July 21, 2017
Day one, July 21. Charles de Gaulle Airport, Versailles, and Bréviaires.
Day 1, July 21. Charles de Gaulle Airport, Versailles, and Brevaires. This is a story about a bike tour in Normandy. But, at least for the first few days, it is also a story about me repeatedly inconveniencing French people, and about how they didn’t seem to mind being inconvenienced. On the first morning I managed to inconvenience Maurice; then later that evening I inconvenienced Cathy. The third day was pretty dull and no one was bothered as I pedaled through Norman forests, but on the fourth day I really inconvenienced Jean-Philippe and Agnès.
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Maurice should have expected to be inconvenienced; he was an Airbnb host. I had told him that I wanted to stay with him at the end of my trip, but at the beginning I wanted to leave a bike bag with him. What I hadn’t told him was that it would take me a couple of hours to assemble the bike. Maybe he inferred this from the fact that he was picking me up with a bike bag with a bike in it, and I was storing a bike bag at his house. In any event, he set me up in his backyard, and introduced the American Putting His Bike Together to his family as they came by throughout the morning: his son, his wife, his nephew, his nephew’s friend . . . he offered me kneepads and coffee, on separate occasions. He took pictures of me assembling the bike with my camera.
When my bike was together and my bags loaded, he drove his Land Rover through the streets of Goussainville, the town near the Paris airport where he lived, but on the main streets meant for cars and semi trucks. Jet-lagged and slower than he was, I tried to keep an eye on his Land Cruiser while I pedaled furiously to keep up with him; either because he didn’t know another route or because one didn’t exist, we were going on the “car streets”. He tried to drive as slowly as possible, often pulling over to let cars pass until I caught up. By the time we made it to the train station, I was grateful I hadn’t had to navigate, but also looking forward to an hour on the train, where I was inside something that automobile drivers were scared of. Maurice bid me a fond farewell, almost like I was a nephew, even though we’d only met three hours earlier. “Bon Courage!” he said, the first of many times I would hear that phrase on this trip.
My tour officially started at Versailles, in the sense that I had planned a route starting there and it was mentally my “starting point”. The automobile gamut with Maurice I hadn’t quite expected, because I thought I would be assembling my bike a few blocks from the train station where the Airbnb unit was located, instead of at Maurice’s personal residence, which was a few kilometers from the train station. I also hadn’t expected multiple transfers, a long transfer wait, station outages, and re-routing on the RER train that took me across Paris to Versailles. But I made it, and there it was: a giant glittering gilded pleasure palace. I took a few pictures in front of it to add some glamour to the trip, took a spin through the park surrounding it – which was much larger than I expected – and I was off.
A typical bike touring day for me in France is to bike as far as I can, and in late afternoon or early evening, do a search for the nearest campground and make a beeline for it. France is covered with campgrounds, in August usually full of Dutch and English RVs, that will give you a small plot of land and a warm shower for anywhere between three and twenty Euros. The higher-end ones have playgrounds, swimming pools, Wi-Fi, and pool tables. The French word for them is “camping”, which is a noun that means “a tourist campground.”
Rather than winging it for the first day, though, I had researched the closest camping to Versailles, called “Le Camping des Bréviaires”. My goal was just to get out of Paris, so on the second day I could wake up and start riding through the French countryside.
When I arrived, “Le Camping des Bréviaires” seemed a little off. Usually the entrance to a camping is bustling with tourists walking to or from their RVs to a central block of bathrooms, with a clear well-lit reception and often a restaurant, bar, and playground full of children. This one looked worn and un-welcoming, without much in the way of signs. There were blocks of trailer homes, but no recreational vehicles.
The only person visible from the entry gate was a teenager riding a bike that was too small for him. I asked if there was as reception. He said there was, it probably was closed now, but let’s check. We walked in through an open door in a building near the entrance into a dim room with what appeared to be mail cubby-holes covering the wall. The teenager explained something to a woman at the desk that was too fast for me to understand. I explained the situation: bicycle tourist, a very tiny tent, one night.
She thought about it for a moment. “Well, normally a person can’t just stay here for one night, but I suppose if someone invites them to be their guest it is ok.” She looked me over carefully, as if assessing my upstanding-citizen-ness. “I suppose I could invite you to stay, why not, you can stay for one evening as my guest, so long as it does not bother anyone else.” She looked at a very short man in a fedora who I suddenly noticed was also there. “Does it bother you?” she asked. “No, not at all, bike tourist, one night, no problem, he said. “We will have to find a place for you. Follow me,” she said, walking out the door.
I wasn’t sure if I was in the opening scene of the French adaptation of The Shining, or if I should be glad to have found a place to sleep. I had arrived from California on a redeye flight at 730am Paris time and it was now 6pm. I needed to sleep. I followed her out.
Having determined that it was permissible for me to stay in Camping Les Bréviaires, my host seemed genuinely unsure of where I could actually put a tent. After a bit of walking around, she decided that the only area didn’t belong to anyone specifically was a small strip of grass outside a large propane tank that was surrounded by a fence.
“If I was you I would probably put the bike inside the fence. With the kind of people around here, you never know. Have you eaten dinner?” Because of jet lag and my actual eating schedule that day between bike assembly, navigating the RER, and riding to Camping les Bréviaires, the actual answer to that question was “it’s complicated.” I tried to explain that to her. “Well,” she said, “if you are hungry, we are eating in about a half hour, come by after you set up your tent.” I told her that was very generous of her to offer, and I would come by. What was her name? “Cathy”.
As Cathy was leaving, a small car with racing-style decals on it pulled up and its driver, a guy in his early twenties, said something to me. I didn’t fully understand it, but it seemed to be a joke about accidentally running over my tent during the night. I noticed that the car was actually full: he had three friends in the car with them, but they were all slouched so low it was hard to see they were there. Cathy said something to them that seemed to be, in essence, “get lost.” They drove off.
I set up my tent, and locked my bike inside the area that was fenced in for the propane tank a tight squeeze among overgrown hedge branches and pipes and hoses.
Based on the experience so far, I had no idea what to expect when I went to the area where she lived. I also had no idea who the “we” was with whom I was having dinner. It was unexpectedly normal. “We” was Cathy, her three young-adult children – one of whom was the teenager from the parking lot, who was now doing some kind of repair on his small bike – and a man of about Cathy’s age named Laurent who I took to be her boyfriend. Cathy said it was sardines for dinner, was that ok? I had never eaten sardines in my life, and momentarily thought those were the fish some people put on pizzas before I remembered those were anchovies, but I said ok. I wanted to be a good guest. Maybe picking up some subconscious cue I had given about my feelings about sardines, Cathy said “if you don’t like them, we will have other things.”
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It was an enjoyable dinner. The sardines smelled very strong and fishy as they grilled, but they tasted pretty neutral. Laurent patiently showed me how to cut the head off, eat the top layer, and then peel out the spine and bones so that the bottom fillet remained. After eating two to make a demonstration, I ate some of the salad and pasta. I asked if I was in Normandy yet. I wasn’t. A teenager was sent to fetch the Petit LaRousse, the French dictionary-and-miniature-encylopedia, and Laurent gave me a quick lesson on the difference between a region (large) and a département (smaller). Normandy was recently consolidated from two regions – Upper Normandy and Lower Normandy – into one large administrative region, and I wasn’t in it. It was another 100 kilometers of pedaling. After dining and chatting for the minimal amount of time I deemed socially acceptable, I pled exhaustion and jet lag, and went to bed.
I fell asleep, wondering whether I would be run over during the night. I woke up at dawn due to jet lag, pleasantly un-flattened, and left Les Bréviaires.
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