Friends: Every year now since I met Yvon, the retired French postman, we have arranged to meet for some cycling or at least to watch a stage or two of the Tour de France during my annual ride around France. This year our plan was to meet at his brother's house near the Pyrenees when the Tour came through in the middle of July and to use it as a base to watch three or four stages together.
But fate grew impatient and couldn't wait for our yearly rendezvous. Less than an hour after Craig and I began our second day of cycling a van passed us giving a friendly toot and then pulled over up the road. Out jumped a grey-haired gentlemen. Craig with his minimal touring experience feared he was going to harangue us for something or other. I knew it was someone who wanted to congratulate us or offer us food or drink or a place to stay or perhaps just query us about our travels. It wasn't until I was nearly upon the gentleman that I recognized Yvon.
It was a meeting almost as miraculous, if not preordained, as our initial meeting at the Notre Dame de Cyclist Chapel one Sunday morning five years ago when we were both engaged in our own independent bicycle tours around France. Yvon and his wife had been attending a table tennis tournament in Montpelier, about 100 miles away. He didn't know I was riding to Cannes from Bordeaux this year, rather than Paris, so hadn't suggested trying to meet up. When he gave the friendly toot, he didn't know it was me. It was only as he passed that his wife Francoise recognized who they had passed.
Even though Yvon's English is very very good, he doesn't get to use it too often and admits its always a strain and wearying to have to speak English. It can be frustrating at times for his tongue to keep up with his mind trying to express himself. He knew that Craig is fluent in French. His first reaction when he greeted us was, "Now we'll be able to fully communicate."
He was gushing with his usual boyish enthusiasm, speaking half-English and half-French barely giving Craig time to translate. He said just a few days ago he had passed another touring cyclist along the road and stopped to talk to him. Few French tour so Yvon immediately starting speaking English to him. The cyclist spoke English, but Yvon soon learned he was French. He told him about my travels and blog, which Yvon says he has been reading.
Yvon was excited to report that he was on his way to Briancon to climb the Col d'Izoard, one of the top five climbs used by the Tour de France. I was surprised he has never given it a ride, as he has climbed all the other great climbs--L'Alpe d'Huez, the Galibier, the Tourmalet, Mont Ventoux. He said the day he climbed the Galibier and then L'Alpe d'Huez was one of his greatest days.
The Col d'Izoard is off in a corner of the country near the Italian border. I told him to keep his eye out for a plaque on a rocky spire a couple miles from the summit honoring Coppi and Bobet. Both had some great triumphs there. It was Bobet's favorite climb. He and his younger brother, also a Tour de France rider, climbed it on Bobet's 50th birthday, with Bobet unable to resist sprinting ahead of his brother to the summit.
After 15 minutes of catching up Yvon said he'd like to treat us to lunch in the town of Uzes, ten miles ahead. About a mile from the town Yvon was waiting for us along the road half way up a mile long hill. He shouted a few "Allees" and a "Tres Bien" and said Francoise was at the summit in their van. Yvon jogged to catch up with us. Then we met up at a parking lot on the outskirts of Uzes, where they left their van and we walked into the town center for a nice meal at an outdoor cafe.
Yvon usually keeps a very tight schedule. When we met at the Cycling Chapel he had assumed that it would open at one p.m. He arrived at noon, allowing himself one hour for lunch at a picnic table and then one hour to go through the chapel, a mini-museum of racing bicycles and jerseys and souvenirs. But the chapel didn't open until two. Yvon was due to be at his bed and breakfast at six p.m. and didn't care to delay to see the museum. He said he would be back that way later in the summer and would see it then.
I was greatly disappointed not to have had the pleasure of Yvon's company and translating abilities at the museum, knowing that he would be spouting excitement and explanation over many items that he would have known much more about than me, having been a bicycle racing fan all his life. So as we ate lunch, I feared he'd be staring holes at his watch eager to be on his way to Briancon, over 250 miles away, but he didn't mind at all prolonging our meal, nor did we.
Craig and I weren't on a tight schedule. The only site we planned to stop for on our way to Cannes was a bicycling museum in a small town just before Avignon. Unfortunately, it was too early in the season for it to be open on a Friday. During the summer months it would be open every day, but now, just on weekends. At least we were able to scout out its whereabouts. Craig may be able to see it on his ride back to Notre Dame de Rouviere, and I may be able to see it when I pass back this way during the Tour de France. If not, next year.
Craig was bursting with almost as much delight as Yvon, happy to be on his bike out in rural France. "I've been looking forward to this for six months," he commented. As we were eating some sheep's cheese, that he had bought in the local market from a friend, he said, "This is the first real cheese I've eaten in six months."
His enthusiasm was dampened a bit when on our third day shortly after we had begun our riding and were approaching the climb to Le Baux-de Provence it began to rain and continued all day long with only intermittent pauses. We were reduced to eating our picnic lunch under the overhang of a supermarket. At least it gave Craig a chance to give his new poncho a thorough test.
It kept him relatively dry, but we both ended the day with soaked shoes. It was too cold during the night for them to dry, so we had to begin our day with wet feet. The thought came to me that it was too bad we hadn't thought of scavenging a newspaper to ball up and stuff inside them to suck the moisture out during the night.
Many towns have a series of recycling containers on their outskirts. After bringing up newspaper when we came to the next recycling center Craig said, "Let's check to see if it has newspapers." It didn't, but the next one we came to did. We weren't so desperate to immediately take off our shoes and stuff them with newspaper, but waited until lunch. By then our shoes had dried fairly well in the perpetual wind of their pedaling, but we still managed to soak some more moisture out, which gave us great satisfaction. It was a dank and cold day until we neared the coast and began the final climb to Cannes from Frejus, about 20 miles away.
We camped at the summit of the three-mile climb in a much more flat and accessible place than I had camped in previous years a bit beyond the summit. Usually the area is thick with hikers and I have to be more discreet. But with the inclement weather, there was no one about. We were able to set up camp at 6:30 down a dirt road that had a barricade saying not open to the public. We could have continued on to Cannes and stayed at the campgrounds I'll be at during the festival, but this was much quieter and more authentic of a camping experience and without cost.
Later, George
Monday, May 10, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Notre Dame de la Rouviere, France
Friends: I had my first rain-free night of sleep in almost a week camped out in the attic of Craig's century old stone house last night with the church bells chiming the hour right outside my window. I could have slept in the guest room the floor below or on a couch by the fire on the first floor, but I preferred the attic, as mounted on the wall was a bike bearing the name of Louisson Bobet, three-time winner of the Tour de France in the '50s and France's greatest cyclist until Jacques Anquetil came along a decade later and became the first to win the race five times.
Craig and I visited Bobet's grave and a museum devoted to him in St. Meen-le-Grand, his home town, in Brittany on our way to Mont St. Michel three years ago. After our visit Craig wrote to the museum offering the bike, but he never heard back. Now it is the crown jewel of Craig's corral of ten bikes here in France. Another is a Peugeot PX-10 similar to the one Bernard Thevenet rode to two Tour victories in the '70s. That one Craig still rides.
It is his Nishiki though that he will be riding to Cannes. It was the first bike to take up habitation in his house here when he bought it fifteen years ago, somewhat on impulse when he and Onni were visiting a friend who lived in the area. That is a common affliction. Not a few of those, even before Peter Mayle, have written books about it. I just finished "A Home in France" by Ann Barry, a "New Yorker" writer. In 1984 she bought a house in the departement Lot between where Julie and Craig have homes. Twelve years later she succumbed to the urge to write about it.
Like all such books she speaks glowingly of her working class neighbors who continually come to her rescue. A book I would like to read is one by those people who befriend their American or British interlopers and how helpless they are and their butchery of the language and alien ways. Craig could be just the man to write it, as he is thoroughly accepted into his small community and well knows the ways and thoughts of his French neighbors. It was heart-warming to see the genuine happiness so many people greeted him with after his six-month sojourn in America.
Among those was the pony-tailed bike shop owner in Le Vigan. We paid him a visit to see if he could fix my wobbly left pedal. After he detached it from the bike and took a look at its innards, he said a part was broken that could not be fixed. He did not have a similar Shimano clip-in pedal, and his alternative was one I had heard bad things about. I'll just borrow a pair of old-fashioned pedals with toe clips from Craig. Before we left the shop, Cyril, the owner, invited Craig to take a ride up Mont Aigoul with a few friends when he returns from Cannes.
On the way back from Le Vigan Craig suffered a flat tire, something Julie and I had been spared. The delay caused us to be caught by a light rain, something we anticipated and almost wanted, so Craig could test out a new heavy-duty, first-rate poncho he'd acquired from an English company a couple of years ago. It draped over his handlebars and kept his legs perfectly dry. Like most things Craig purchases, he thoroughly researched it. It met all his expectations.
Getting rained on caused me no concern knowing I had a dry place to return to. We lit up the fire and draped damp clothes all around it. My shoes and booties and gloves and tights and laundered clothes all needed drying. There was a faint aroma of coconut to the fire, as Craig had brought ten coconut shells from America to burn. Craig is determined not to let anything go to waste and tries to find a use for anything he comes upon, even if it means taking up space in his luggage and flying it across the ocean only to be burned. It is just one of his many idiosyncrasies that makes him such a fascinating fellow.
Craig had flown over on Swiss Air for the first time. The highlight was the chocolate they offered. I came via Air France. For me the highlight was the vast variety of French newspapers they offered, including the sports daily "L'Equipe." There was a rack of them in the terminal at O'Hare for our perusal before we boarded the plane.
Craig is just now tending to his final house-opening and packing chores. Then we'll begin the climb out of here. A sign warned of a barrier six kilometers away. No one could tell us if we could get by on our bikes, so I rode out this morning to investigate. A 100-foot section of road had washed away, but there was a narrow path along the cliff that we can walk our bikes along to get beyond it. It will be a mid-afternoon departure, but we'll still be able to get forty miles or so down the road and spend the night in our tents somewhere lost in the French countryside, just where we long to be.
Later, George
Craig and I visited Bobet's grave and a museum devoted to him in St. Meen-le-Grand, his home town, in Brittany on our way to Mont St. Michel three years ago. After our visit Craig wrote to the museum offering the bike, but he never heard back. Now it is the crown jewel of Craig's corral of ten bikes here in France. Another is a Peugeot PX-10 similar to the one Bernard Thevenet rode to two Tour victories in the '70s. That one Craig still rides.
It is his Nishiki though that he will be riding to Cannes. It was the first bike to take up habitation in his house here when he bought it fifteen years ago, somewhat on impulse when he and Onni were visiting a friend who lived in the area. That is a common affliction. Not a few of those, even before Peter Mayle, have written books about it. I just finished "A Home in France" by Ann Barry, a "New Yorker" writer. In 1984 she bought a house in the departement Lot between where Julie and Craig have homes. Twelve years later she succumbed to the urge to write about it.
Like all such books she speaks glowingly of her working class neighbors who continually come to her rescue. A book I would like to read is one by those people who befriend their American or British interlopers and how helpless they are and their butchery of the language and alien ways. Craig could be just the man to write it, as he is thoroughly accepted into his small community and well knows the ways and thoughts of his French neighbors. It was heart-warming to see the genuine happiness so many people greeted him with after his six-month sojourn in America.
Among those was the pony-tailed bike shop owner in Le Vigan. We paid him a visit to see if he could fix my wobbly left pedal. After he detached it from the bike and took a look at its innards, he said a part was broken that could not be fixed. He did not have a similar Shimano clip-in pedal, and his alternative was one I had heard bad things about. I'll just borrow a pair of old-fashioned pedals with toe clips from Craig. Before we left the shop, Cyril, the owner, invited Craig to take a ride up Mont Aigoul with a few friends when he returns from Cannes.
On the way back from Le Vigan Craig suffered a flat tire, something Julie and I had been spared. The delay caused us to be caught by a light rain, something we anticipated and almost wanted, so Craig could test out a new heavy-duty, first-rate poncho he'd acquired from an English company a couple of years ago. It draped over his handlebars and kept his legs perfectly dry. Like most things Craig purchases, he thoroughly researched it. It met all his expectations.
