Thanksgiving

So, I realized this morning that in the US it's Thanksgiving. Here’s what I’m thankful for:

I’m not spending the day in Seattle.

My cats (my own and one I’m looking after while she’s waiting out her rabies test period before moving to the UK) are okay and not ripping out each other’s fur.

I’m fit enough to walk 13k-14k steps per day.

I found the hotel today, in the heart of Bordeaux. (And didn’t get a ticket or clipped by another car when I parked illegally for a few minutes on a street that’s narrow enough that a six-year-old could spit across it.)

I had a glass of champagne with lunch, which also included a warm chevre salad and cassis ice cream.

I’ve had quiet hotel rooms and lots and lots of hot water for baths and showers. And (for the most part) fluffy towels I don’t have to wash.

I’ll be heading to Paris tomorrow on the TGV.

I’ve got friends following my journey on this blog.

I’m rediscovering Henry IV/1 and have Part 2 waiting for me at home; and then Henry V.

That all the hotels have had wi-fi, And only one has had the nerve to charge for it.

Upon posting this, I’m sliding into a hot mineral bath, then going for a walk around the city. And I believe there’s a glass or two of Bordeaux out there waiting for me.

Happy Thanksgiving to all—even if you’re not in France.

(Posted at 1705 Thursday, 26 November, Bordeaux)

Mme Bertrand redux

I forgot one thing about my conversation 30 years ago with Mme Bertrand that should have been more memorable than you’d gather from my earlier report.

As I mentioned, the Second World War really defined much of her life. Certainly understandable—living under an arrogant and cruel occupation force that milked your country’s riches (from perfume to coal) for four or five years would make an impression on even the thickest dolt. And Mme Bertrand was not at all thick.

In talking about how German and English are similar languages, Mme Bertrand brought up the theory of some sort of German-English “understanding”. After all, why had Rudolf Hess flown to England? It wasn’t to take a walk!

Mind you, this was nearly 40 years after Hess made the trip, and he’d been rotting in Spandau for nearly 36 of them.

She was as vehement about that as my mother was about not wanting the two Germanies to reunite because we’d only end up having to go to war a third time.

But Hess—not even his Nazi buddies could figure out what that whole mission to Britain was. If there was a conspiracy, it was in his mind and his only.

(Posted at 1531 Thursday 26 November, Bordeaux)

Bordeaux-Pruniers

Technically, much of this post is about the countryside about 65 km from Bordeaux, rather than the city itself. I have this book/CD on walking meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist master, and Nguyen Anh-Huong, one of his first ordained students. It was recommended to me because one of the few (if not the only) way I can quiet my mind is walking a labyrinth. I’m meant to find other ways of walking meditation to help me make it through.

Actually—let me back up. Sadly, when I got to Chartres last Friday, the labyrinth wasn’t available for walking; evidently it’s only cleared of the chairs on Fridays outside of winter. That was a disappointment, as I was really looking forward to walking the mother of all Christian labyrinths. (Yes, there are others, but this is the one everyone talks about.)

Center of labyrinth, Chartres

So Thich Nhat Hanh’s retreat “house” in the Cognac region was my backup plan; sort of.

The whole thing was an interesting experience for me, from the moment I tried finding it on their web site (http://www.plumvillage.org/). They tell about their philosophies, their retreats, etc., but do they tell you how to get there? Noooo.

And it turns out there are three “hamlets”, and the “Lower Hamlet” is the one for women (and couples).

Jill wouldn’t recognize the actual village, Meyrac, (too small, I guess) so I let her take me to Loubès-Bernac, which is nearby. I expected to take it from there with the Bing maps instructions I had. But When I got to Loubès-Bernac I could not find the directions—could I have left them in the hotel?

So I asked at the local Mairie; the woman there advised that the woman at the grocery store would be able to give me exact directions, And she certainly did. It was less than a couple of kilometers.

