PBP 2007 Fini

Page: 4

Byron pauses at the Louvre

Arriving in Paris at Gare Nord we bike to Montparnasse briefly losing Gilbert, and entertaining motorists with the recumbent—"Did you buy that in Paris," they asked? At Montparnasse we again board a train for Plaisir hoping to stay a few minutes ahead of the evening commuter rush as our bikes partially block the train doors. After wrestling Byron's bike free from the clutches of an automatic door, the attendant in Plaisir instructs us to take our bikes around the station. we head downhill into southwest Plaisir pausing once to ask directions of two guys on the street. One says "droit", the other "gauche", so we go straight to the bottom, turn left, climb through the woods and cross the D30 toward Gaitines.

At the Hôtel Formule-1, Plaisir

Arriving at the F1 we find we are staying with the German and Muscovite randonneurs. A huge bus pulls up from Germany towing a enormous bicycle trailer — "There are four-hundred cyclists coming from Germany for PBP," they tell us. "A few of us will stay at this hotel."

I ask the Russians, "Are you with the Baltic Star Randonneurs?"

"No, the St. Petersburg group is staying in another hotel. We are 'Karavan' from Moscow."

Biking into town for supper, we met up with "Big Dog" Paul from Ohio, also staying in Gaitines — we would bump into Paul often in France.

In 2003, I became annoyed at the motorcycles for fouling the air. This year Byron pointed out that the problem was not the motorcycles—every single car in France runs on diesel and it doesn't take many to pollute the path. Aren't they supposed to use bio-diesel in Europe? What happened to, "Smells like french fries?" Maybe being exposed to gasoline fumes at home makes me less sensitive to gas fumes and relatively more sensitive to diesel?

[←Previous] [Next→]

Copyleft © 2007 Adrian Hands.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation