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12 Service Station A man's bass voice carried through the wall like a fog horn. His snoring was worse. Even with my ear plugs I heard him. He had a good sleep. Being somewhat masochistic I showered again in the morning. With only the "hot" tap on, the water was warmer. I turned the water off between lathering and rinsing. Still the water was cold when I finished. Even worse, the hotel had an attached restaurant and bar. Our clothes picked up a dreadful cooking odour. As soon as we mounted our bikes it began raining. After five kilometers my socks, shoes and feet were soaked. Arriving in Cahors the clouds let loose a torrent of pelting rain. We hustled under a gas station roof to wait for the deluge to pass. An old woman, with an umbrella, stood on the boundary, peering across fifteen feet of open space to her beloved funnylooking French car. She pondered forlornly-realizing she would get wet when she had to close her umbrella to get in her car. The man working at the gas station noticed too. He took her keys, dashed to her car in the downpour, then delivered it to her. When was the last time you saw that? That was what I called a service station. In Cahors we missed our road and ended up on some rural mountain road, sweating fitfully up one side and zooming down the other, ending where we started. Very entertaining. Sharon was hungry and in a bear of a mood. She said I became cranky when I was hungry, but I was no competition to the Bruin. We pulled into a Champion Supermarket at 12:38 p.m. It was closed. They closed at midday for midi. I found that concept difficult to grasp. Champion, a store the size of Walmart, was dark. Between twelve thirty and two thirty the whole place, including the gas bar, was locked tight. Making a wrong turn, Sharon and I came across an E. Leclerc store. I thought E. Leclerc was a giant electrical supply store, but I noticed grocery carts. Investigating, we found they had food and didn't close for midi. The weather was sixteen degrees Celsius with intermittent rain and shine. We crossed a slippery metal one lane suspension bridge with ridges for skinny bike tires to fall between. On the other side, Sharon and I spread our ground sheet over the soggy grass. We feasted on Cheerios; baguette and jam; baguette and President camembert cheese; chocolate and coffee flavoured puddings and Clementine oranges. To recross the bridge I took the safer sidewalk. I noticed the river was still high. Trees were twenty feet out in the rushing water. A beach and campground were under water. "Don't camp too close to the river," Sharon advised. Along the river, D8 was hilly and twisty. We passed field after field of vineyards. Grape vines littered the hillsides. We were on the edge of the Bordeaux region. Monstrous cold and damp stone chateaux advertised wine. Many properties were for sale. Some vines in emblazoned fields of orange, red and yellow leaves still held clusters of black grapes. We bought wine in grocery stores with regional labels. We were having fun tasting our way across France. I hoped the wine we bought fared better than our last bottle. It ended up all over my pannier. A reminder of France every time I opened my pannier. I kept thinking it was the wineries we were passing-then I found my pannier swimming in wine. Sharon was upset-until she remembered the bottle cost two bucks and we had already drunk half of it. A tree, absent of foliage, was loaded with orange coloured fruit. To get a picture, I jumped the rock fence and laid on my back with the camera pointed through the gnarled branches at the blue sky. I couldn't decide whether the fruit were apples, oranges or tomatoes. Late afternoon, amid palm fronds and private outdoor swimming pools, we arrived in Puyl'Eveque. The patisserie clerk cheerfully sold me her last four darkcrusted baguettes. The next day was Remembrance Day: everything would be closed if All Saints' Day had been any indication. Being in France with war memorials, ringed in bombs, Remembrance Day held more significance for me. Bombers and jet fighters flew overhead in training. At the stadium we cooked supper under the grandstand roof, then set our tent under an overhang by the water closets. Sharon had turned European. The restroom featured both squat and sit down toilets. Sharon used the footstep one. "Better than sitting on someone else's seat," she explained. Oompah wedding music blared the same basebeat over and over out of speakers until 1:00 a.m. One song ran into the other; I couldn't tell the difference. The drums played each song identically. At 5:00 a.m. cars arrived to deliver concession items. They turned around directly in front of our tent, their lights shining bright. Even though it was pouring rain, we got another early start. |
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