May 31, 2022
To Paris
Our experience at breakfast this morning causes us to completely reconsider our host, the interesting Mme Boultam. She is considerably warmer when she greets us in her elegant dining hall this morning than when we parted last night. Maybe she needs her coffee, maybe she was thrown off by the language barrier, maybe we were so tired that she was uncertain about us. In any case she serves us a fine breakfast and keeps checking back to see what else we might want. Some meat? Some cheese? Another pot of coffee? An egg perhaps? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Merci beau coup!
Soon after we’re seated she goes back to the kitchen to prepare our coffee, and when she returns she finds me standing at the end of the table, taking a photo of Rachael with my iPad. She asks for it, directs me to sit down, and takes a photo of us together.
And she really does have a remarkable home, inside and out. There are interesting details everywhere you look - a spinet with a children’s primer on the music stand, prints by Modigliani, prints or perhaps original oils of nude models in various poses. Clearly a person with an artistic bent, as well as a love of gardening.
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Biking to Paris today! An old favorite song emplants itself as an earworm this morning, and stays there most of the way to the city.
My father always promised me
That we would live in France
We'd go boating on the Seine
And I would learn to dance
We lived in Ohio then
He worked in the mines
On his dreams like boats
We knew we would sail in time.
Judy Collins
Our ride to Paris has some of the features of yesterday’s ride. Downriver along the Seine the whole way, with a mix of interesting and at times decidedly unpleasant cycling experiences. As with yesterday, the ride begins seductively with a pleasant five miles along the river; but then suddenly we find ourselves on an unpaved towpath again. I’ve formed a theory about this: Rachael and I both use RideWithGPS - I draw up our bike rides, and she’ll draft walking routes for herself. My theory is that on these last two rides the application was routing us in walking mode rather than cycling because that’s how it was last used. Walking along a rough, narrow towpath would be fine, but not on a bike.
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We only get a few hundred yards into this path before deciding to turn back - just long enough to pick up a few scratches and stings from the nettles. We returned to pavement and I improvise, finding an alternate route that takes us over the top of the meander we were following the river around. At the end we dropp back to the river again and find ourselves on Eurovelo 3, The Pilgrim’s Route. Beginning in Trondheim in Norway, it ends 5,300 km later in Santiago de Compostela.
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As it turns out Eurovelo 3 has a few tricks in store for us. Soon after crossing to the right bank of the Seine we find ourselves off the pavement again. It’s not bad though, and we’re feeling good about our progress. With only 20 miles to go we stop for lunch by a pond and Rachael calls our host to let her know we’ll arrive around 4. We hear some news - there’s a plumbing issue at our apartment, and the plumber is due at 5. We can arrive and check in though, and with luck the plumber will be done and gone by 6.
We cover the next six miles in a half hour, so we’re right on time and still feeling good about our progress. It takes us roughly a half hour for the next mile though, as we push our way over a pair of narrow, steeply arched footbridges in a swampy riverside park (are we still on the Eurovelo?) and then come to the dam at Ablon-sur-Seine. There’s a footbridge crossing the river above the dam. First though you have to get to the base of it by dropping a steep double staircase, one of those with a trough along one side so you can roll your bike up or down. Rachael has trouble with this, so I roll them both down - 4 sets of stairs, so far.
Which brings us to the base of the overpass. The overpass itself is up though - up four steep sets of stairs, with a trough on one side. We both have trouble with these, so we do each bike together - I push the front end, and she brings up the rear. On the other side of the river it’s a reverse situation, with a four flight descent with each bike.
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We finally arrive at our apartment at a bit past four, after an easy ten miles biking along the left bank of the Seine and a chaotic three or four at the end making our way through rush hour to our apartment. Traffic is crazy, with cars, bikes, scooters and pedestrians all opportunistically taking their right of way when they think they can get away with it. It feels like we’re biking in Asia, and we snap on our fish brains.
The plumber hasn’t arrived yet but is expected any minute. Rachael heads off to the store to provision us for three days, and I stay in the apartment with the host. The plumber arrives at five, and fifteen minutes later the host come up to me with glum news. There will be no easy fix, and the work will require most of a day and at the earliest will be done Thursday. She says we can stay, and offers to show us how to turn the water off and on so we can take showers and use the bathroom.
Shit happens though, so three days of this doesn’t sound appealing. We call Susan who lives just a few blocks from here, and she invites us to spend the night on her fold-out and we’ll think about what to do in the morning. Deal. Ten minutes later we’re packed and on the road to Susan’s and a half hour later we’re settled in, showered, and the three of us are on our way to a neighborhood cafe for a meal and a glass.
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Ride stats today: 41 miles, 900’; for the tour: 2,265 miles, 110,200’
Today's ride: 41 miles (66 km)
Total: 2,293 miles (3,690 km)
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??? Guessing you're referring to the phenomenon where all the fish in a school somehow manage to coordinate their motions and turn the same direction in the same instant, or to instantly disperse as a predator or other hazard looms?
1 year ago
1 year ago