The Road Home

Sept. 11. Orleans, at last. A must write-about experience: after over 3 weeks of travel together, we four were so much looking forward to toasting our time together tonight at a nice restaurant. Not to be! We headed out to Orleans' main Place de Martroi and every single restaurant - every one! - could not serve us. A couple of cafes only serve drinks outside, and were full inside. Other places were jammed and, without a reservation, we were politely but definitely sent on our way. This beautiful, balmy evening and nowhere to eat! We finally settled on, of all places, a small sushi restaurant! I hate raw fish, but we found they had two little skewers of marinated chicken breast, so I ate that (as slowly as possible) while the others enjoyed The Rawness. We laughed about it - what else can you do but chalk it up to Travel - the things that happen on the road that you must be prepared to accept. So the plan for tomorrow is that the Ks will come in from their airport hotel to join us for dinner in Paris, hopefully at a restaurant favorite that we all know. You will have to ask us, once home, if this actually happens. As they say: Whatever...

We made it back to Orleans after two exhausting days of packing, driving and winding our way through medieval cities en route. Friday was a serious day of sitting in a car, with one significant stop in the city of Albi, which has a deservedly famous cathedral. We drove to Limoges (yes, the city of that porcelain ware). Only the second half of the drive was on divided highway; most of the drive was the "usual" single lane-traffic circle-up and down around around-through cities driving. Beautiful countryside, but tiring. After the now familiar circling and missing signs, we found a hotel, dragged ourselves off to a brasserie for a later than usual dinner, and finally collapsed in bed close to 11.

Up this morning and at it again, though the driving was virtually all expressway. It is worth noting that even most of the "N roads", or National roads, in this country are two lane, as are the "D roads" or Departement roads, and the white roads - well, those are just the country lanes that we have been cyclng on. I think we have done remarkably well driving these three weeks given all the challenges of navigating in unknown territory, on small roads with lots of traffic circles, trying to please four people at once, and maneuvering a giant toaster that barely fits in a medieval street. I credit Robb above all for his driving ability, great sense of direction, map-reading skills, and CALM under stress. What ticks him off is the wait in restaurants for service, but when it comes to driving, he is pretty unflappable and really knows how to wheel that van around!

While the guys took the van to Avis to retrieve the boxes and repack the bikes, Jane and I went to the Gare to buy tickets to Paris (they will go to the airport overnight and fly back Monday). After walking to the cathedral and back, I can attest to the fact that it is still summer, and wedding season, in Orleans. In their enormous Gothic cathedral we witnessed one smallish wedding party (bells pealing above); and just across the way at the Hotel de Ville, a Muslim wedding party! At just after six, the guys returned with bikes packed, the car returned, and we are ready for the train and two days of seeing friends in Paris before flying home.

We have gotten between 27-29 mpg (some heavy math by Jane went into this figuring) despite all of the slow driving and altitude gain and loss. This is amazing, we think. I guess it's a tribute to the efficiency of diesel fuel and the van's 6 gears. Even fully loaded with us, our gear, and bikes, we got over 27 mpg driving yesterday. How much does diesel cost?, you ask. We've paid about $1.10E/liter; there are 3.78 liters (I think that's it...) to a gallon, so you can figure it out. It's expensive, and that's why there are so many small cars and so many diesel cars in France! Robb says: Why aren't there more diesels, and manual transmissions, in the U.S. !?

This will be our last upload to the blog. I hope readers have enjoyed it, and that a little bit of the flavor of France, biking, and adventure has filtered through. It's been fun to share our experiences and it will be fun to read back home as we relive, as best we can, this unique experience!

Finally, some random things I like about France. I like the fact that none of the windows in our hotels have had a single screen, and that we have been completely free to open them. I hate American hotels that are shut up like mausoleums, smell like Lysol and air conditioning and are about 50 degrees on a summer day. And I really like being able to walk around towns or cities here at night without fear. People are out on the street, riding bicycles, walking with friends, eating and drinking at cafes until late, and in bigger cities, like Orleans tonight, historic buildings and sometimes fountains are lit artfully at night. People are active but they are not rushing everywhere, and they are not loud either. So nice...