I knew I was on the right road when I saw three brown-robed persons walking towards me, with brown hoodie-sweatshirt things over them. Like you’d get from college sports departments. Go, Buddha!

Et voilà—there was the sign:

I don’t know quite how to describe it—kind of like a sacred camp. Rustic, barebones (although the dining hall had several air conditioning compressors); focused on contemplation. Buildings for meditation and eating; dormitories; a kitchen. A pagoda gives views onto a vineyard and a stand of trees.

It’s quiet except for the wind; one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever seen.

I spent some time running through my five sets of 21 breaths in the meditation hall. And then sat there just watching the bamboos sway in the wind.

There were small hand-written signs throughout the place (in French, Vietnamese and English):

Listen compassionately

Look deeply

They really struck me because I don’t think I’ve been doing either for a long time. Probably even longer than since my last good meal.

I don’t know where to start on that. Perhaps just being aware of the lack?

I had some bread, cheese and part of an apple in my car while there. As I was preparing to leave I found my web directions. I don’t know why I couldn’t find them when I was going there, but not having them forced me to get out and ask.

And connections—even for the length of time to get instructions to leave the village, climb a bit and then turn left, going past a horse farm—are another thing I’ve missed since leaving Virginia.

Connections and contemplation. Insight number two.

There is more to Tuesday and Bordeaux; that’ll be another post.

(Posted 0804 Thursday morning, Pau)

Bordeaux (nourishment)

On my way in to Bordeaux 30 years ago I got caught at dusk between towns with hostels. So in some teeny village I stopped a woman who was just taking her groceries into her house and asked if she’d let me spend the night in her garage.

She was a little bit suspicious at first—I’m guessing raggedy-looking young women en vélo toutes seules aren’t what she ever expected to see on her doorstep. But after a while she invited me in for coffee (instant!) and offered me a room inside. I declined, but it was a kind offer. (I don’t know what she told her husband when he got home, or what her little boy would have said.)

The concrete floor was hard, and there were mosquitos. I stuck my head completely in my sleeping bag and was okay. (This is a miracle because I’m known far and wide as the tastiest meal for any extended mosquito family in a 17-mile radius.)

During the day I had run into an Englishman who had been following the vendange, picking grapes. (On that trip I’d met a number of such vagabonds of many nationalities.) He’d given me the name and address of a family in Lussec, which was further south, and by the time I got to that garage, I couldn’t ride any further.

You learn to know your limits when you’re travelling by bicycle.

What really seemed to strike people as odd was that I was toute seule—all by myself. That, and being an American; inevitably the question (following something I would say) was, “Vous êtes Anglaise?” (You’re English?) “Non.” “Ah, vous êtes Allemande?” (You’re German?) “Non.” And with that all their possibilities just faded away.

So when I finally said, “Je suis Américaine”, that just broke apart their sense of reality. An American woman, riding a bicycle, all alone, and speaking French. Mon Dieu!

The quintessential experience along those lines was in a boulangerie in some tiny village. I’d gone in to buy my daily baguette and asked the boulangère to cut it into three pieces. She and her friend, who’d been chatting away until I appeared, rested l’Escargot Rouge next to the building and came in, were fascinated to watch me stowing the bread in my knapsack and securing it on the bike.

Whoosh! They whipped out of the shop and asked the usual nationality questions. And then they wanted to know about my trip. Ah—Saint Jacques de Compostelle, très beau! But I should be careful about staying the night in forests because of hunters.

As I was saddling up they wished me a good trip.

Everyone always asked about me being alone, and wasn’t I afraid. I was indeed (alone), and I wasn’t (afraid). I don’t really know why I wasn’t afraid; I should have been. But it (the trip) was just something I had to do.

I suppose my explanation came under the rubric of being a crazy American.

Getting into Bordeaux this time round was somewhat easier, at least until I got into the city and tried to follow Jill’s directions to my hotel. Whole lotta construction going on and I could see the damned place but couldn’t get to it. And when I could get to it, I couldn’t find a place to park.

