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October 30 Sunday Bicycle touring Canada from Montreal Quebec to Paris France We pass through customs. They don't make me take my hat off to compare pictures. In like Flint. We pick up our baggage. I go to find a cart as we probably have to pick the bikes up elsewhere. I leave to find one. Sharon stays with our shrink-wrapped panniers. They traveled well. Good job. I highly recommend the shrink-wrap guy. Even the fuel from Sharon's bottle, which had a loose top apparently, has been contained inside the shrink-wrap. I see a cart outside the airport. I go out and reach it at the same time as another guy. "You want this?" he says. "Yep." He sneers and walks off -- guess he doesn't want to mess with a Mohawk warrior. I wheel back inside and am stopped by a guard. I can't understand what she says, but she won't let me back into the baggage area. Hmmm. Maybe I have to go in somewhere else? Nope, this looks like where I was before. More people arrive. She stops everyone. "What's going on?" I ask a guy. "Suspect luggage," he says. "It's been going around on that carousel and no one's claimed it." After a short time, cops arrive. The luggage is taken off the carousel and they whisk it off. Taken out to be blown up, I suspect. When I finally return Sharon has our touring bikes partly assembled. They didn't go to another area, but came out on the conveyor too, looking like shot buffalo. I go to withdraw funds from an ATM, so we can buy a map of France. We're in Paris for $299 each. I can hardly believe we're here. Go to sleep and wake up in France. I meet two people who are leaving to go backpacking in Southeast Asia. I ask them how much money per day I should estimate. He says 150 francs per day should do it. It's an exchange of 3.6 francs for one Canadian dollar. It used to be higher, but fell recently. I look at an ATM. There are no buttons. I'm not sticking my card in there, I decide. I go around the corner and find one with buttons. I stick my card in. It spits my card back out. It turns out to be a bus fare machine. I go back and ask the backpacker how to use the ATM. He says when I put my card in a door will open and the buttons will appear. Sure enough. I key everything in and get the message: "Your bank has refused this transaction." Maybe the amount I keyed in was too high? I try a lower amount. I get the same result. The backpacker has been watching my progress, or rather, lack thereof, and comes running over. He tells me not to try a third time or the machine might keep my card. Ooh. Thank you. He says sometimes a particular machine doesn't work with a certain card. He suggests I try another machine. I try one downstairs. Same story. I go to the exchange clerk and convert my $13 of leftover Canadian cash to 42 FF. I buy a map of France for 20F. I go and tell Sharon my plight with the ATMs. She gives me her card to try. Same sad story. I suspect even though the ATM says Visa on the label, it doesn't work with the Plus system. I try a MasterCard with an ATM showing the Cirrus symbol. The machine swallows my card with a little message: "We keep your card." I then try my other MasterCard -- which I've never used in any machine before and I'm not sure I can even remember the correct PIN. I key in an amount and hit the jackpot! Hurray! I buy a French-English dictionary and go back to Sharon and the bikes. Having had so much fun trying to figure out how to use the ATMs, we attempt to phone home to let them know we arrived safely, and discover that ATMs are mere child's play compared to the phone system. We can't figure out how the phone works. I think you need a special phone card. We try using a "Mini Tel," since it says one can use a credit card. But it won't work either. We talk to an information desk and we still can't get anything to work. I can't even get an operator. I find a number and call direct to the US, but the operator tells me she can't phone Canada for me. I don't know a direct number to reach a Canadian operator. Frustrated, I give up. It is 3 PM by the time we leave the airport. Two days spent in airports -- joy. We jump on our fully loaded touring bicycles and cycle out into the rain and onto the A6, the autobahn -- cyclists prohibited -- looking for N7. There it is -- three lanes over exiting on the left -- traffic whizzing by ... we're in the right-most lane. We don't even bother to stop to wait for a break in traffic ... there will never be one anyway. We continue on, hoping there will be a right hand exit soon. Within five minutes we are talking to a smartly-uniformed French Gendarme in halting English. He is wagging a finger in my face, admonishing us that there is no cycling on the autobahn. I feign ignorance and that I do not understand. He pantomimes writing a ticket. Comprehend? Ah, oui. He tells us to take the next exit. Can we get to N7? "Follow your map," he says and leaves. It starts to rain harder. We take an exit and go under A6. We stop and put on rain gear. N7 must be just over there we reason and head off in that direction. Soon we are lost in a maze of short streets with narrow lanes and stone or white plaster houses with red clay tile roofs. Just like I imagined France to be. We find a soccer match and stop to ask directions to N7. Follow the ring road around the airport we're told. We cycle on and on, around and around. It becomes dark and we still can't locate N7. How can a national road just disappear? We stop again and are consulting our map when a little car pulls up and asks us directions. I laugh. We are at least as lost as they are. Sharon begins to cry. She wants a motel. "I feel so far away from home," she laments. We see a motel. I go in and get a room for 250 francs. The desk clerk at the Climate says we can take our bikes into our room. They are very friendly. He said that if we want to go into Paris tomorrow, we can leave our bikes here. Sharon tries to tighten her cones, but she can't get the cluster off. She replaces a rear brake cable that snapped when we stopped at the soccer field to ask directions. We have baths; there is no shower. Then we watch Robin Hood in French and wash out our clothes in the sink. |