Robb here. A word about the French Bread Year: Many years ago Bruce and I noticed how many French were taking home a baguette every day, in their cars, on their bicycles, or just walking with it sticking out of their grocery bags. I devised the idea of the French Bread Year, that is the length of French baguette that the people in France eat in a year. This trip, I have finally calculated this, based on conversations from a Parisian hotelier about his family's consumption of bread. Assuming the average Frenchman eats a half meter of baguette every day, and that France has a population of 65,000,000 we get following lengths for a French Bread year, day, hour, minute, and second:

French Bread Year: FBY=11,862,500 km (7,354,130 miles)
French Bread Day: FBD=32,500 km
French Bread Hour: FBH=1354 km
French Bread Minute: FBM=22.6 km
French Bread Second: FBS=376 meters

To give all a better feel for the new units, here are a few conversions:
1 FBY = 1.25e-6 light year, or 39.57 light seconds
1 FBY = 0.08 AU (astronomical units--the distance from the sun to the earth).
1 FBY = 30.8 LD (lunar distance--the average distance between the earth and its moon)
Circumference of Earth = 1.23 FBD
Mean radius of Earth = 4.70 FBH

At dinner tonight we estimated that we have been eating about 60cm of French bread per person per day on this trip. That ends up being a total of 72 meters of French bread for our trip, or about 0.2 FBS. BTW, the climb up Mount Ventoux (from the south) is 1612 meters in elevation and 21 km long, or just equal to one French Bread Minute. Our total distance that we cycled on this trip ends up being 408 miles for Jane, 411 miles for Bruce, and 418 miles each for Robb and Barbara; that is a total of 1655 miles, or about 2.25e-4 FBY.

Sept. 9, last day in Quillan. Weather this morning was wet but at 11 we all set out, in different directions, in hopes that rain was mostly over. R and I ended up riding 28 miles along the Aude river, through and along some beautiful gorges. But weather drove us back shortly after our picnic lunch. We no sooner set out on a climb out of the gorge to a tiny village than it began to rain. So we turned around and hot-footed it back, a fast trip since it was down! As we approached Qjuillan it began to rain again, and I looked over to the mountains in the distance and it was raining hard. We ran for the hotel garage, got the bike inside, went up to the room, and then the sun came out!! It was that kind of day, with intermittent rain, wind and sun. But: we have now broken 400 miles in France (418 exactly), so we feel good about that. And I am looking forward to our planned Tuesday ride next week to Versailles with the Fat Tire folks. That will be our last day in the country. As for the Ks, they took the van and went further afield, but had a rotten time with hills and lousy weather. We all agreed: so glad that yesterday was so glorious!

Tonight will be packing and tomorrow we will head back to Orleans with an intermittent stop tomorrow night at a place yet to be determined.

Sept 8. What a great day! We had a beautiful ride today by ourselves while Ks killed themselves on hills (actually they had a great ride too!). Some of the highlights of the day: little girls waving at us from the back of a school bus; an early Gothic cathedral with an enormous undivided nave, stained glass and stenciling throughout (some gone/deteriorated); 12-15th century town square in Mirepoix, looking more Germanic than French; a friendly country dog that came wagging out, an Australian couple at a cafe enjoying wine while we drank coffee and a Coke - they were very intrigued by our bicycle adventures -, and last but not least, a "rolling Home Depot" - a semi trailer parked near our van which is in essence a hardware store on wheels, pulled up and displaying various wares like ladders, brooms, even work shoes (on sale).. Inside I glimpsed cubbyholes and shelves full of wares, and by the door in the middle was a small catalog and a machine that takes credit cards. One guy manned the operation and four people came up to buy stuff while Robb was disassembling our bike.

That was our ride. But after that, we hotfooted it to Montsegur, one of the most famous Cathar castles because it is on one of the most radical sites, a rock outcropping that affords a breaktaking 360 degree view far into the distance. BUT the hike up is a killer on the knees! Robb says it is 150 meters up from the parking lot (about 500 feet) and it's pretty steep and rocky. The castle itself is just a shell, although they have repaired enough of the former chapel to tell what it is. It's the view, holy mackeral! Coming down was not knee friendly and I leaned on Robb a lot because the steps are so high and some of the rocks so slippery. Luckily we made it down without incident, the whole climb just took a long time and we were pretty sweaty.

