Tours to Orleans...& back

I’m not sure how I did this, but I managed to get Orléans and Tours in the wrong order: stayed at the latter first, which meant retracing my route from there to here and then back again as I head out to Poitiers.

Can’t think what I was about when I did that. I’m sitting here looking at the order in which I stopped at various places in ’79, and it’s as clear as can be: Fôret de Rambouillet, Chartres, Orléans, Blois, Tours. Somehow in my conversations with Amex travel I lost the plot in those first bookings.

It’s annoying, because of the extra car time; but I’m chalking it down to the entire Emerald City experience.

It’s Seattle, Jake.

Still, I’m here now, and it’s not a bad thing to go up and down the Loire Valley a couple of times.

Today I was on one of the smaller routes (Jill keeps trying to get me on the Péage, the toll highway. Back in ’79 at the Bordeaux Auberge de Jeunesse, I was talking with another American girl about how we each had started down one of the ramps to a Péage before we were honked off by drivers. Bikes not allowed. We referred to them as “plagues”.)

Well, Jill just wants me on the Plagues and she’s a terrible nag if you ignore her.

At one point I told her to get stuffed and proceeded to go in exactly the wrong direction on my own. However, I got some great shots of the Loire just west of Tours.

My signature shots happen to be fountains and bridges. And I’m the queen of the hand-held. (Back in ’79 I took a night picture of a lighted fountain on the Champs Elysées, and then stood in the middle of an intersection to get one of the Arc de Triomphe.)

I also go for things that amuse me.

Some samples from Friday and yesterday:


Michelin man perching on a news stand. Note added decoration in groin area.


Bridge over branch of the Loire at Langeais


Some sort of construction project, Tours.

I’ve got to say that having a car—with or without Jill—is both more complicating & somewhat less enjoyable than being on a bike. Sure, you’re dry and warm, if you want to be. and there’s more room for stuff. But you’re also more regimented. It’s not so easy to just pull to the side of the road if you want to explore something, especially if someone’s riding your tailpipe.

Plus—it’s harder to see stuff from a car. Even at 50km/hour you’re moving too fast, especially in cities, to really know what’s there around you. And then there are those cars crawling up your tailpipe. When you’re on a bike, you’re colder (or hotter), but if something catches your eye, you just pull aside and go investigate.

Also, I’ll confess that I have to fight my California heritage of wanting to just get there, to lay on the speed and just do it. It’s a constant struggle, and Jill doesn’t help by continually sending me to the Plagues. (Why don’t they make a sat-nav that adapts to your obvious preferences? Or at least allows you to tell it NO PLAGUES!?) But then I get on one of the D-roads and start chafing behind someone SLOW.

And this is part of the reason I’m on this trip—to slow down. Speeding got my route mixed up when booking hotels and speed got me to accept that job in Seattle. Speed is not all it’s cracked up to be.

(No puns intended, actually.)

And having a car makes city navigation very anxiety-producing. Even with Jill. In fact, I spent about an hour trying to get to my hotel this afternoon, because Jill kept directing me to take an exit that was blocked because it’s a pedestrian zone. And I couldn’t get her to give me a different way to approach, she kept sending me there. Finally I had to park illegally (in a handicapped space, no less) and walk around trying to find the hotel on foot. It eventually got sorted, but it was way more troublesome than if I’d just been on a bike.

Once in a city, of course, it’s not too hard to walk it. Yesterday I put on more than 11000 steps on my pedometer. And it’s a lot more enjoyable to be out in the place, not catching a glimpse of it from a glass-&-fabricated substance box.

Speaking of which, it’s time for me to get out and about. By the time I got in yesterday I’d missed the cathedral hours. And this is a special cathedral—where Jeanne la Pucelle gathered strength before leading the Dauphin’s army out to drive the English and Burgundians away. And Jeanne is special to me.

More later.

(Posted at 0738 Orléans time, Sunday 22 novembre)

Toujour Tours

It’s Saturday in France; in Tours, to be more precise.

