not that he needed my help, but I did anyway. So we put on the tyre he was afraid to put on, the one with the bulge with metal showing underneath. Well it’s better than paying a tow truck guy 150 Euros eh I reassured, thinking yeah that’s a problem don’t go to fast . . . Just go slow with the flashers on and get to the next service station that fixes tyres and he agreed and went inside to find out where while I finished with the spare. We said good-bye and he was off, saying there was a place up the superhighway 6k from here. I answered I hope I don’t see you on the side of the road, and I didn’t.

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I stayed in a big small city village and after eating dinner I was stupefied by how quiet it was in the streets at 9pm. No one was out, no lights were on and there was no noise. It was in Carpentras. I’ve never experienced this in my whole journey so far, nothing, dead quiet as if I was the only one in this huge small city. The next morning, and after mademoiselle took my money but didn’t charge me for breakfast, merci beaucoup, I went about fooling my GPS as always, for I don’t have proper maps for the countries I’ve visited since Canada, including Canada. Well that’s not true, Pierre from Zimbabwe gave me two Michelin Maps for Zimbabwe and up. I have now only a big European map that has all the countries and all the main arteries only. However I also have very good GPS maps given to me from Andreas back in Egypt. The only problem is, it’s better to have better paper maps to be honest, however if you don’t mind wandering around a little, and I don’t mean during the difficult parts (usually there’s no choice in that case), for those things are planned well, but here in Europe, ahh I can’t go wrong (touch wood; I’m a hockey player of course I’m a little superstitious) …. speaking of which, for those of you who know Mick from the Friday afternoon skate at Ted Reeve in Toronto, well he sent this out to all the guys and it’s a classic if you’re a hockey player …. LifeInTheBeerLeague

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So I have to choose a village on my paper map, that doesn’t have a lot of names to begin with, in order to request this from my GPS, to avoid the big roads that my GPS naturally wants to take me on. It’s so crazy really, that I’m still trying to learn how to think and to fool the mind of this computer (it must think I’m really stupid). Anyway, it had me go this way so I went, for I never really know who’s right, me or the GPS.

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I really should have taken a picture of the road it wanted me to take next, up 900 metres, and I could see the climb for myself and the road was narrow like this but with big holes and rocks and all, and maybe in Africa or other parts of the world when you’re expecting it and have no choice, well it seems right, but here in France, I don’t think so, and besides my thumb and wrist are still not good, (I really think I did some bone damage somewhere along the way). Anyway, the GPS is also guilty of trying to take the fastest route, no matter what the moment is like. Anyway I turned around thinking this climb is much worse than the one I tried to Lesotho, well not really I don’t know, so I turned back, went around the same village again, waving at the same people, and then found the proper, stupendous road ahead for 200k. Wow, what a beauty to Gap. Really pleasant, and nice for the tyres and the rider, with tons of bicyclists doing the real thing.

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Just after the picture above I crossed a sign that said in Francais but in Anglais just now, ‘You are entering the region of the Alps’. And no longer than six hundred seconds before this, I was hit with a cold wind that I knew was going to last judging from the sky ahead. So I stopped and put on what I had that didn’t mean stripping down naked to put on, and then went ahead, turning the hand grip warmers on to low, and then high about twenty minutes later.

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It was cold, but not that cold having ridden in Canada in the pre-early spring on a shit day to prepare the bike for this trip. Rigs my friend was following me in my/his car, and at one point I had to pull over, for I not only couldn’t feel my full fingers, but the freeze was going into the bottom of them and my hands within minutes, with the heaters on high and I wasn’t expecting it, which is of course much worse than when you do. Anyway Rigs pulled up behind me and I jumped off the bike and inside the car with my helmet still on, hitting my head on the top of old Scarlett, sticking my hands into the vents of heat; ‘I don’t know how I’m going to ride around the world if I can’t even go thirty minutes outside of my own home without having a problem!’, I said to Rigs, he laughing in response with that earnest laugh of his.

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Anyway, once into most of my proper clothing, with the correct accoutrements to follow tomorrow, minus one important thing I’ve admired for many years now, that I’ll show once I find them somewhere, I was good to go, and ended up here for the night, Monestier-de-Clermont at Hotel Piot, not expensive and excellent food, another family affair, husband the chef and wife the manager, teen-aged child the everything while learning, and a couple of dedicated staff who live here too maybe I don’t know.

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Excerpt from journal …. Barcelona to Carpentras …. Nice to ride again today, for a long while for a change, only thing to keep me happy these days, not enough riding, but not enough places to go, waiting for winter to come and go before I cross, so maybe as a result I’ll go a lot of places quickly, but still I will have to stop and then what? October 13th, 2010. Here in this restaurant, a boy of about ten months, has crawled across the floor to where I am reading, for the third time now. The first time his mother came to take him back to their table twenty five feet away saying something to me that I recognized as I don’t know, the second time the waiter and the parent’s friend took him back before he reached me saying something apologetic again maybe, and the third time he finally made it, crawled up on his legs with his hands against the wall from the floor, and then wobbled onto the side of my chair, looking up at me and giggling with that little voice box that doesn’t know how to laugh yet but does, looking back to his parents who I didn’t look to fearing they would think I was not happy about the visitor laughing with that wondrous joy, and then he tried to maneuver around the arm and to the front of my lap without hitting the table I could hear him thinking, and then fell down comfortably I could see in slow motion, at the base of the chair and my feet, otherwise I would have caught him for I was ready, but also knew he needed to do it on his own. And just as he was maybe going to cry (not caring what the parents thought), I picked him up and sat him on my knee to look out through the night time reflection of the window; his parents in the background, and the world he will one day crawl into on his own two legs in the future, and he sat there comfortably for about twenty seconds, for I was watching his eyes to see inside, before the waiter came over again saying something I thought wasn’t cool, apologizing all the time all nervous and scared of the stranger all alone who doesn’t speak his language but won’t say it yeah, and he took the boy who I handed back, to his parents who I still didn’t want to look at, for they were young and the father was a frantic pacer, the mother a worried lot, and the dog just wanting to follow along for no reason but to go along and see; faithful but also intuitively trustworthy though mostly curiously free, held by a loving chain we all can see. Beau Reve I said quietly out-loud to the waiter as I was leaving, for everyone one just able to hear as I wandered out the door, including the older red head on her own maybe thinking the same things.

It’s true I know, dogs and kids, my two favourite things; for they do not lie or fumble along.

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Before dinner, I went down and asked Madam Piot if I could eat – instead of the dining room where the people talk in hushed quiet tones, or too loudly, all cute and proper – instead maybe Madam could I sit here in the parlour. Well not now, for the staff eat here at this moment before we work. So later I confirmed even though she didn’t really answer me then at that moment, when I came back two hours later she placed a mat in front of me when I sat down in the parlour, and her waitress too tried to give me all the dining room necessities when I just said no, a knife and a fork will do, and a glass of wine please.

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And this is sweet Mirabelle, fourteen years old, and polite as a lady. We became friends quickly, and of course she peed on my pee in the back of the hotel, as faithful dogs do. She knew when I said in the middle of the courses of dinner I asked, ‘I’m going outside for a piss and a smoke do you want to come’, she answered no with that great inquisitive know. So I went outside alone, looking back through the window of this old great door and saw her standing there waiting for a miracle so it seems yeah, after a couple of drags, I opened the door and said do you want to take that piss or not, and she lead me to the great place to do so, near her dog house that she no longer sleeps in but always protects. Ahh Mirabelle, you are a good dog.

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And once everybody relaxed including myself, being somewhere I shouldn’t while contentedly reading my book, we got along famously and I learned so much about Madam and Mademoiselle, and I think we all appreciated my change of venue for the night.

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Madam Piot and her husband Mr. Piot, and his fore fathers before and their wives owned this Accueil since four generations ago. Absolutely phenomenal to experience the food and hospitality without the big neon sign, not even a five star rating, just two in fact, but a real great pleasure unnoticed just the way they like it; making a living and passing on a tradition like all the old ones used to still kind of do still I hope think now maybe eh.

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They reminded me of the Abraham’s, with a hotel, for my direct family who will know what I mean … Robbie ran the house, Richard the kitchen, well no that’s not right, anyway, they reminded me of them in a way I can’t explain just now yeah. Classy family affair.

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At the end of the night this father of twins arrived to sit with us and have a drink. We talked a little, and researched where I was going next, but I couldn’t remember the name of the village city I don’t know somewhere in Switzerland I said with the image of the map in my mind, I’ve never been there before where Chris and Sylvia live who I met first in Viedma, Argentina for a Horizon’s Unlimited Meeting, and then on the Ruta 40 in the early morning before the winds had started with Nick the Brit from Cornwall, where my family is from, going opposite ways who fed us both bread with Nutella and coffee right out of their panniers, for we hadn’t eaten yet, afraid to take time when the wind was calm. What a great moment that was in the middle of nowhere, having a chuckle and shooting the breeze before the winds we all thought about in the back of our minds came before leaving after saying our good-byes …. and I get to see them again … isn’t life great … when you think about all the discoveries that are possible within a small period of time …. I forget my point … oh yeah, isn’t it great!

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Excerpt from email …. If you happen to be going through Ireland, you can get a skate I bet. Remember that kid Dean that played with us a couple years, he’s over there. I played when I went there about three summers ago. They were able to round up some equipment, though I did bring my own skates – and jock. The last e-mail I had for him was deankelly25@hotmail.com. Failing that, www.iiha.org or just Google Irish Ice Hockey Association. He’s with the Dublin Flyers. They play out of Dundalk, about an hour-90 minutes north of Dublin, close to the border. Mickey Conlon

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…. and yes it was cold … and I couldn’t see a thing with all the fogging and such, rode by some new accident, no I wasn’t the first one there, maybe the fifth, but it was just the same, somebody fucked up in the passenger seat, people running toward as I rode by carefully thinking, fuck, what happened to them, and where will they go now, as I cautiously rounded a corner.

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