To end the day, we drove with the Ks to the tiny village of Borriege we had cycled through a few days before to have dinner at a tiny restaurant where delicious lunch smells made our mouths water. What a wondeful experience!! We will write about it on Tripadvisor.com so they can get more business. That little town has just a handful of residents, but this couple bought their place and opened up just last April. Husband is the cook, the wife makes the desserts and is the waitress. She was absolutely delightful! Funny, a little playful, and I hope she enjoyed us as much as we did her. The setting was fabulous: a small area behind the building enclosed by high rock walls on two sides! She has just a few tables and chairs, with large white umbrellas. We had an absolutely wonderful set-price meal for our 19.5E. Most notable were a scrumptious gazpacho with something resembling meatballs but oh so much more delicious; large potatoes cut in half and roasted with herbs; and a tarte tatin (apple tart) to die for! The potatoes were a funny story. We all just raved about them, including Robb, who is lukewarm about potatoes but ate all of his and some of mine. So we asked Madame: how are they cooked? The secret . roasted in DUCK FAT! We had a good laugh over that one. Anyway, we all agreed that this was a meal to remember and this couple deserves as much business as they can get!

Sept. 7. Today: was rainy. So what else - we went to Spain! Out of curiosity, we four headed to a town near but not over the Spanish border which is part of Girona, a Catalan city in Spain. Llivia is in the middle of the high Pryrnees, and is essentially Catalan, although I am sure that everyone there speaks Spanish and French as well, at least to some degree. It is essentially a ski town with an old church and a few piles of stones which were once a castle. Because it was officially named a Villa (capital V) centuries ago in some political accord, when the existing border between France and Spain was established, Llivia was allowed to retain its alliance with Girona, Spain. Other plain old towns and villages were assimilated into France. Or so we gathered from the information available. Expecting some sort of at least rudimentary "border control"', we had brought our passports, but fuggedaboudit - we sailed down the main street into town just as what few shops were open, closed for the lunchtime break. We ambled around and found only a simple cafe, and I had a fairly hilarious time with the waiter/owner trying to switch my brain off and on between Spanish (which I kinow well), French, Catalan and English. He also seemed to enjoy the translation process, and things were made easier since two of us wanted omelettes, another, a hamburger, and the fourth, a standard menu listed. Lunch went fine, we ambled around some more trying to figure out just what made this empty town tick, and finally left for home with the notion that Llivia survives on the ski trade and thus at this time of year, is "resting."

As for the drive, all six hours of it (round trip): how can words possibly do justice to a mountain landscape like this? Despite being glued to our car seats for so long, and enduring scarily narrow, bumpy roads and never-ending switchbacks, we were bowled over by the majesty of the high Pyrenees and the beauty of their green valleys, only enhanced by the interplay of clouds and sun. Our roads took us over, around, down, over, around and down for hours, thousands of feet up to the passes between mountains, then thousands of feet down to the valleys, only to head up again, usually at speeds of 15-25 mph. Americans apparently don't visit the Pyrenees. But the Europeans sure do, to camp, hike, and ski, or just plain to see this glorious terrain. I opted out of being a driver for this trip, figuring that three drivers would do the job plenty well, and this allows me the pure luxury of rubbernecking, and this I have done to my heart's content, no more welcome than today.

We've had record-breakingly fast dinner tonight at a pizza place. Most often, our dinners two hours plus. It is a SIN in France to hurry the dining process; there are long pauses between courses and a long wait to catch the waiter's eye to ask for the check. It is considered supremely rude for a patron to receive the bill without asking and in some places, we have found disappearing waiters (observed smoking a cigarette "off campus" or just plain gone somewhere). Only once have we been aguche (and desperate) enough to get up to collar the waiter - at a restaurant where dinner took almost 3 hours. Most of the time we complete our 2-3 courses at 9:30 or later and roll off to bed with full stomachs.

Finally, another mandatory pleasantry in France is that you MUST bid farewell upon leaving a shop, whether you buy something or not. It's very uiseful to learn how to say "Merci au revoir" (thank you good bye) as a single sentence because you will be saying it a lot. Those salutations are just second nature and make the French world go round. This, along with the mandatory "Bon jour" throughout the day to anyone you pass anywhere. Sometimes I hear it as just a whispered "...jour" as I pass, but it's always there!