I’ve lost about half a day, somewhere, in my circadian rhythm, mostly desiccated (along with my nose and throat linings) in the A320 over the Atlantic, I’m sure.

I had a bit of kerfuffle getting to the airport in Seattle and then getting out of the airport at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. For one thing, it always takes me a while to get to know a new clutch’s feel, so I hop and jerk about at least long enough to give the rental guys alternate hysterics and panic attacks. I'm driving a tiny Fiesta I've named Le Lapin Gris, and my sat-nav is a posh English cow I call Jill.
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I admit I was white-knuckled part of the time in traffic getting around Paris. And it seems like I was only in the industrial part—which went on for many, many kilometers. At one point I thought I must be passing over a garbage dump that hadn’t been processed since Mitterrand’s presidency; the stench was enough to peel your skin.

And then there were the motorcyclists—who are apparently legally allowed to whiz between two lanes of traffic with the urgency of carrying orders from Garcia. They can do that in California, too; but here I swear the highway lanes are narrower and there’s nothing like trying to shift gears smoothly in an unfamiliar car, follow the instructions of that sat-nav cow and then suddenly seeing some two-wheeled maniac coming into your side vision (since cars are too close behind you to give you any rear view) about 7 cm off your side mirror, just as he’s scooting ahead.

So, by the time I got to Chartres, if I hadn’t already had the intention of laying down my burdens, I would have laid down the burdens of travel and French drivers. (Apparently it’s illegal to let someone signaling a lane change into traffic in front of you; but you do get extra points if you jump in ahead of someone else who’s committed the cardinal error of leaving half a car-length of space in front of her.)

The Chartres experience requires its own post(s); it was so intense and I’m still absorbing it some. Let me just say: that is some special space, sui generis.

Right now I’m doing the unheard-of (for me): lingering in the breakfast room & not doing anything (except writing this, which I’m about to stop). As soon as this post hits the web, I’m officially back to living in the moment.

This magic is starting to work already.

D-day

Well, I’m coming down to the final hours in dreary, rainy Seattle. I’ve packed my bag three times (and, lordy, but it’s heavy). My carry-on is just about ready to go—I’ll have to stuff my down parka in it just before I leave, to cushion my two cameras and the netbook.

House is prepped for the cat-sitter. I’m leaving these weird wall heaters (fed by the tankless water heater) on incredibly low, as that seems to keep things livable. Especially if you’re a girl wearing a fur coat.

Last night and earlier this morning was a flurry of last-minute “where did I put that?” hunts. I’m trying not to obsess, but I want to make sure that all the things I thought of as being needed for this trip are indeed going with me. I’ve got paper copies of confirmations for hotels, rental car, TGV, Heathrow Express, flights. Probably other stuff, too, but this is all I can think of now.

Once I get on the plane I can relax some. Actually, I can relax a lot. They’d better have Champagne; they’re Air France, after all.

As one of my main goals is to be in the moment (as we say on the Left Coast), as I was taking that trip on a bicycle, I do not intend to spend massive amounts of time either planning my next step or analyzing what just happened. In my mind I shall once again be riding L’escargot rouge, have plenty of time to absorb what’s around me now, and stop to examine more closely something that strikes my interest.

Le voyage commence.

D minus one

It always seems as though the days surrounding a vacation require twice hethe work you’d ordinarily produce. For some reason, my own job, which had been pottering along for a while, suddenly shifted into overdrive. In the past four work days (plus the weekend) I’ve had to produce marketing materials drafts, mockups, scenario scripts and questions for focus groups that are being held while I’m away; pick up the slack from my technical colleague who simply doesn’t do anything that doesn’t interest him; come up with value propositions and pricing for channel sales and pricing/justification for licensing fees—well, you get the drift.

I feel like that song Lili von Stupp sings in Blazing Saddles:

“I'm tired,
Sick and tired of love,
I've had my fill of love,
From below and above,
Tired,
Tired of being admired,
Tired of love uninspired,
Let's face it,
I'm tired!”