Getting rained on caused me no concern knowing I had a dry place to return to. We lit up the fire and draped damp clothes all around it. My shoes and booties and gloves and tights and laundered clothes all needed drying. There was a faint aroma of coconut to the fire, as Craig had brought ten coconut shells from America to burn. Craig is determined not to let anything go to waste and tries to find a use for anything he comes upon, even if it means taking up space in his luggage and flying it across the ocean only to be burned. It is just one of his many idiosyncrasies that makes him such a fascinating fellow.
Craig had flown over on Swiss Air for the first time. The highlight was the chocolate they offered. I came via Air France. For me the highlight was the vast variety of French newspapers they offered, including the sports daily "L'Equipe." There was a rack of them in the terminal at O'Hare for our perusal before we boarded the plane.
Craig is just now tending to his final house-opening and packing chores. Then we'll begin the climb out of here. A sign warned of a barrier six kilometers away. No one could tell us if we could get by on our bikes, so I rode out this morning to investigate. A 100-foot section of road had washed away, but there was a narrow path along the cliff that we can walk our bikes along to get beyond it. It will be a mid-afternoon departure, but we'll still be able to get forty miles or so down the road and spend the night in our tents somewhere lost in the French countryside, just where we long to be.
Later, George
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Le Vigan, France
Friends: The forecast of snow for today was no exaggeration. Though none has graced my shoulders, I have seen chunks of it along the road fallen from cars coming down from the higher elevations. When the clouds occasionally lift revealing the mountains above I can see fresh patches of the snow. I am passing through the Cevannes, which are not as high or as dramatic as the Alps or the Pyrenees, but still have an allure.
This is the fifth straight day of rain, but by far the coldest and hardest and most prolonged, and genuinely miserable. I've been able to see my breath as I've huffed up the climbs, and for the first time in my European travels I entered a tunnel that was actually warmer than it was outside it.
Julie was wise to call it quits yesterday. She wasn't prepared for the cold and the wet. "I'm not enjoying this," she said, "I don't want to suffer." She decided to take the train back to her home from Millau, rest up for a week, and then take the train to Cannes and join me in the campground.
It'd been three years since her last tour and she was a bit rusty. She was having difficulty readapting to her bike seat. What adjustments we made caused her Achilles tendons to protest. She doesn't particularly care for the hills, and there were a few too many.
She's never toured solo and has found it increasingly difficult to find a traveling companion now that she's a "woman of a certain age." She has lots of "gonna friends," friends who are gonna join her on a trip or come visit, but they're just "gonnas" and not doers. She says all the guys she meets over fifty claim they're fit, but they have guts and complain of some ailment or another and find it hard to keep up with her.
All her friends told her she was crazy to bike to Cannes, especially since she recently had a severe enough back problem to fly home to the States for an MRI and treatment. But she's not the type to stick to something she's not liking to prove others wrong. The back held up fine. Watching movies for twelve hours a day for a couple of weeks may be more of a strain on it than the biking.
One of her biggest regrets in not completing the trip is not being able to get a ride in Craig's Duex Chevaux, the vintage French Citroen car that hasn't been manufactured since 1990. In all her years in France she has never been in one. We'd see one or two a day, always a pleasurable site, and a sharp reminder that we were in France, in case we had forgotten.
Even riding with a companion I am capable of getting lost in a revery and forgetting where I am. I was startled to glance up and notice a couple of white faces in an approaching car the other day, as I'd been mentally transported back to Africa, and when I came to, forgot I was in France.
Despite the uninviting weather, there have still been quite a few gallivants of one stripe or another out on the roads drawn by the glorious French countryside. On our first day out of St. Cyprien for half an hour or more matching sports cars, some with their tops down and others with them still up, zipped by us, often with a trophy wife in the passenger seat. A couple days later an entourage of 50 Harley-Davidsons roared out of a town just as we were arriving. The day before an equal number of recreational bicyclists strung out for over a mile passed us going the opposite direction. Julie greeted them all with a ring of her bell.
There was a gathering of horse people in Etaing Sunday morning as we set out, saddling up in the town square for a ride into the surrounding mountains. And for a couple of days out route coincided with the Camino de Santiago, or Chemin de St. Jacuques, as it is known in France, allowing us an occasional glimpse of full-fledged backpackers. We've seen just one other touring cyclist, a lone Dutch-looking guy headed in the opposite direction. Julie and I were enough of a curiosity to one Santiago pilgrim we talked to that he asked to take our picture.
I'm just ten miles from Craig's house. Le Vigan is the largest town near his village. He and Onni come here every Saturday for its market and a New York Herald Tribune. Craig flies into Paris today and then takes the TGV to Montpellier where a neighbor will pick him up and drive him the 50 miles to his village in the mountains. I may arrive at his house before he does. I hadn't intended on arriving today, but I've had to keep riding all day to stay warm. I may end up camping somewhere along the road anyway and allow him to begin his jet lag recovery before we set out to Cannes.
Its been three years since our last ride together in France. I've been looking forward to another ever since, as I know many of my readers have. With his French fluency and inquiring and helpful nature, not to mention expertise as a bike mechanic, he makes for an ideal traveling companion.
Later, George
This is the fifth straight day of rain, but by far the coldest and hardest and most prolonged, and genuinely miserable. I've been able to see my breath as I've huffed up the climbs, and for the first time in my European travels I entered a tunnel that was actually warmer than it was outside it.
Julie was wise to call it quits yesterday. She wasn't prepared for the cold and the wet. "I'm not enjoying this," she said, "I don't want to suffer." She decided to take the train back to her home from Millau, rest up for a week, and then take the train to Cannes and join me in the campground.
It'd been three years since her last tour and she was a bit rusty. She was having difficulty readapting to her bike seat. What adjustments we made caused her Achilles tendons to protest. She doesn't particularly care for the hills, and there were a few too many.
She's never toured solo and has found it increasingly difficult to find a traveling companion now that she's a "woman of a certain age." She has lots of "gonna friends," friends who are gonna join her on a trip or come visit, but they're just "gonnas" and not doers. She says all the guys she meets over fifty claim they're fit, but they have guts and complain of some ailment or another and find it hard to keep up with her.
All her friends told her she was crazy to bike to Cannes, especially since she recently had a severe enough back problem to fly home to the States for an MRI and treatment. But she's not the type to stick to something she's not liking to prove others wrong. The back held up fine. Watching movies for twelve hours a day for a couple of weeks may be more of a strain on it than the biking.
