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Dirty Laundry "Silently, one by one, in the infinite
meadows of heaven At 2 am, I arose, still unable to sleep after my tiff with Sharon. I exited the tent. The sky was clear, speckled with winking stars. I watched in cold fascination as ice slowly encased our aluminum tent poles. Then, frost descended - everywhere - forming even on the shoulders of my fleece jacket. Six-thirty. It was still dark, but I chomped at the bit to get going like a race horse waiting for the starting gate to open. There was hardly any traffic. Sharon slept on. When she arose at the lordly hour of 7 am, she was still mad at me for insisting we take "the long route" around Montréal. By the time we packed up and hit the road, we still weren't on speaking terms. At a corner in Hemmingford, I made a right turn and cycled a couple of blocks. At Louie's motel (where we had stopped the previous night to check out the price and had offered $10 less than the asking price but were rebuffed), I noted the parking lot was devoid of vehicles. "Looks like Louie rented them all," I chuckled, and glanced to see if Sharon's face betrayed a smile. To my amazement, Sharon was nowhere to be seen. I pulled to a stop and waited. I waited some more. After ten minutes, I figured she must have gotten a flat. I retraced my route and found her waiting on the corner where I had turned. "Wrong direction, Scout," she blinked. "That'll take us directly into Montréal." She pointed straight ahead. Following her finger, I silently pedalled off in the new direction. I whipped along, churning past farmyards of cows, not caring if I worked up a lather: we planned on finding showers before our flight. Sharon was not impressed with my pace. She lagged behind. Far behind. (When we weren't getting along we tended to cycle farther apart. I don't know what folks on tandems do! Maybe they're more compatible?) Hunger ground me to a halt. Sharon eventually puffed alongside, panting and complaining. "I'm tired," she said. "Maybe I'm low on iron." "I'd settle for a banana." Sharon reached into a pannier, extracted a banana, and threw it at me. The yellow fruit bounced off my chest and on to the ground. As I bent to pick it up, Sharon determined the law of averages to drop me were on her side. She powered away, a strong wind at her back. What a woman! I inhaled the banana, and pounded off in hot pursuit. I doubt I would have caught her, but road construction forced her to stop. I halted alongside her, gasping. Offering a peace pipe, I apologized, and hugged her. Wind-at-Back reluctantly accepted Banana-in-Face back into tribe. A barge, towed by a powerboat, transported us across the river to Oka. A priest, on his day off he told us, was out for a hike. High on the hillside, he pointed out three churches hidden in the trees. "That's where I'm headed," he said. "There's a Trappist monastery up there. They make great cheese." When we arrived in Oka, cheese was not on my mind. Partway down main street, I saw it - a barber shop. Sharon had been bugging me the past few weeks to get a haircut. And, I figured, if there's anywhere in Canada that knows how to do a Mohawk haircut, it's gotta be Oka. After all, Oka is home to a band of Mohawk Indians. (In 1990 an armed confrontation arose between Oka's Mohawk warriors, the Québec Provincial Police, and the Canadian Armed Forces. The problem began when Oka's town council planned to expand their nine-hole golf course into an 18-holer (a rather insensitive decision considering the expansion was slated for construction on a tract of sacred native land that included a centuries-old cemetery). Not being avid golfers themselves apparently, the Mohawks took exception. They slapped on some war paint and set up an armed road block. The Canadian government sent in the army. After a tense 77-day standoff, the Mohawks, despite being outnumbered by thousands of army troops, emerged triumphant.) We approached the barber shop. "Hey!" I shouted. "I should get a haircut." "Good idea!" Sharon replied. "I'm glad you've finally seen the light." She wanted me to make a good impression on my entrance into France. And, oh, what an impression I would make! Leaving Sharon with our bikes, I traipsed inside the barber shop. "Most people need parental permission to get one of these," the barber told me. Fifteen minutes later, I sauntered out with my new Mohawk haircut. Sharon groaned. "I can't believe I didn't see this coming." As I suspected might be the case, she wasn't all that impressed with my new hairstyle. Banana-in-Face was once again in danger of being booted out of tribe. "Maybe you are low on iron," I said. "You're getting a little slow." I paused, then asked, "How do you like it?" "Looks a little odd with glasses." "Think of all the shampoo I'll save," I said, rubbing my mostly bald pate before strapping on my suddenly larger helmet. "Yeah," Sharon mumbled. "I hope your head sunburns." Perhaps she thought it'd bake some sense into it? That went well, I thought, saddling up and following Sharon's rapidly departing form. She gamely pulled to a stop in front of a Welcome to Oka town sign and took my picture. In Saint-Eustache, at a junior high school, I went in and asked a teacher if he knew where I could get a shower. "Sportif," he responded. His directions sent us to Sportif's parking lot. Just looking at the parking area I could tell we were way out of our league. Numerous snazzy BMWs, Porsches, and Mercedes lined the parking stalls. We leaned our overloaded bikes against a railing (praying they wouldn't topple over and scratch a paint job on a car that cost more than our house). Sportif was a tad greater on the ritzy side than we had first imagined. I approached the sparkling clean double-glass doors, fully expecting to be given the heave-ho before I even had a chance to lay one foot inside. But, a pert aerobics instructor took interest in me (my new haircut?) and invited us in. The showers were deluxe. The whirlpool wasn't half bad either. The white collar clientele, however, wasn't altogether sure about what to make of my new flying wedge hairdo. As I soaked in the spa, they stared and stared, and then stared some more. I'll bet they mistook me for a lawyer right off.
After a long soaking, scrubbing, lathering hot shower, we reluctantly bid Sportif farewell. We arrived at a launderette - just in time to have a worker lock the door in our faces. With six minutes to closing, there was not a chance we were setting even one foot inside. "Oh, well," I said, "two out of three ain't bad." "You're not counting your haircut as a good thing, are you?" Sharon asked. We rode off, planning to camp at the same church we had a month earlier. No doubt the vast improvement of our French would impress the monsignor! I forgot I had unbungeed my bag of dirty clothes at the laundry. When we stopped a few blocks later to check directions, I discovered the still open bag clinging to my rear rack. "Wow, that's amazing," I marvelled, wondering how on earth it hadn't toppled off. "Must be my lucky day." "Or not," Sharon laughed. "If you'd been lucky, it'd have fallen off." (She's always in a better mood when she's clean.) I snorted, and checked the bag's contents. One Chilli Willie sock wasn't there. I convinced Sharon we should backtrack to look for it. Following the smell, we found it - right beside the laundry door. "Still dirty!" I exclaimed, plucking the dank bundle off the sidewalk. "I'm sure no one dared touch it," Sharon said. "No doubt it's radioactive." We set off once more. In the dark we cycled a bike path, keeping a keen eye out for the "you-can't-miss-it" church. At the edge of town we realized we had somehow missed the church. I recognized the spot we were - it was well past our intended camping spot. It was late. Rather than backtracking again we cycled into a nearby residential area and discovered a quiet park. A next door neighbour dog announced our presence, yapping hysterically without relent. "Mangy mutt," Sharon mumbled, pulling her sleeping bag over her head. |
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