Just substitute “work” for “love”.

Still, I’ve also crossed a lot off the trip preparation list. Notified my credit card company to expect charges in different places (didn’t have to worry about that in ’79; no credit card).

Confirmed hotel bookings (ditto—I spent my nights in youth hostels, forests, vineyards and…well, I’ll go into that later).

Organized all my guide materials (I photocopy them so I can toss after used—30 years ago I had a Let’s Go guide to France; I was flying completely blind in Spain, nothing but my Michelin map).

Did a trial run of packing, including an empty bag for the return trip because dirty clothes always seem to take up more room than clean ones and because I’m notorious for buying books on my trips (on the Motobécane I had two panniers, a handlebar bag and a knapsack; not much to pack)

Confirmed my credit card’s insurance coverage for the rental car (not a factor when you’re traveling by bike).

Downloaded music to my pod (none of that MP3 nonsense back in those days—we entertained ourselves, you youngsters).

Oh, also fighting a sore throat/cold. Not surprised that my resistance went to hell, but I’m trying to trick myself into forgetting all about that.

So—final day at work before setting out. I can not wait.

D minus two

I’m coming down to two work days before my trip to France, and I have to say that, if I hadn’t already had the goal of shaking off this veil of Seattle misery, I’d have had to add it to my list of must-dos.

It’s got to the point where I’ve started dropping data—and I’m not talking bits, here, I mean entire data streams.

Naturally (even though my product launch has been delayed two months—the latest delay), the number of tasks I have to complete before leaving has metastasized. But I’ll get done what I can and they’ll have to get along without me for two weeks, because I don’t check on work email while I’m on holiday. That’s why they call it “holiday”.

I’m just trying to not wind myself up to the max—I’m already about 90% there and I want to get rid of this sore throat before I board that flight. So I’m practicing deep breathing and restraint.

And holding out the option that I could always stay in France and become a migrant grape picker.

Poor wayfaring stranger

Thirty years  ago I took a trip…

Well, let me go back a bit to explain.

In May of the summer between my junior and senior years in college, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She’d been acting, well, not like herself for some months—she was fearful, which was the antithesis of her normal self. And for the first time she’d let more than a year go by between annual exams.

A lifelong smoker, she’d been afraid the verdict would be emphysema, but instead it was so much worse.

Diagnosed in May, dead by December.

During her final hospitalization (which we all knew would indeed be final), my sisters, father and I took turns staying with her. Since I was going to school 30 miles away, I’d drive there on a Monday, stay two nights, return to take the night shift on Wednesday, out to Claremont on Thursday and then back that night. I also took Sunday night, so Monday morning, when my sister relieved me, I headed out to school again.

On Saturday, 2 December, I turned in two papers for different classes to the library, where they would be read and critiqued by classmates. On Sunday, Mom died. On Monday I defended one paper and on Tuesday I defended the other.

And then, from the 5th on until the beginning of February I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what I did, where I went, who I saw. (And, you understand, I didn’t have any recollection even in February of what I’d done for the previous two months.) I had my final semester of classes to take, a thesis to write; and basically I just soldiered on putting one foot in front of the other, without really knowing what was going on around me.

Around March, I happened to be in a church with a chapel devoted to Saint Francis. Francis always struck me as being a standup guy. For one thing, ya just gotta love a guy who tweaks the nose of Pope Innocent III. And then there’s the recognition of animals as something more than just creatures to be exploited by humans. Even his mysticism is something I can get my head around. With Francis, pretty much what you see is what you get.

So I, feeling pretty haggard on all fronts, made a vow to Saint Francis: get me through to graduation and I’ll go on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Well, blow me if I didn’t make it to May—even graduating Phi Beta Kappa. Go figure.

But then, as is my wont, I embarked on a campaign of equivocation. I mean—I’d just graduated, I had to find a job, I had to get my life in gear, didn’t I?