One of her biggest regrets in not completing the trip is not being able to get a ride in Craig's Duex Chevaux, the vintage French Citroen car that hasn't been manufactured since 1990. In all her years in France she has never been in one. We'd see one or two a day, always a pleasurable site, and a sharp reminder that we were in France, in case we had forgotten.
Even riding with a companion I am capable of getting lost in a revery and forgetting where I am. I was startled to glance up and notice a couple of white faces in an approaching car the other day, as I'd been mentally transported back to Africa, and when I came to, forgot I was in France.
Despite the uninviting weather, there have still been quite a few gallivants of one stripe or another out on the roads drawn by the glorious French countryside. On our first day out of St. Cyprien for half an hour or more matching sports cars, some with their tops down and others with them still up, zipped by us, often with a trophy wife in the passenger seat. A couple days later an entourage of 50 Harley-Davidsons roared out of a town just as we were arriving. The day before an equal number of recreational bicyclists strung out for over a mile passed us going the opposite direction. Julie greeted them all with a ring of her bell.
There was a gathering of horse people in Etaing Sunday morning as we set out, saddling up in the town square for a ride into the surrounding mountains. And for a couple of days out route coincided with the Camino de Santiago, or Chemin de St. Jacuques, as it is known in France, allowing us an occasional glimpse of full-fledged backpackers. We've seen just one other touring cyclist, a lone Dutch-looking guy headed in the opposite direction. Julie and I were enough of a curiosity to one Santiago pilgrim we talked to that he asked to take our picture.
I'm just ten miles from Craig's house. Le Vigan is the largest town near his village. He and Onni come here every Saturday for its market and a New York Herald Tribune. Craig flies into Paris today and then takes the TGV to Montpellier where a neighbor will pick him up and drive him the 50 miles to his village in the mountains. I may arrive at his house before he does. I hadn't intended on arriving today, but I've had to keep riding all day to stay warm. I may end up camping somewhere along the road anyway and allow him to begin his jet lag recovery before we set out to Cannes.
Its been three years since our last ride together in France. I've been looking forward to another ever since, as I know many of my readers have. With his French fluency and inquiring and helpful nature, not to mention expertise as a bike mechanic, he makes for an ideal traveling companion.
Later, George
Monday, May 3, 2010
Millau, France
Friends: Julie and I have wild-camped the past two nights in campgrounds that hadn't opened yet. We weren't looking for a free place to camp, but rather a shower and a little shelter from the rain and a place to dry out some gear. When we discovered they were closed, we weren't so desperate to push on in search of an open campground, especially since Julie has put a limit of 50 miles per day on our travels and we'd already hit it or were approaching it.
Two nights ago we set up our tents in the stands overlooking the town soccer field adjoining the municipal campground in Estaing on the Lot River. We were joined by two French couples pulling campers behind their cars. The misty weather kept them quiet and in their vehicles.
Last night we didn't have to worry about sharing our campgrounds with any automotive campers, as a barrier blocked the road into the campground. Like the night before the toilets were locked, but this night we found a spigot dispensing water. We could have bathed if we needed to, but we've hardly been sweating in the unseasonably cold temperatures, other than on some of the increasingly long and arduous climbs. Julie has gone as long as 20 days without being able to bathe on a trek in the high Himalayas of Nepal, so she's not complaining, at least about not showering.
Yesterday's high was just 52 degrees, thirty degrees colder than my first two days in France before joining up with Julie--cold enough for me to wear tights for the first time in France since I needed them three years ago in the Alps on the way to Cannes. Snow is actually forecast for elevations over 1,000 meters tomorrow. We had intended on a route with several passes over 1,000 meters past Mont Aigoual, the highest peak in these parts at 1,567 meters, so we won't be going that way.
I learned my lesson six years ago when I was caught by a May snowstorm while climbing Aigoual on my way to Craig's house. That seven-mile descent in sleet is about as close to hypothermia as I've ever come. It took quite awhile to warm up beside Craig's fireplace. Mont Aigoual is notorious for having some of the nastiest weather in all of France and has a weather station atop it compiling data to prove it. I was lucky to learn from someone at a tourist office of the impending storm.
We've had to regularly seek out restaurants or coffee shops for warmth the past couple of days, especially after shivering long descents. Yesterday that led us into the small village of Ste-Eulalie d'Olt. We stumbled upon a festival of food and music and scarecrows. "Epouvantail," scarecrow, was a word Julie already knew, as a town near her also has a similar festival. She said she impressed her teacher in Paris by knowing it. There were stuffed epouvantails dangling all about the narrow streets of this charming village. Its small quaint square was jammed with vendors selling nuts and olives and pastries and cheeses and various prepared foods, some with aromas that were utterly irresistible.
When we walked past a lonely shivering couple all bundled up selling ice cream I commiserated with them, muttering a phrase new to my vocabulary thanks to Julie, "Quelle catastrophe." They almost smiled. Julie had used it to refer to the volcanic ash that closed down air traffic in Europe for five days. The French love extreme, colorful adjectives. During the Tour de France the French announcers pepper their commentary with "extraordinaire" and "magnifique" and "fantastique" and probably "catastrophe" too, though its French pronunciation (ca-tas-trof) has never registered with my ear. Since I've become attuned to it, I noticed its use five times in a book I'm reading about the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville, most famous for his seminal book "Democracy in America" that he wrote in 1835 after a visit to America. He wrote this book on the French Revolution twenty years later, just three years before his death in Cannes in 1859.
We bought a variety of food and retreated to a bar where Julie got her daily cup of coffee, a little later than usual. We could gaze out on the square and just barely hear the music of a five-piece band with three women singers. Julie kept gushing about how much she liked the ambiance of the town and its counter-culture flavor. There were many more young people here than in her town of St. Cyprien, and quite a few long-haired males of all ages. She is eager to pay it another visit with some of her ex-pat girl friends. It was another of the great discoveries of our travels.
Now its on to Craig's house.
Later, George
Two nights ago we set up our tents in the stands overlooking the town soccer field adjoining the municipal campground in Estaing on the Lot River. We were joined by two French couples pulling campers behind their cars. The misty weather kept them quiet and in their vehicles.
