I’ve been listening to the audiobook “Dreaming of Jupiter: In Search of the World—Thirty Years On” by Ted Simon of his motorcycle trip around the world in 2001, repeating his trip of 27 years before that resulted in the seminal book “Jupiter’s Travels,” as fine a book as I’ve read capturing the essence of traveling by bike, pedal or otherwise. There’s hardly a page in that book that I didn’t underline some passage that spoke to the heart of the matter. I’m excited to finally meet him at the end of July at a slow travel festival in Le Caylar north of Montpellier organized by a friend, who invited Simon to give a presentation at my suggestion, as he now lives in a small village nearby.
Simon turned 70 during his second trip and wasn’t as inclined to camp as much as he did on his first trip, and laments that he fears might be trending towards becoming the traveler he despises, but he certainly should have no worries of that, traveling as independently as he does, traversing desert terrain in Africa and subjecting himself to the rough roads of India and South America and elsewhere. Rarely does a chapter pass that his motorcycle doesn’t fail him in some manner from parts breaking to falling over in impossible situations requiring the help of others to right. He constantly has to rely on the goodwill of strangers or contacts back home to get some part replaced or repaired.
I finally had such an experience myself when I discovered my bottom bracket had considerable play and needed to be replaced. It was sealed, so there was no possibility of tightening it or replacing a cup or bearings. I presumed it would be just the simple procedure of removing the old one and inserting a new one that any mechanic could perform.
I was in a city with a Decathlon, which has a large bicycle department. The mechanic instantly recognized that my fifteen-year old Trek had a semi-obsolete bottom bracket. He didn’t have one, but said he knew of several bike shops in the vicinity that might. The nearest was owned by the father of Cedric Vasseur, a recent Tour de France rider. It would be an honor to have him work on my bike.
The mechanic called to see if he had the part. After placing the call he shook his head and said his shop was closed this day. He tried another shop and got the same message, then explained, “I forgot, today is Thursday. That’s the day when most bike shops in Flanders are closed. If you don’t mind biking twenty miles to Lille I’m pretty sure our super store there will have the part.”
That was fine with me. Before he placed the call he removed both crank arms from my bike to get a precise measurement on the length of my bottom bracket and also to count the number of splines on it that made this Shimano part unique. He had to wait a couple minutes for the person he called to check their inventory. “You’re in luck,” he reported. “They have it and will be able to do the repair when you arrive. They’ll be waiting for you.”
This was the same good fortune that Ted Simon experienced every time he suffered some calamity. People invariably are happy to go out of their way to help a traveler in distress. I was surprised how quickly my bottom bracket had deteriorated, as I do check it from time to time, and there had only been a slight wobble a week ago. Now that I knew how bad it was, I could feel it as I pedaled along. I was looking forward to a new one, hoping it would lessen the effort I was expending to propel myself.
I felt lucky it happened in a land of abundant bike parts and not off in Senegal or Madagascar as I’ve been the previous two winters. I’ve broken parts on the bike here and there in far-flung places, but the only time it was a near-travesty was when I broke my rear axle in Iceland. It was a tandem hub with a rare axle not to be found in Iceland. Luckily it happened on my last day of my tour in Reykjavik and I was able to limp to the airport without putting much pressure on the broken axle.
The Decathlon in Lille was a giant warehouse exclusively devoted to the bicycle, possibly the largest bike store in the world. It adjoined the factory that makes many of the Decathlon line of bike parts. It’s repair room was bigger than most bike stores and staffed by over a dozen mechanics in matching smocks, who all looked as if they had years of experience. The mechanic who took my bike attached a couple hooks to it and hoisted it a few feet from the floor without removing any of my panniers and dove right in.
After he removed the cranks and took a close look at the bottom bracket he had the bad news that it wasn’t the part he thought it was. He could still replace the bottom bracket but would have to replace the cranks as well. That wasn’t as bad news as it could have been, as we could see the teeth on my two smaller chain rings were badly worn and needed replacing anyway.
They had a crank set that would actually be cheaper than replacing the chain rings. The only drawback was that the smallest chainring would have 28 teeth, compared to the 26 I’d had. I could live with that. I left him to perform the operation while I ventured off to a dining area to eat a couple of pâté sandwiches I’d brought. I was back on my bike in less than an hour. As after any repair, riding felt more glorious and smoother than ever.
This was to be my first day of rest since I’d left Cannes over three weeks ago. I was going to spend it at the library in Bailleul. So I had to delay it until the next day. While the library was closed for lunch between noon and 2:30, I took my lunch in a nearby park, then dropped in on the town art museum, that only took an hour break for lunch from noon to one.
As one encounters all over France, this museum had been the collection of an individual, Benoît de Puydt, a bachelor who died in 1862. He donated his three-story house and his vast store of carvings and music boxes and paintings and knickknacks, known as a “cabinet of curiosities,” to the city to make it into an art museum free to all. It was fascinating even without the enthusiastic, expert commentary of Janina, who had guided me through several such emporiums during our time in France two years ago. The house was destroyed and much of the art during the First World War. The house had been restored and his collection greatly added to.
I asked the caretaker if the museum had ever had an exhibition devoted to Bruno Dumont, a filmmaker who grew up in Bailleul and used it as the setting for his first two movies, “Life of Jesus” in 1997 and “Humanité” two years later, both award-winners at Cannes. The museum hadn’t, but she showed me a book on the local artist Pharoon de Winter from the late 1800s, and said that Dumon gave the tortured investigator in “Humanitè” his name.
The park across the street from the museum had several benches named for people in the arts from the past two centuries that had a connection to Bailleul. I was hoping one might bear the name of Dumont. Others I asked about Dumont all said his movies didn’t give a very flattering portrayal of Bailleul, so the city hadn’t acknowledged him in any way despite his high-regard among cineastes. I was hoping the tourist office might have a map of sites that had been used in his movie as Cherbourg does for the umbrella movie. There was a walking tour of the city center and its historic sites, but nothing relating to Dumont. There weren’t even any teens on motorbikes buzzing around as in “Life of Jesus.” The city’s small cinema, which was playing a Claude LeLouch film I had just seen at Cannes, made no reference to him either, nor did it always play his films, the last of which debuted at Cannes, his second on Joan of Arc.
After my much-needed day of rest and recovery I plunged into Belgium to begin a circuit of its many cycling shrines. The first was along its northern coastline in the seaside town of Lombardsijde, for a bust of Freddie Maertens, a contemporary of Eddie Merckx, who was twice World Champion in 1976 and 1981. He wasn’t a climber so never contended for the Yellow Jersey in The Tour de France, but he did win eight stages in the 1976 Tour.
5 comments:
How many kilometres (or miles) did you get out that bottom bracket and crank set George?
George if you find yourself with time don't forget leo's bike collection in Belgium
Andrew: Better than 100,000 miles on the bike, but I have replaced chain rings once or twice along the way and the bottom bracket once before.
Vincent: Zepperen is on my itinerary. It is near the town of Borgloon that has a giant wooden pavilion, a piece of art in the countryside.
You are the only person I know of who wears out granny rings.
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