Well, let me just say that you shouldn’t mess with a saint. Nothing in my life was going right. Couldn’t find a job—wasn’t even sure what I wanted a job to be; so I worked temporary gigs. The men in my life…well, ’nuff said.

And then, in October, I was eating dinner at the Hungry Tiger with a friend, whining about how I couldn’t seem to organize my way out of a paper bag, and I didn’t even go on pilgrimage and now it was too late and blah, blah, blah.

He just looked at me and said, “Well, you’re not doing anything right now that you can’t leave and come back to later. Why don’t you just go?”

Oh. Right.

So, within about a week, I’d put my stuff in storage (thanks, Leilah and Colleen for helping; we’ll all never forget the sight of the two of you whizzing down the hall with my black fake leather sofa-bed, laughing like lunatics), prepped my Motobécane, emptied my savings account (I didn’t have a credit card) and bought my ticket on the Laker Airways Skytrain.

It was an extraordinary, for me, journey. Wonderful things happened all along the way. People offered help in a multitude of ways. And it turns out you meet the most interesting folks when you’re riding a bike. (At least in France; not so much in the north of Spain.)

If you’ve been following my musings in this blog, you know that this past year has been rough on me. So, along about August I thought I’d like to replicate at least part of that trip, see if I can reconnect with that brave and hopeful young woman who was open to all sorts of things. Who persevered when her knees were damaged (her own fault, as it turns out) and when it was chucking it down rain (I learned that after a certain point you can’t get any wetter than you already are, so you might as well keep pedaling)—even climbing through Roncevaux, in the Pyrénees (on the advice of Colleen, sofa shover and medievalist, I kept a sharp eye out for my baggage train, to avoid that whole Roland thing).

I delayed this trip twice due to work issues (and when I advised my manager that I was taking it the last two weeks in November, she actually asked, “You wouldn’t consider December?”), but now I’m ready to head out.

Thursday I’ll be on Air France flight 309, Seattle to Paris. I’ll pick up a rental car and start my abbreviated pilgrimage. (No, I’m not riding a bike and no, I’m not staying in youth hostels.) First stop: Chartres.

I’ll be referencing my journal of 1979 as I make my way along the Route de Saint Jacques de Compostelle. And I’ll be posting every day as I progress.

I invite you to come along with me—in a vicarious sort of way. And have a good thought or two that I achieve my goal.

She's baaaaack...

Okay, this I gotta share—NPR reports on the contents of Sarah Palin’s self-justifying/aggrandizing “memoir”, Going Rogue.

It’s just, it’s just…what’s the word? Fulsome? Nauseating? Shallow?

I won’t help her financial condition by actually buying this sad thing; but I’ll probably read a library copy.

Of course the library loan lays an obligation on me to not rip the tome into bits, or chuck it in the garbage bin.

Honoring the fallen

It’s a sad irony that Major Nidal Hassan should go postal at the soldier readiness center at Fort Hood, Tex., and murder 13 and wound 29 more just a few days before Veterans Day.

Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines signed up for the risks involved in combat and combat support: separation from loved ones; sand and rocks (or tropical jungles); the constant adrenaline surge that comes from being on the alert 24/7; fake food; rudimentary sanitary facilities; exotic insects, arachnids and reptiles. And of course, snipers, suicide bombers and IEDs.

(That’s why they call it going into harm’s way, and these men and women, from all backgrounds, go in harm’s way because that’s their job.)

They did not sign up for one of their own strapping on two unregistered (non-military) handguns and opening fire on them (they were unarmed) on an Army post as they were preparing to deploy to hostile territory.

That President Obama had to go to the memorial service for the 13 less than two weeks after honoring 18 soldiers killed in Afghanistan at Dover AFB (a Commander-in-Chief duty that was declined by Obama's predecessor—the CiC who started these wars in 2003 and shortly thereafter declared "Mission Accomplished!") says to me that it’s all starting to look like hostile territory.