Last night we didn't have to worry about sharing our campgrounds with any automotive campers, as a barrier blocked the road into the campground. Like the night before the toilets were locked, but this night we found a spigot dispensing water. We could have bathed if we needed to, but we've hardly been sweating in the unseasonably cold temperatures, other than on some of the increasingly long and arduous climbs. Julie has gone as long as 20 days without being able to bathe on a trek in the high Himalayas of Nepal, so she's not complaining, at least about not showering.
Yesterday's high was just 52 degrees, thirty degrees colder than my first two days in France before joining up with Julie--cold enough for me to wear tights for the first time in France since I needed them three years ago in the Alps on the way to Cannes. Snow is actually forecast for elevations over 1,000 meters tomorrow. We had intended on a route with several passes over 1,000 meters past Mont Aigoual, the highest peak in these parts at 1,567 meters, so we won't be going that way.
I learned my lesson six years ago when I was caught by a May snowstorm while climbing Aigoual on my way to Craig's house. That seven-mile descent in sleet is about as close to hypothermia as I've ever come. It took quite awhile to warm up beside Craig's fireplace. Mont Aigoual is notorious for having some of the nastiest weather in all of France and has a weather station atop it compiling data to prove it. I was lucky to learn from someone at a tourist office of the impending storm.
We've had to regularly seek out restaurants or coffee shops for warmth the past couple of days, especially after shivering long descents. Yesterday that led us into the small village of Ste-Eulalie d'Olt. We stumbled upon a festival of food and music and scarecrows. "Epouvantail," scarecrow, was a word Julie already knew, as a town near her also has a similar festival. She said she impressed her teacher in Paris by knowing it. There were stuffed epouvantails dangling all about the narrow streets of this charming village. Its small quaint square was jammed with vendors selling nuts and olives and pastries and cheeses and various prepared foods, some with aromas that were utterly irresistible.
When we walked past a lonely shivering couple all bundled up selling ice cream I commiserated with them, muttering a phrase new to my vocabulary thanks to Julie, "Quelle catastrophe." They almost smiled. Julie had used it to refer to the volcanic ash that closed down air traffic in Europe for five days. The French love extreme, colorful adjectives. During the Tour de France the French announcers pepper their commentary with "extraordinaire" and "magnifique" and "fantastique" and probably "catastrophe" too, though its French pronunciation (ca-tas-trof) has never registered with my ear. Since I've become attuned to it, I noticed its use five times in a book I'm reading about the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville, most famous for his seminal book "Democracy in America" that he wrote in 1835 after a visit to America. He wrote this book on the French Revolution twenty years later, just three years before his death in Cannes in 1859.
We bought a variety of food and retreated to a bar where Julie got her daily cup of coffee, a little later than usual. We could gaze out on the square and just barely hear the music of a five-piece band with three women singers. Julie kept gushing about how much she liked the ambiance of the town and its counter-culture flavor. There were many more young people here than in her town of St. Cyprien, and quite a few long-haired males of all ages. She is eager to pay it another visit with some of her ex-pat girl friends. It was another of the great discoveries of our travels.
Now its on to Craig's house.
Later, George
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Decazeville, France
Friends: It's day three of Travels with Julie to the Festival de Cannes. I met up with her at her home in St. Cyprien on the Dordogne River after flying into Bordeaux, one hundred miles west of St. Cyprien. I was six days late, delayed by the volcanic ash that closed down all of northern Europe's airports for five days.
Fortunately, we had allowed loads of time for the 500-mile ride from her home to Cannes, so we will still make it without having to push ourselves. We'll just have to take the most direct route and won't be able to meander as much as we might have otherwise. Although this is our first trip together, we knew we were fully compatible, as Julie has bicycled extensively all over the world, even wild camping at times.
Julie has had a house in France since 2003 when she and a girl friend were on a month long bicycle trip and saw a place she couldn't resist and bought it then and there. She has since sold that house and bought another in the same small town and has rehabbed it magnificently. That has been one of her sidelines back in Michigan. She even flew over her favorite contractor to help her with the job.
When I arrived at her three-story, century-old, stone house overlooking the valley, I caught her taking out the "poubelle." Julie just completed a three-month course honing her French in Paris and has been generously sharing her greatly expanded vocabulary. "Poubelle," the trash, was the first of many words and expressions that I have picked up.
Her fluency allowed us to have a full-fledged conversation yesterday with an older French man hiking the Chemin de Saint Jacques to Compestela in Spain that I biked two years ago. He had started in Puy en Velay two weeks ago and had two months to go. Even if I hadn't noticed the shell he had dangling from his backpack, I would have recognized him as a pilgrim with his walking stick and the great glow brightening his face.
Julie and I have been following rivers as much as possible to avoid the hills. We spent most of yesterday along the Lot and will have it as a companion for the next day or so. It will take us to the Gorges de Tarn, the one sight that Julie was most eager to bicycle. The only specific destination I wanted to include on our route was the Musée de Insolite, something I had recently read about in Lonely Planet's cycling guide to France. This museum of strange and bizarre sculptures included some bicycles. Since the book was written in 2001, we weren't certain the museum was still in existence, as they tend to come and go. I've gone out of my way to visit bicycle museums here in France that were no more.
When Julie and I arrived at the small town near the Musée we asked if it still existed. The caretaker of the campgrounds said it was just two kilometers up the road, just beyond a tunnel. He warned us not to take any pictures, as the owner would demand money from us.
He needn't have warned us, as there were two large signs forbidding photography of the sculptures mounted on the cliff side behind his home and museum without paying for it. It was two euros to enter the museum of several rooms and a large courtyard that included a bus sawn in half with the heads of pigs sticking out the windows. There was also a car whose body had been flattened hanging from a wire. Computer monitors were embedded in the cliff side. A scantily glad woman mannequin dangled from a high wire above it all. Garbage galore was artistically arranged. And amongst them were various bicycles and bicycle parts. One of the bikes was accompanied by the sign Jour de Fete. I asked the owner if he was a fan of Jacques Tati. He said he was born in 1949, the year of Tati's first movie, the bicycle postman movie, "Jour de Fete," his favorite movie and one of his inspirations.
Both Julie and I were most happy to have made the effort to find this place. It was a great discovery. It had us repeating our mantra of how much we enjoy France.
Later, George
Fortunately, we had allowed loads of time for the 500-mile ride from her home to Cannes, so we will still make it without having to push ourselves. We'll just have to take the most direct route and won't be able to meander as much as we might have otherwise. Although this is our first trip together, we knew we were fully compatible, as Julie has bicycled extensively all over the world, even wild camping at times.
Julie has had a house in France since 2003 when she and a girl friend were on a month long bicycle trip and saw a place she couldn't resist and bought it then and there. She has since sold that house and bought another in the same small town and has rehabbed it magnificently. That has been one of her sidelines back in Michigan. She even flew over her favorite contractor to help her with the job.
When I arrived at her three-story, century-old, stone house overlooking the valley, I caught her taking out the "poubelle." Julie just completed a three-month course honing her French in Paris and has been generously sharing her greatly expanded vocabulary. "Poubelle," the trash, was the first of many words and expressions that I have picked up.
Her fluency allowed us to have a full-fledged conversation yesterday with an older French man hiking the Chemin de Saint Jacques to Compestela in Spain that I biked two years ago. He had started in Puy en Velay two weeks ago and had two months to go. Even if I hadn't noticed the shell he had dangling from his backpack, I would have recognized him as a pilgrim with his walking stick and the great glow brightening his face.
Julie and I have been following rivers as much as possible to avoid the hills. We spent most of yesterday along the Lot and will have it as a companion for the next day or so. It will take us to the Gorges de Tarn, the one sight that Julie was most eager to bicycle. The only specific destination I wanted to include on our route was the Musée de Insolite, something I had recently read about in Lonely Planet's cycling guide to France. This museum of strange and bizarre sculptures included some bicycles. Since the book was written in 2001, we weren't certain the museum was still in existence, as they tend to come and go. I've gone out of my way to visit bicycle museums here in France that were no more.
When Julie and I arrived at the small town near the Musée we asked if it still existed. The caretaker of the campgrounds said it was just two kilometers up the road, just beyond a tunnel. He warned us not to take any pictures, as the owner would demand money from us.
He needn't have warned us, as there were two large signs forbidding photography of the sculptures mounted on the cliff side behind his home and museum without paying for it. It was two euros to enter the museum of several rooms and a large courtyard that included a bus sawn in half with the heads of pigs sticking out the windows. There was also a car whose body had been flattened hanging from a wire. Computer monitors were embedded in the cliff side. A scantily glad woman mannequin dangled from a high wire above it all. Garbage galore was artistically arranged. And amongst them were various bicycles and bicycle parts. One of the bikes was accompanied by the sign Jour de Fete. I asked the owner if he was a fan of Jacques Tati. He said he was born in 1949, the year of Tati's first movie, the bicycle postman movie, "Jour de Fete," his favorite movie and one of his inspirations.
Both Julie and I were most happy to have made the effort to find this place. It was a great discovery. It had us repeating our mantra of how much we enjoy France.
Later, George
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
The African Queen and other Post-Africa Reading
Friends: I left Africa two weeks ago, but I continue to linger in the Dark Continent thanks to my usual post-trip reading of books on the region I just returned from. The books all make me glad to be home, freed of the malaria threat and the many other trials and tribulations that afflict any one who lives or travels in Africa.
One of those tribulations was the scarcity of water. Even though much of my time was spent near Lake Victoria, the second largest lake in the world after Lake Superior, water wasn't so easy to come by. Many of the three and four dollar hotels I stayed at didn't have running water, like the majority of the population. Most people procure their water from a well or a town pump often on the outskirts of their village.
Often my lodging included a mere jug containing a couple of gallons for my bathing and washing of clothes, much much less than I am accustomed to. But I felt fortunate to have any water, as occasionally I ended up at a place that had none, due to lack of water pressure or too much demand. I was continually on the alert for and craving water to pour over me in the heat and to rinse out my sweat-soaked clothes.
"Bill Bryson's African Diary" mentioned that most people in Africa get by on less water each day than an American uses in one flush of the toilet. Bryson's book was more of a pamphlet than a book, just fifty pages long, recounting eight days he spent in Kenya at the invitation of an aid organization. He tries to amuse, as is his style, though that's not so easy to do, nor entirely appropriate. I don't particularly care for travel writers who strain to be humorous. I take travel seriously and prefer those writers who look for truths and insights, rather than those who stray into flippancy and try to make light of their experiences.
A common theme of my reading has been coping with the mosquitoes and the flies. No one had as severe a fly attack as the five hours that Ingo and I endured during our ride out of Murchison Falls National Park, but at least we avoided malaria. Corinne Hofmann, a 27-year old Swiss woman who fell madly in love with a young Masai warrior while vacationing in Kenya and married him, describes quite graphically her battles with malaria in her book "The White Masai."
Malaria was just one of the many traumas and difficulties she had trying to adjust to a culture utterly alien to what she was accustomed to. She makes a brave and valiant attempt to live as a Masai in an isolated small village in a cow-dung walled hut, but it is a doomed effort. Her book covers three-and-a-half years from her first sight of the Masai to her finally fleeing the country with their one-year old daughter.
She returns to Switzerland several times during her stay in Kenya for recovery and respite. It is a remarkable story that had enough appeal to sell over four million books. Her Masai was illiterate and continually suspicious that she was having an affair with just about any male she spoke to. The book was so successful, she has written two follow-up books.
The two lead characters in the book "The African Queen" are also stricken with malaria, though not in the movie. The slender book was written by C. S. Forester sixteen years before it was turned into a movie in 1951 starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. Their marriage in the movie also differs from that in the book. The Hepburn character in the book actually proposes in the final few paragraphs just before the Bogart character is to be sent off to serve in the army, while in the movie it is Bogart doing the proposing before they are both to be hung.
I was eager to see this seminal movie again, as it was filmed on the stretch of the Nile preceding Murchison Falls that I had taken a river trip on. Hepburn and Bogart passed many more crocodiles than I saw, though not as many hippopotamuses. The hippos I saw were mostly submerged. The crocodiles were definitely much more cinematic, especially with their mouths gaping open as a means of cooling off.
