While riding and thinking about the bike, without the hand warmers on, I thought about what Bertrand had said …. he’s a moderator for HU and a very informed, happy man who has seemingly done everything, including a 350 mile Pilgrimage. I remember Bertrand saying that the warmers draw a lot of power from the battery, and that he turns his off when he’s riding in town or slowly along the way somewhere. Hmmm, it’s possible the last three times the bike wouldn’t turn over is because I was riding in town, drawing the power from the battery, therefore the next morning the battery had no time to charge. We shall see. Anyway, thanks to Chris and Sylvia for their donations; balaclava, hand knitted socks from her mother, warm rain proof mittens, reading glasses, and from Biggi, tarpaulin, ski socks and everything else everyone has been so kind to donate to keep me warm. 
Hey how did that smiley face get there, I only typed it and now I see a different happy face. That’s funny.
Stopped in at a road side Campanile to dry everything out.
Rode into Paris at rush hour looking for a place to stay, with thankfully no manifests. I was riding around just cause it’s fun to ride with the traffic, to squeeze through with the panniers on the sides, receiving comments from other motorcycles, just to be an oddball for someone else’s end of day. I was enjoying but surveying the streets, that’s one good thing about rush hour for a traveller, when the traffic is slow in Autumn, you can see those neon signs better in the night just as a little boy chases after his mother.
These faithful boots I’ve sworn to throw out so many times on this trip are still here to romp the streets of Paris like they did before, so I used the last of the shoe shine after wiping off the sheep/geese/mudshit from the HU meeting in Germany. Good to go thanked the boots, and off we went ….
For those that don’t want to think so much, I give you this from them ….. the perfect lullaby …..
A few hours before my brother Adam was born, my parents woke me up and took me over to the neighbours before they drove to the hospital. Sleeping on the floor beside the bed of my friend Michael, I remember him saying this …. ‘Good night sleep tight don’t let the bed bugs bite but if they do pick up a shoe and beat them till there black and blue then they won’t bite tomorrow night’.
Bus lit à Paris, quelle ironie compte tenu de tous les lits, j’ai dormi au cours des 15 derniers mois. C’est la vie, se faufiler à côté de vous eh.
I read a short story today by Kurt Vonnegut called Hello, Red. Couldn’t have told the truths of my own parental woes better myself.
Thanks to Hugo and his resourcefulness, I was looking for Cafe de Flore, that poster a few pictures back. Well here it is again …..
… and the reason I was looking for this cafe is because I had just seen the poster again here in Paris where Hugo is staying, and it reminded me of all the nights and days I had spent at Chris and Roger’s pad in Toronto, with this poster to gaze at during the summers and winters, for years and years always staring at this view, wondering so many things like when reading a book, but with only one page, nothing more. So today I went looking for the cafe, and to read a little more ….
Unfortunately they were closed for the day (funny eh the timing), sorting out some things, but here is the view from the front of the cafe today, just like before ….
This may be a sweeping generalization, and if so I hope I am not wrong …. Excerpt from journal …. When I think of the differences of Europeans in terms of history, culture and vibe, I believe the French to be the most sensitive ones, for they have surrendered many battles but yet they still fight even against their own governments often and with such passion like the little kid on the street who has been beaten so many times he grows up fighting for everything. The Germans will tell you ‘We work too much and everything is too structured’, the Italians smile and wonder what is the problem, the Spanish live for food with music, the Swiss have nothing to worry about, the English, well they’re English, the Russians are still mysterious, the Irish like to fight themselves, and the rest I don’t know, I don’t even know what I just said but it’s my feeling.
Yep and yessiree, the truth is under the table. Wanna take a big piece from above, but the truth is under the table.
Excerpt from journal … I got lost trying to find my way to the hotel where I was to meet Emilie; lost with a map of the city but you know I think I understand now how it must feel for someone who doesn’t know yeah, so terrifying in such a simple way. For example, I got lost while wandering around and not paying attention after an hour or so, thinking I was where I was, which is the trick, and then when I decided I wanted to know where to go for real, I didn’t know, then everything seemed familiar and of course different, like when I arrived at the Republic, I was marveled at what I knew from the past and tried to remember and got lost at the same time, I know this so called street in Drumheller, Alberta too I was thinking, this is the way to that cowboy’s ranch where we shot that snowy day in October …. and then when you ask someone for directions, that someone who is your deep conscience questioning you with authority, and they too seem confused but you don’t know cause you want to trust someone you ask in a foreign language what you don’t know and in the same breath as do they, well anyway, I laughed to myself while swearing also, where’s my bike I need my bike, I haven’t seen her since left in the bowels of Paris four nights ago like in New York, down down down, just like in Dar Es Salaam feeling all guilty for my innocent whims of Zanzibar, coiling like a replay when I realized what I had maybe done, leaving those wheels there all alone under some sun of significance. Yeah well, thoughts come and they go eh…. anyway just as I found my way and I was arriving I saw her leaving on her scooter, and that was nice, even confusion can’t kill a good encounter, but I caught her at the last second which is all. So sweet life’s poetry is eh? Sante.
I’m so brutally freaked out by the bed bugs, having researched all night, thinking of the order of things to get rid of them, and not bring them to my father’s house. So again I slept, barely, with my clothes on until I finally gave up at 6am, packed and carried the stuff downstairs, got my bike from deep underground, all okay on that front, and then packed the bike before paying a tab I shouldn’t have to pay. He didn’t ask me for the parking money so I assumed Messieur was taking pity on me without accepting his liability. Then when I was leaving he sent one of his workers to collect the parking money, I was livid. I went back in to the hotel lobby and gave it to him calmly and without anger, ‘You want me to pay 45 Euro for parking while my body is covered in red welts, my stuff contaminated that I will have to disinfect myself, buy some antibacteria creme and all the discomfort of this. I’ve been in 30 countries, some of them the poorest in the world and you sit there behind your desk with that smirk on your face, lying to all these people here by not telling them that you have a serious infestation. You make me sick Messieur, you greedy man, maybe I should sue you instead, and I threw my money down on the counter and left, in the early morning Saturday rains of Paris. Ugh. The thing is also, the second day I was there I saw men all day taking out box springs and matresses, and the following day a guy showed up at the front desk with a steel can and spray gun. C’mon!! Needless to say, it has ruined the last part of this travel, for I still have to deal with the parasites that are likely hiding in my stuff, and the welts are terribly itchy and on fire as I have an allergy to the saliva. Maybe I should sue him, but rather I would just like some understanding and some sort of recompense, but I don’t beg and I don’t steal so I left.
I watched this program in the evening, after keeping everything sealed so as not to spread any of the bed bugs into this room, that is if I have them I don’t know. Anyway, no matter how many programs on World War II that I have seen, the magnitude of the sheer power of that war, and the suffering still makes me shiver, and it was only 70 years ago.
Being a Sunday, I couldn’t find a place to launder my clothes, but the manager of the motel agreed to throw my clothes in their machines when all was finished later in the afternoon, so I sat around watching TV, and a whole bunch of Jamie Oliver’s ‘Meals in 30 minutes’, salivating and wishing I had a kitchen to cook some of his recipes. Instead I put some of my riding gear in the tub, with scalding hot water from the kettle in my room to kill whatever I could. Later my clothes were washed in hot water, and a hot dryer, and though this would kill any bed bugs hiding in my clothing, I was still wary as they could be in the room which I felt bad about, but what was I to do?
In the morning I had to put on my wool sweater which I couldn’t launder, and my riding jacket and boots and such. It was that or freeze. Ugh.
My father had suggested to me, even though he has quit smoking, to go just inside Belgium to buy some cheap tobacco to save money in the UK so I did.
Then back to France to catch the ferry to Dover. The heavy rains and winds predicted had started to roll in …
The ferry was delayed because of the huge swells in the Channel … though eventually I was looking at the White Cliffs of Dover after 15 months of travel thinking, ‘Wow, I’m about to roll my bike onto the island of my birthplace, the United Kingdom’.