Finally I just hauled up on a sidewalk and ran in to ask where to park. They had a garage with about eight spaces (if no one’s driving a Benz, or anything larger than a Deux Chevaux) and I swung in there faster than a monkey on a banana run.

As it happened, my watch battery had died and I went into centre ville to get it replaced. Maybe knowing the correct time shouldn’t be important to me; but it is.

The receptionist at the hotel said it was about a 15- or 20-minute walk. Maybe if one knew exactly where one was going or walked a three-meter stride. As it turns out it was about three kilometers, so I got my daily exercise but good.

I swear I could not find the first restaurant recommended by the hotel (and I even tried walking there in the daylight just to check; complete phantom.) But another one turned out to be just fine and I lingered over my bavette éschalotes (steak with shallot sauce) and demi-bouteille of red wine.

Actually, some of the most consoling and happy moments in France have been meals. That was true back in ’79, as well. Although, of course then it was an enormous pleasure to make some packaged leek soup in a hostel, and have bread and cheese, maybe some fruit with it. After 100 km of cycling in a day, that’s a magnificent meal.

This time, of course, the meals are somewhat more elaborate, especially in the evening when I’ve finished driving for the day. I sit at table with my journal and Henry IV, Part I (I’m afraid that sometimes I laugh aloud at the exchanges between Hal and Falstaff; and one evening a waiter must have been standing in front of me for at least a minute asking, “Madame?” before I realized I was in Poitiers and not anywhere that I could give Hotspur a potch im tuchis). These meals are a prime opportunity for me to people watch like mad.

It’s been so long since I’ve done this, had a leisurely meal out. Maybe one night last year when I was in Port Angeles, having dinner in a wine bar. Seattle/work/the whole damned thing have just worn me down and I don’t go out. I hadn’t realized how much I miss a really good, sustaining meal

It’s more than just food, nourishment. And I don’t know why I had to come more than 7000 miles to remind me of that.

Okay—one insight from this trip.

(Posted at 2156 at Pau)

Meanderings at the roadside

There are times on this trip—a lot of them—that I get wound up tighter than a cheap watch. Mostly to do with getting there (wherever “there” is). I don’t know whether I’m terrified of getting lost, or staying lost, or losing the plot, or losing time, or all of the above.

Probably all of the above.

Orléans cathedral vaults with stained glass light.

Sunday I was retracing my steps (or wheel revolutions) from Orléans to Tours, and then on to Poitiers. It was cold and chucking down rain and Jill had put me on to the damned Plague again. I pulled off at the Ste Maure de Touraine exit to take a D-road (usually one lane of traffic in each direction, going 50km through the towns, etc.), and hell when you get behind a commercial vehicle. Ste Maure turns out to have been where I stopped to have my lunch 30 years ago on the way to Poitiers. I ate at a park where two guys were planting a border of yellow pansies.

At one point I saw some fellow standing on a side road, in the drenching rain, noted that le Lapin Gris was telling me it was 9°C, and thinking, “Man, I feel your pain.”

When you’re traveling by bike and on a budget, if the weather is foul you have nowhere to go to get out of it. Hostels didn’t typically open until around 1700. At one point I ate my lunch in the passageway between two buildings, at least out of the rain, but still cold and really dark.

It was around this time I commented on Montaigne’s essay, “On Education”. He was describing a deep sort of friendship, and saying that one can only have one friend of that sort.

Of course, he also said women aren’t capable of that sort of friendship in the first place.

Very disappointed in Michel, I was.

Well, anyhow, Poitiers was a high point both then and now. It’s one of those fortress towns, built originally on a rise with stone walls—thick, defensible stone walls—between the good citizens and whatever would endanger them from the outside.

