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May 2 Tuesday Bicycle touring France from past St Seine L'Abbaye France to The day dawned clear and blue. As we were exiting our free bicycle touring forest campsite, a farmer passed by on the road on his tractor. We cycle into town and stopped to buy fruit and bread. Sharon wanted hard cheese, but the little store didn't have any. It turned out the town didn't have a boulangerie, either. Very odd -- nearly unheard of in France. We cycled to the next town. It turned out to have even a smaller number of inhabitants, with many old crusty farmers and their wrinkled dusty wives. That's the trouble with bicycle touring on these small roads -- they all go to small towns. Often, ones that time has forgotten, but somehow still exist in a back eddy of the stream of time. Luckily we arrived at just the moment when the traveling bakery man was sounding his arrival. We went in the direction of the horn blasts and found him in an alleyway waiting for a pleasant woman to make her purchase. We took our purchases and cycled to eat at a nearby park on benches surrounded by tumbledown buildings and the smell of barnyard manure. Out of water, I tried turning the handle of an abandoned well, but it was drier than a biscuit fart. For all my efforts I received nothing more than a protesting squeal of old metal. Cycling down main street leaving town, I turned into an open driveway to ask the occupant for water. A shuffling grizzled veteran of too many late night wine bashes told me he had no water. If my French was better I would have asked him what the hose was for if he had no water. Welcome to the 20th-century buddy. Instead, I departed, thanking the monsieur for his hospitality, and telling him he should live in Paris as he would fit right in. We cycled a couple of kilometres down the road. I swung my bike into a farmhouse to see if they might have the luxury of water. The woman was in the midst of preparing chicken lunch. She spoke English, and after filling my water bottles pleasantly asked if I needed anything else. Sharon was doing her best grumpy bear routine that I have seen in a long while. Guess she is upset when she doesn't get enough honey. They are like that in the spring time when they are just coming out of hibernation. I don't know how she could ever be upset traveling with a saint like me. But I suppose twenty-four hours a day with the same someone for eight months wears thin at times -- even if the other is a saint. Homesickness bites the big one. The scenery is so similar to back home in Edmonton Alberta, she wonders why she is bicycle touring so far away from home to see this. Lots of farmland. She wants history, art and architecture. And she complains we don't have enough information about the area. We could be right by something and miss it because we don't know it's there. She accuses me of not wanting to look at the map to plan ahead. I told her I would if it would make any difference to where we are going. I don't particularly enjoy these churches. They are old and smell like moldy fungus rock rot. Sharon has found her bike gears are too high now that we've entered the hills again and her legs and back hurt. And with the sun shining today she will probably burn. Sometimes you just can't win. What did the woman say about her ex-husband? He was like my left hand -- nice to have, but basically useless. Stopped to see a church with a beautiful stained glass window -- too bad it didn't open. It smelled like someone had died in there and hadn't been found yet. The water in the creeks is still high. Noticed lots of bugs pelting my face today. I hate it when I'm cycling blissfully along and they smack into my lips and stick onto my lip cream. I asked another woman for water. It is hot bicycle touring today. I am going through a lot more water than usual. As the woman filled my jug I told her I was from Canada which started a raft of questions. Her husband was working on a car and she would repeat info to him. At one point she removed her dentures to explain that he can't talk well because he has no teeth. People do strange things to overcome the language barrier. Saw some calves running through a field, kicking up their heels. They must have been quarter horse cows at the pace they were setting. Sharon said she had never seen cows run like that before. "Hey Shorty, what's spookin' those cows?" A few horses were in a pasture. The recent rain had turned part of the field into a brown stream of fast flowing water. The horses were standing in the water and splashing each other with their hooves. As I was buying groceries, a fella asked Sharon if we were staying at the campground in town. Maybe Sharon told him we might. "Nope," he said, "it's underwater. Beacoup pluie." Just out of town we cycled upon a small wooded area by a field of canola and a haphazard stack of round bales. These bales don't have the little black plastic hat chapeaux like others we have seen. These bales lie carelessly stacked and scattered across the field, strewn about like some mischievous giant child's play blocks. Our wooded area turned out to be on suitably high ground. After setting up our bicycle touring tent, I spent the next hour poring over my map, looking at various possible routes to get us from here to there. You see, not only am I a saint, but I am a wise one as well. |
