|
May 1 Monday Bicycle touring France from Dijon France to a forest past St Seine L'Abbaye France To level the rolling off of my Thermarest in our tent, I shoved my substantial book bag under the downhill side of my Thermarest and almost got my Thermarest level. It is still a wee bit tipsy. Sharon chose the high side above me and spent the night trying not to steamroller me. This morning she had a headache. I peek out our Kelty's bicycle touring tent's door. The entire valley is shrouded in fog. We are high enough to be above the fog. The sun is shining. An oddity. I see a spider web, glistening with the remains of last night's dew. We pack up our cycle touring gear and descend into the fog. We cycle to Sombernon where a Casino (a France grocery store) is open, but we don't go in. A patisserie in town is open and they have a special on croissants. I buy three chocolate croissants and two normal ones. Sharon spies a washroom by the tennis courts and hauls her touring bike to a halt. Apparently France's eggs once again don't agree with her system. The eggs in France are usually not refrigerated. I plan on keeping mine. There is a sink and we wash our bicycle touring clothes and hang our cycling shorts and long-sleeved cycling jerseys on the back of our bikes to dry. Sharon was going to wash her hair, but people came to play tennis and she is shy. A woman and her son came over to talk with us. They asked, "Do you need anything?" A very nice question to hear when cycle touring in a foreign country, but we said we had everything we needed. As they left, Sharon wondered if saying a shower was something she needed would be in the right vein. We pedal north on our fully loaded touring bicycles. The wind feels straight out of Siberia. It is colder than the past few days. Not as bad as the day we were cycling through Siena Italy though. Plenty of snowflakes in the air that day. The sun pokes out from behind cumulus clouds. Cycling along, my back becomes hot, while my front is freezing. Just like being by a roaring campfire on a cold evening. We are trying to cycle tour on small roads. As we pedal along, we are enjoying France's pastoral scenery. We have been cycling uphill and downhill all day. With the strong headwind, we have to pedal just to cycle downhill. Everything is very green. Streams are charging their way through flower bedecked meadows. Fishermen with long poles try their luck. One stream meanders furtively along a field, and then doubles back on itself numerous times, glinting in the sunshine. Cows are spectacularly white. Calves glow like heavenly visions. We see lots of baby lambs as we cycle past fields; grey wool with black faces and stockings. Dandelions dot the meadows in an extravaganza of yellow blooms. They must get three crops a year here. Some have already gone to seed. There are an amazing number of paved roads to choose from for cycle touring. A one-laner running across the top of a farmer's field -- paved -- that we somehow go on. No houses were in sight for miles. No one passed us in either direction for the entire way. Can you believe this is bicycle touring in France? I expected France to be a whole lot more populated and congested than what we are finding here. We cycled out at an edge of a field to overlook St Seine L'Abbaye. We pulled our touring bikes to a halt and ate apricot jam, bread, and apples while admiring the view from a strategically placed bench. I can tell Europeans aren't used to picnic tables. A couple with a small baby set their lunch on a picnic table, then stood around the table and ate. Later, another car stopped. The driver got out, walked over to a spot no more than twenty feet from us, unzipped his trousers and takes a leak. Sharon marvels at how uninhibited they are about taking a whiz in public. We drop swiftly into town. Noticing a church door open, we drop our touring bicycles and go in. The church's gigantic front doors are plain wood. A small door is cut into one of the large doors and this is what we use to enter. Above the entrance are statues of ghoulish gargoyles -- their mouths hanging open in a howl and their arms beckoning. The far end, inside the church, has a colourful stained glass pattern. We cycle through a town where the shingles look like old cedar shakes. After a few buildings, I realize they are actually flat pieces of rock stacked like shakes. They must come with a million-year warranty. The road we are cycling is paralleling a stream. At a pullout, we pull our bikes in, and Sharon washes her locks while I decided to fix our shortwave's radio antennae. I begin to dismantle the radio's plastic case. It is held shut by five screws. I get the case open and find the screw holding the wire onto the antenna has jarred loose. I guess bicycle touring is a good test for products. I put the wire back on and wonder if it will improve the reception. A forest is beside the creek. As I reassemble the radio, Sharon pushes her loaded touring bike into the forest to find a free bicycle camp spot. When I finally finish reassembling the radio, I look up. I can no longer see Sharon or her brightly panniered bike. Confidently, I push off in the general direction I saw her go. After a minute I spot her pink bagged bike. "Do you think we should go farther in?" she asks as I approach. She's worried that we're still too close to the road and someone may see us. I tell her that I could barely find her ... and I knew where she went. We pushed our fully loaded touring bicycles in a ways farther, and settled for a moss covered group of rocks fifty feet away from Sharon's original spot. It is flat. No steamroller games tonight. And just when it was my turn to be on top. We set up our two-person bicycle touring tent and throw in our lightweight bicycle touring bike and hike sleeping bags. Just as we settle down, we suddenly hear a grotesque growling and howling. It is close by. Something is caught in a death struggle. The seemingly preternatural screams diminish into the woods as something runs off in a direction away from us. I tell Sharon she had better sharpen a stick in case whatever that thing was comes back. I'll confide: Whatever it was, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. |