It’s been the scene of several battles over the centuries. But perhaps the most notable was in 732 when Charles Martel turned back the tide of the Moorish invasion, beginning the drive that would culminate in 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella (known as los reyes Católicos) pushed the Arabs off Spanish soil.

The Jews went at the same time, but that’s another story.

Back in ’79 I walked along a stretch of those parapets and looked in the distance to try to make out the medieval battle. I thought I saw some pennants flying and heard the clash of arms; but that might have been a somewhat overactive imagination. Not that much of a stretch, though, if you don’t focus too closely on the present and the near distance.

This time I rambled through the old town, which was quiet because on Sundays not very much is open.

Gargoyle on Poitiers church.

The Auberge de Jeunesse where I stayed back then had two “classes” of residents. If you paid a fee you got served a meal that looked pretty hearty. If you didn’t you had to go to a kitchen that was out around the back, where there were about two pans and a stove of questionable capacity. I was there with the other riff-raff, mostly guys from Ghana, Morocco and Zaire (as it was known then). The Ghanaian had been a fisherman for Star-Kist, but was now looking for work in France as a diesel mechanic.

This time I stayed in a hotel in the old town and had a fine dinner of moules marinieres and Sancerre. Splurged on profiteroles, although I ate only one of the three. It was good, but I’d ordered them just to splurge, and one was quite enough for that purpose. Sadly, you cannot pack up leftover profiteroles to take home with you for breakfast..

Yesterday I stopped off in Ruffec, a small town where I spent the night in the youth hostel back then. Ruffec is important to e because after I got settled in the hostel I took a walk around the town. And I came upon this beautiful garden hidden away in a courtyard. A woman came out from a doorway and called to me; I thought she was shooing me away, so I scooted. But she got another pedestrian to call to me (“chaperon rouge”—as I was wearing my red plastic rain poncho).

I said I was just admiring her garden and she invited me in for a closer look. She showed me around it, and it really was lovely. Very small but lots of different plants that all seemed to co-exist very well.

Madame Bertrand spoke with me for maybe a couple of hours. Her father had a lot of sayings:

In a garden you should plant pretty and useful things.

In a war you need infantry to occupy land.

(Her father was obviously no fool.)

She and her sister (both around 65-70) ran the family business distributing liquor but she very much enjoyed working in that garden.

She talked a lot about the wars. During World War II, her husband had been taken prisoner by the Germans. She didn’t see him for a long time. And he had died some years back.

She’d had a pen pal before the war from Orange County (California).And she wrote to her in English. That correspondence of course was cut off in 1942 (after the US entered the war). She said that she forgot all her English during the war because she was forced to learn German, and German and English are similar languages.

Fountain Ruffec.

So yesterday I stopped a while in Ruffec and walked about. I had no hope of finding Mme Bertrand’s place, but I wanted to thank the town for being very good to me back then.

(I was the only person staying at the AJ, and the fellow who ran it actually came back in the evening to turn on the heat in my room. Now, that’s living the dream!)

Likewise, I stopped off in Angoulême yesterday. By the time I got there in ’79, I needed a bit of a break, and enough time so my clothes would dry if I washed them. By then I’d been on the road ten days and those things needed a blow torch. Angoulême is another of those walled, fortress towns, and I’d actually considered staying there on this trip, but in the end only had lunch there.

Getting into Bordeaux was a bit of a bummer. Jill suddenly went silent, and the sat-nav flat out lied to me, saying there were no languages to be found for spoken directions. Let me just say that if getting around cities with medieval warrens of streets is hard with spoken instructions, it’s worse without them.

(Somehow she miraculously came back online today. Don’t know what to make of that.)

And yes. I am afraid of being lost, although I don’t know why. It’s never that hard to put yourself right after a misadventure. As for losing time—well, I am rather time-sensitive. That’s more to do with my entire life, and how much of it I’ve lost, than spending an extra 30 minutes on the road because I took a wrong turning.