While searching for the book at the library I discovered Hepburn had written a book about the filming of the movie--"The Making of The African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind." Hepburn was thrilled with the opportunity to go to Africa and didn't care what she was paid. But she struggled with sickness while there. She lost twenty pounds, even though she says she was thin to begin with.
Testifying to the enduring popularity of the movie, Hepburn didn't write her book until thirty-five years after the movie came out. It received four Oscar nominations, but not one for best picture, just best actor, actress, director and screenplay. Bogart was the only one to win, beating out Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire," a performance that is now considered one of the greatest of all time.
Bogart had never won an Oscar, and had only been nominated once before for "Casablanca" in 1943. He was much more liked by the Hollywood community than the young upstart Brando, proving that Oscar voters aren't always objective. It was Brando's first nomination in just his second movie. He received nominations the next three years as well, finally winning for "On the Waterfront" in 1954, beating out Bogart in "Caine Mutiny."
Winston Churchill recounted his travels through Kenya and Uganda and on to Cairo in 1907 as a 32-year old Under-Secretary in "My African Journey." Most of the journey was on waterways, but some was also by foot and bicycle. He acknowledges, "The best of all methods of progression in Central Africa--however astonishing it may seem--is the bicycle." There were few roads then, but the bike was well-suited to the hard-packed trails. He says he could average seven miles per hour and could cover four times the distance by bike as he could by foot in a day. Not only did he bicycle to Murchison Falls, he was also transported by bike rickshaw the 25 miles from Entebbe to Kampala, with one guy pedaling the rickshaw while three others pushed it.
Though the book was written over one hundred years ago, many of its observations still ring true. Churchill saw great potential in Uganda, calling it the pearl of Africa, but he also acknowledged that "the natives evince a reluctance to work, especially to work regularly." He refers to them as "brutish children," that need to be raised from "their present degradation." He observed that they were quite impoverished, though they hardly knew it, "secure in their abyss of contented degradation, rich in that they lack everything and want nothing."
Paul Theroux has written quite a bit on Africa having served in the Peace Corps in Malawi in the '60s and then teaching in Kampala for several years after being kicked out of the Peace Corps. Before he was a travel writer, he was a novelist. He wrote ten novels before his first travel book, "The Great Railway Bazaar," a book he wrote out of desperation, as none of his novels were much of a success. Leaving his wife to travel for a couple of months cost him his marriage, but made him enough money to get out of debt and provided him with a career. He's never felt comfortable as a travel-writer though. He'd much rather be known as a novelist, and regularly demeans travel-writing.
Three of his first five novels took place in Africa. All three are about the miserable experiences of non-Africans trying to do good or make a life in Africa. "Fong and the Indians" focuses on a Chinese shop-owner and how he is preyed upon by Indian merchants and the Africans. His second African novel, "Girls at Play," is about several American and British women who come to Africa to teach and what a disillusioning and disastrous experience it is for all them.
An American insurance salesman is the chief pitiable character in "Jungle Lovers." It is surprising Theroux lasted as long as he did in Africa seeing what a jaded view he had of living there. He returned forty years later for a trip from Cairo to Cape Town detailed in "Dark Star Safari." He saw that decades of humanitarian aid to the Africans had done little to improve their lot and only made them dependent and defused whatever ambition they might have. He declares it is time for aid organizations to stop giving to the Africans and to let them cope for themselves. I had a similar impression after encountering so many people who wanted money from me, as they had grown accustomed to whites and aid organizations freely giving them assistance and spending outrageous sums of money on their travels.
On my flight home I met a 45-year old Swedish engineer who had spent three weeks in Tanzania helping to dig a well for an orphanage. It was his first time in a third-world country encountering extreme poverty. He said being able to help such poor people, buying them shoes and other incidentals, was the best experience of his life.
He thought he had made such a difference in their lives, especially with the digging of the well, that he envisioned countless other improvements that could be made in their lives. Just before he left he had a conference with the administrators of the orphanage detailing what else they could do in the coming years to improve their operation. He said they just looked at him baffled, wondering why he was telling them all this. Rather than inspiring them to make such improvements on their own, they expected him or someone else to do it for them. The Swede said that was the first time he really understood the African mentality. Still, he was aglow with the giving he had done. And that's what keeps many whites returning, doing some good, but only corrupting the locals will, turning them into beggars and semi-cripples.
But being conditioned to expecting those with more to willingly and gladly give isn't unique to Africans. Tim and Cindy Travis of downtheroad.org, a couple who have spent the past eight years touring the world by bicycle and have written three books about their travels, recently sent out a diatribe to their followers complaining that no touring bike manufacturer would give them free bikes before they set out for India. They'd become so accustomed to others in the bicycle industry giving them gear, they expect it from everyone.
Later, George
One of those tribulations was the scarcity of water. Even though much of my time was spent near Lake Victoria, the second largest lake in the world after Lake Superior, water wasn't so easy to come by. Many of the three and four dollar hotels I stayed at didn't have running water, like the majority of the population. Most people procure their water from a well or a town pump often on the outskirts of their village.
Often my lodging included a mere jug containing a couple of gallons for my bathing and washing of clothes, much much less than I am accustomed to. But I felt fortunate to have any water, as occasionally I ended up at a place that had none, due to lack of water pressure or too much demand. I was continually on the alert for and craving water to pour over me in the heat and to rinse out my sweat-soaked clothes.
"Bill Bryson's African Diary" mentioned that most people in Africa get by on less water each day than an American uses in one flush of the toilet. Bryson's book was more of a pamphlet than a book, just fifty pages long, recounting eight days he spent in Kenya at the invitation of an aid organization. He tries to amuse, as is his style, though that's not so easy to do, nor entirely appropriate. I don't particularly care for travel writers who strain to be humorous. I take travel seriously and prefer those writers who look for truths and insights, rather than those who stray into flippancy and try to make light of their experiences.
A common theme of my reading has been coping with the mosquitoes and the flies. No one had as severe a fly attack as the five hours that Ingo and I endured during our ride out of Murchison Falls National Park, but at least we avoided malaria. Corinne Hofmann, a 27-year old Swiss woman who fell madly in love with a young Masai warrior while vacationing in Kenya and married him, describes quite graphically her battles with malaria in her book "The White Masai."
Malaria was just one of the many traumas and difficulties she had trying to adjust to a culture utterly alien to what she was accustomed to. She makes a brave and valiant attempt to live as a Masai in an isolated small village in a cow-dung walled hut, but it is a doomed effort. Her book covers three-and-a-half years from her first sight of the Masai to her finally fleeing the country with their one-year old daughter.
She returns to Switzerland several times during her stay in Kenya for recovery and respite. It is a remarkable story that had enough appeal to sell over four million books. Her Masai was illiterate and continually suspicious that she was having an affair with just about any male she spoke to. The book was so successful, she has written two follow-up books.
The two lead characters in the book "The African Queen" are also stricken with malaria, though not in the movie. The slender book was written by C. S. Forester sixteen years before it was turned into a movie in 1951 starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. Their marriage in the movie also differs from that in the book. The Hepburn character in the book actually proposes in the final few paragraphs just before the Bogart character is to be sent off to serve in the army, while in the movie it is Bogart doing the proposing before they are both to be hung.
I was eager to see this seminal movie again, as it was filmed on the stretch of the Nile preceding Murchison Falls that I had taken a river trip on. Hepburn and Bogart passed many more crocodiles than I saw, though not as many hippopotamuses. The hippos I saw were mostly submerged. The crocodiles were definitely much more cinematic, especially with their mouths gaping open as a means of cooling off.
While searching for the book at the library I discovered Hepburn had written a book about the filming of the movie--"The Making of The African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind." Hepburn was thrilled with the opportunity to go to Africa and didn't care what she was paid. But she struggled with sickness while there. She lost twenty pounds, even though she says she was thin to begin with.
Testifying to the enduring popularity of the movie, Hepburn didn't write her book until thirty-five years after the movie came out. It received four Oscar nominations, but not one for best picture, just best actor, actress, director and screenplay. Bogart was the only one to win, beating out Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire," a performance that is now considered one of the greatest of all time.
Bogart had never won an Oscar, and had only been nominated once before for "Casablanca" in 1943. He was much more liked by the Hollywood community than the young upstart Brando, proving that Oscar voters aren't always objective. It was Brando's first nomination in just his second movie. He received nominations the next three years as well, finally winning for "On the Waterfront" in 1954, beating out Bogart in "Caine Mutiny."
Winston Churchill recounted his travels through Kenya and Uganda and on to Cairo in 1907 as a 32-year old Under-Secretary in "My African Journey." Most of the journey was on waterways, but some was also by foot and bicycle. He acknowledges, "The best of all methods of progression in Central Africa--however astonishing it may seem--is the bicycle." There were few roads then, but the bike was well-suited to the hard-packed trails. He says he could average seven miles per hour and could cover four times the distance by bike as he could by foot in a day. Not only did he bicycle to Murchison Falls, he was also transported by bike rickshaw the 25 miles from Entebbe to Kampala, with one guy pedaling the rickshaw while three others pushed it.
Though the book was written over one hundred years ago, many of its observations still ring true. Churchill saw great potential in Uganda, calling it the pearl of Africa, but he also acknowledged that "the natives evince a reluctance to work, especially to work regularly." He refers to them as "brutish children," that need to be raised from "their present degradation." He observed that they were quite impoverished, though they hardly knew it, "secure in their abyss of contented degradation, rich in that they lack everything and want nothing."
Paul Theroux has written quite a bit on Africa having served in the Peace Corps in Malawi in the '60s and then teaching in Kampala for several years after being kicked out of the Peace Corps. Before he was a travel writer, he was a novelist. He wrote ten novels before his first travel book, "The Great Railway Bazaar," a book he wrote out of desperation, as none of his novels were much of a success. Leaving his wife to travel for a couple of months cost him his marriage, but made him enough money to get out of debt and provided him with a career. He's never felt comfortable as a travel-writer though. He'd much rather be known as a novelist, and regularly demeans travel-writing.
Three of his first five novels took place in Africa. All three are about the miserable experiences of non-Africans trying to do good or make a life in Africa. "Fong and the Indians" focuses on a Chinese shop-owner and how he is preyed upon by Indian merchants and the Africans. His second African novel, "Girls at Play," is about several American and British women who come to Africa to teach and what a disillusioning and disastrous experience it is for all them.
An American insurance salesman is the chief pitiable character in "Jungle Lovers." It is surprising Theroux lasted as long as he did in Africa seeing what a jaded view he had of living there. He returned forty years later for a trip from Cairo to Cape Town detailed in "Dark Star Safari." He saw that decades of humanitarian aid to the Africans had done little to improve their lot and only made them dependent and defused whatever ambition they might have. He declares it is time for aid organizations to stop giving to the Africans and to let them cope for themselves. I had a similar impression after encountering so many people who wanted money from me, as they had grown accustomed to whites and aid organizations freely giving them assistance and spending outrageous sums of money on their travels.
On my flight home I met a 45-year old Swedish engineer who had spent three weeks in Tanzania helping to dig a well for an orphanage. It was his first time in a third-world country encountering extreme poverty. He said being able to help such poor people, buying them shoes and other incidentals, was the best experience of his life.
He thought he had made such a difference in their lives, especially with the digging of the well, that he envisioned countless other improvements that could be made in their lives. Just before he left he had a conference with the administrators of the orphanage detailing what else they could do in the coming years to improve their operation. He said they just looked at him baffled, wondering why he was telling them all this. Rather than inspiring them to make such improvements on their own, they expected him or someone else to do it for them. The Swede said that was the first time he really understood the African mentality. Still, he was aglow with the giving he had done. And that's what keeps many whites returning, doing some good, but only corrupting the locals will, turning them into beggars and semi-cripples.
But being conditioned to expecting those with more to willingly and gladly give isn't unique to Africans. Tim and Cindy Travis of downtheroad.org, a couple who have spent the past eight years touring the world by bicycle and have written three books about their travels, recently sent out a diatribe to their followers complaining that no touring bike manufacturer would give them free bikes before they set out for India. They'd become so accustomed to others in the bicycle industry giving them gear, they expect it from everyone.
Later, George
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