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April 29 Saturday Bicycle touring France from
the Saone River to I should have put my earplugs in much earlier than I did. It was amazing. As soon as I shoved the first one in as far as my ear bone, the whole world ceased to make a sound. The silence was complete as my stirrup and anvil no longer vibrated the conducted air waves. My cilia hairs stopped waving in their gel and my tired overworked semi-unconscious brain stopped processing incoming stimuli. If a car crashes on the freeway and no one hears it does it make a sound? I need to go to sleep. Started the day with French toast. Got to try out that new bottle of cinnamon. Sharon asked if I knew it was cinnamon when I bought it in the grocery store. I told her the fist bottle I picked up had sticks of cinnamon. This one, beside it, looked like ground cinnamon. Still, not taking any chances after the prune jam fiasco, I unscrewed the lid and sniffed the contents. Yep, cinnamon! A 4x4 just came groaning along in low gear on the muddy track in front of our lightweight cycle touring tent. Those guys go everywhere. Lots of spiders in the tent. Just trying to find a dry refuge, I guess. I hate it when my two feet get wet; I can't imagine what it would feel like to have eight wet all at the same time. A few boats ply the Saone. Saw everything from a barge to a small fishing rowboat with two people. Even saw a cabin cruiser. Got out our bicycle touring maps to evaluate which route we should attempt on our France bicycle tour. We're off the Michelin Rhone valley map I bought at Mammouth. We are just past Lyon. The maps spread out across our entire tiny two-person bicycle touring tent. With the Europe map fully open we barely have enough room for us. Plus we have an AMA map of the Benelux countries and another Michelin France map. Looked at our bike guide book that I have been diligently cycling with every day since Lisbon, Portugal. I can hardly wait to try out a route. I hope it will be worth the weight of lugging the cycle touring book up all those mountains. I would think the publishers would take into consideration who is going to be carrying these things. As it says on the bicycle touring book's front cover "quality" paperback. Who cares? I want lightweight onion paper with tiny size 4 writing. We are cycling toward the tulips in North Holland. We have decided to make an earnest effort to get up earlier to get in more hours of pedalling. It probably will do us good. We packed up our tent and cycle gear and we're back on D933 about 2 PM. We're cycling in quite a bit of traffic, but it thinned out as we cycled past Villefranche-sur-Saone. We just remembered it is a holiday weekend. Monday is Labor Day. May 8 is Liberation Day or Victory Day from World War II. Two long weekends in a row. That could account for the increase in traffic. In Trévoux I bought two new small scale Michelin maps for the next two areas north of us that we will be bicycle touring. In Thoissey, we had to try out some white departmental roads to make my bicycle touring map investment seem worthwhile. So, even though D933 had quietened down and we had a tailwind, we still headed east and then north in quest of white roads. I can rationalize almost anything to justify something Sharon says. Haven't I ever heard that two wrongs don't make a right? Yes, but three do. Soon, rather than cycling flat smooth blacktop,
we are bicycling along on lumpy pavement rolling over hill and
dale. "Isn't this better?" I ask Sharon. Turned out we needn't have worried -- no one passed us in either direction the whole time we were on the petite route. It turned out to be a great road for carefree cycle touring. All too soon, our peaceful bicycle touring route rejoined D933. The valley is wider now than the Rhone Valley. Less industry. Less population. Less traffic. Less congestion. Much nicer to be bicycle touring the Saone Valley; we actually get to look around and enjoy the scenery. We are cycling along in the country, noticing the large country houses of the poor country folk with their large expanses of yard. Didn't they build anything smaller than mansions in the old days? Home alone. One was very picturesque with a large opening through a meadow to large trees framing the house. We even saw a chateau that offered camping on their expansive estate. Cycled past lots of worked farm fields. No vineyards here. The land doesn't have those special rocks. Some canola is higher than our heads as we ride past. The fields of yellow have a luminescence to them -- they practically glow. We are pedalling along on our fully loaded touring bicycles discussing the healthier lifestyles of the people who live in this part of France compared to yesterday around Lyon as we ride side by side down a quiet lane surveying the rural scene spread before us. When we pulled our overloaded touring bicycles to a halt in a small town for a loaf of bread (called a flute), an old chap spotted us and came over to extoll the very virtues of rural life we had just moments before been expounding upon. Very interesting. So, the rural folk don't take their surroundings for granted, after all. A moat surrounds the old part of town with a couple of rivers thrown in for good measure. The old fella's grandson and granddaughter were walking with him. I said "Bonjour" to the old man and shook his hand. The two-year-old tyke stuck out his hand and said Bonjour. That always amazes me. They are so small and yet they speak French so well. My new maps cost nineteen francs each ($5) from a little paper store. I paid twenty-five francs at Mammouth. So not everything is cheaper at a super store. The rural folks are friendlier than the inhabitants living in the more congested area we were cycling around Lyons. They wave their arms and shout words of encouragement as they greet us. The first time it happened Sharon said it must be some transplanted Italians. It can't be the reserved French carrying on like that. After the third time it happened, I said to her, "More Italians, I see." Sharon wonders if the rural French population is less inhibited. Cycled past an equestrian centre. The people riding were decked out in all the latest fashion accouterments. Don't forget the aloof French expression and make-up applied to perfection. As we pedalled a sedate country road on our overloaded touring bicycles, two Harleys suddenly thundered towards us. The lead guy took his feet off his foot pegs and then rotated his legs in a pedalling motion. Always some comedian. He went past us with a big smile. Like I'm glad I'm touring on this Harley, and you're the one that's bicycle touring. The sky to the west is ominously dark. A hairline crack of white ran through two layers. We began to look for a bicycle camping spot as more lightning crackled. We turned our bicycles off D58 and checked out a farmer's field for possible free bicycle camping, but the dove came back without an olive branch. We cycled back to D58, as it didn't look promising for more trees farther along. A house had a roof over their main gate. We huddled there, holding our touring bicycles, while the rain fell in a slashing motion driven by the gusting wind. Would it pass quickly? In a few minutes the wind let up. It lightened in the west. I put on my new yellow Mountain Equipment Co-op Gore-Tex raincoat for its premier christening. We decided to ride for a spell in the light drizzle. We hadn't cycled far when we saw what looked like an abandoned hut behind some forest cuttings. We turned our fully loaded touring bicycles in and went up the wet driveway. It turned out to be a chicken coop. Occupied. As we turned our touring bicycles around to leave it began to rain harder. A small woods next to the chicken coop whispered some promise. The dove was once again sent forth and this time returned with a small twig. As we pushed our loaded touring bikes into the forest to set up our bicycle touring tent, a rooster, agitated by our presence, crowed incessantly. Anyone for barbecue coq? A cuckoo bird sat in a tree nearby doing what it does best. Its chime announced an infinite hour. Does anyone smell chicken cooking? |