And yet, it does make me anxious…

(Posted 0854 Wednesday at Bordeaux)

The road to Poitiers

Okay, although I’ve been complaining about Jill’s propensity for sending me to the Plagues (do you suppose she gets a cut of the toll, a sort of CPA deal, for touting it?), and there’s no getting around it that driving in strange city environs is anxiety-inducing, yesterday as it was chucking it down rain, 9°C and the “vent fort—prudence” signs were not joking…I was deeply grateful that I was in le lapin gris and not on l’escargot rouge (my transport of 30 years ago).

And I’ll admit, having the car does increase my entertainment value for the locals. I’d parked the Fiesta in a public garage close to the hotel Saturday evening; it’s closed on Sundays, so there’s the formidable “call” button on the barricaded door. That’s no use, of course, because you wouldn’t be able to understand the recorded voice in your own language, let alone another one; I believe that’s some sort of rule about recorded announcements.

Well, finally I deduced which way to hold my ticket to swipe through the mag reader. I heard a barely perceptible click at the door and yanked it open.

Then I was faced with the dreaded caisse machine, where you insert your ticket and then your payment to get out of the garage. Somehow I don’t mind so much sticking my credit card in one of those machines when there are other people around doing it—you figure it won’t act up where there are witnesses. But doing it in a dimmed area, with no one else around—what’s to stop it from just keeping your Amex card? Huh?

Okay, so that went fine. And then here’s where my major amusement value took the stage: I couldn’t find my car. And the garage is dark, just some emergency lights, so you’re stumbling around wondering if there have been any serial garage killings in Orléans lately. I went out to Level 1, but it really looked…alien. Well, maybe I was on Level 2. And down there, there was a tiny square grey car parked facing the exit ramp…but not mine. (Did mine have a rack on the top? Evidently not.)

Well, back to Level 1. No—definitely not mine.

Well, could it be on Level 3? I went down there and the first good sign: the entrance ramp. The night before I’d shot straight out of that into a parking spot next to the exit ramp. Little square grey car in my spot. And it unlocks when I click the right button on my key!

All this in the dark, looking for hunchbacks and National Front proselytizers who might be lurking in the blackness, because there were still no lights but the barest minimum.

Only when I started the car and flicked on my own lights did the ceilings light up.

There was another hiccup getting out—can’t just go out that exit ramp, nono, must flail about the Level 1 floor plan and get to an actual exit ramp, with the gate into which you stick your paid ticket. Only then are you free to go and get lost in the city.

That wasn’t actually my full entertainment capacity for the day. I needed to get fuel—this thing runs on either Gazole or Diesel—so I pulled into one of those motorway petrol stations, park in front of a diesel pump…and for the life of me I cannot find the switch that opens the flipping fuel tank. I was going over the dashboard like it was Braille, trying to find SOMETHING that would give me a clue.

After about ten minutes I went inside and asked at the caisse. The woman there sent out a colleague with me, who pushed at the right side of the tank cover, et voilà!

To say I felt like the village schmendrick would be a gross understatement. The only good thing (aside from the fact that I could finally fill my tank) was that I disappeared right quickly and didn’t have to listen to the hysterical laughter for long.

You know—it’s a rental, and you’d think that Hertz would give you a bloody owners’ manual, so you could find things like the light controls, the windscreen wipers and the, you know, fuel tank. But no—you’d be wrong.

I do have to say that I'm also grateful for a car this size. If it were anything but the teeniest-tiniest of transportation pods, I wouldn't have made it through some of the little paths designated as actual streets, in either Orléans or here in Poitiers.

Well, enough of the mundane for now. I’m sitting in my hotel salle du pétit déjuner, trying to keep the croissant crumbs and apricot preserves out of my keyboard.

I still owe reports of Chartres, Tours and Orléans, as well as Poitiers. But looks like I’ve got to find someone who can replace watch batteries.

More later.

(Posted at 0900 Monday 23 Novembre at Poitiers)

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.