We’re hearing a lot of stuff about Hassan—that he’s had leanings toward radical Islamist fervor, that he showed signs of instability and activities that someone should have noticed and acted upon (well, apparently people did notice, but action was not taken), that he did not want to deploy to Afghanistan (which would have been the first in-country experience of his Army career), that he objected to Muslims going to areas where they might be obliged to kill other Muslims.

Well, those last two just set my teeth on edge.

When you take the king’s shilling you don’t have the right to choose your deployment; you go where they send you and do the job you’re trained to do. My war was Vietnam, and let me just say that a vast percentage of grunts over there—if offered a choice—would never have landed at Ton Su Nhut, much less spent 13 months in country. But there they were, picking leeches off their limbs, running LRRPs and taking mortar rounds from the VC over there and  guff from people over here.

That, of course, was a draftee military and this is volunteer. But all the more reason to do your duty as laid out for you by the chain of command. You volunteered, for God’s sake, you had a pretty good notion that the job was dangerous when you took it.

It saddens me deeply that 13 soldiers who should at least have lived until deployment were mowed down in the madness of the readiness center last Thursday.

I have a friend, a bell ringer in the UK. Sunday her troupe rang muffled bells (some centuries old) for Remembrance Sunday. And today she’ll ring again for the Armistice Day commemoration. I hope her band will include the dead of Fort Hood in their thoughts.

Cold war crackups

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Followed shortly afterward by the collapse of Communism in Europe (except for Yugoslavia and Albania, which both took time to rot from the inside, but made up for that by unleashing just about every form of civil warfare, up to and including genocide).

It’s interesting that news stories talk about the generational gap—Germans in their 20s and 30s are pretty blasé about the significance of the event. They have nothing to compare a united and prosperous Germany with.

Their elders—who lived in the German Democratic Republic—on the other hand are grateful for being out from under the Stasi and the Communist economy. They’re really appreciative of the prosperous Germany (whose prosperity is for once not built on armaments and plans for invading their neighbors).

Listening to NPR I flashed back to my mother; she died 11 years before the wall’s collapse. She had lived through the 20s and the aftermath of World War I as a child, and as a young adult she worked at Lockheed during World War II.

Me, I never knew anything but a divided Germany. So I thought it interesting when Mom said (more than once) that if we ever let the two Germanys unite, we’d just be faced with yet another war.

Mom, not what I would call inclined towards paranoia and certainly leaning more towards the logical, nonetheless had a primal, gut-emotional response to that possibility.

It’s been 20 years now, and the united Germany shows no signs of overrunning Poland or invading Belgium. They’re doing perfectly fine through carving out economic rather than geographic lebensraum. But that’s capitalism and de facto fine.

I wonder what Mom would say about that?

'Tis the season, apparently

’Kay, I don’t want to sound like Ms. Cranky-Person, but what is it with stores putting up their Christmas displays & decorations on the day after Halloween?

(& I’m not going to call them “holiday decorations” because I don’t see any Hanukkah- or Kwanzaa-themed stuff.)

Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? Used to be you had Halloween, with witches, ghosts & jack o’lanterns; then Thanksgiving, with turkeys, Pilgrims & harvest-home decorations.

THEN there was Christmas, red-&-green things, conifers, sparkly lights & snowflakes.

But yesterday when I went to Target to see if they had fountain pen cartridges (they didn’t even have fountain pens) I walked into a Christmas wonderland—red & silver ornament things hanging from the ceiling & a huge fake-Christmas tree section.

& this morning I went to the Tully’s coffee shop on Main Street in Bellevue, only to be slapped in the face with all-out Christmas: plastic greenery, strings of fairy lights & Christmas cups for your coffee.

IHOP has been advertising holiday hotcakes (maybe they’re waffles—I really don’t pay attention) for a couple of weeks—so before Halloween.

I shudder to think what Wal-Mart looks like.

Dunno if this is the inevitable onslaught of commercialism, or just retailers reacting to the second selling season in a recession. Whatever—it’s really an affront.