“Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” – Aldous Huxley
I left Hedwiga’s place about 10 am in the morning,
after a tasty breakfast in a French style – a fresh baguette, butter, jam and
coffee. I felt so obliged to them, yet my poor French made it impossible to
express my gratitude as I wanted. Still, I guess that I did quite well with my French
and was able to make myself understood. After only 3 intensive 4-week-long
summer courses and subsequently 1 month in France as a volunteer I can say that
I can communicate sufficiently, even though my French level is not fit for any
intellectual debates. But still, it is a good feeling anyway because I do not
study French; therefore, I do not have to strive for perfection. All I need is
to communicate and that I can do somehow, with hands and legs and everything.
Screw grammar and mistakes, the most important thing of speaking a foreign
language is to have fun and not to be ashamed of the mistakes you make.
Everyone makes mistakes and the locals are usually happy if they can understand
what you say and you answer to their questions correctly. Therefore, I have a
better feeling from my French than from my German, even though my French sucks
and I have studied German for decades. The solemn truth is that I am sometimes
timid to speak German because as the language expert studying German, I am
expected to speak flawlessly. That is more of a hindrance than help for the real
life communication.
My today’s plan was to get from car roads back to the
national bike route. It was grueling to ride on the asphalt in the scorching
temperature of 30 degrees, but at least I could move faster on the normal road.
It took me about 40 km to join the national bike route, or in this case better
said a national bike lane. The road leads along a canal again, but it is very
narrow and I would not really compare it with other national routes. At least
the terrain is so far flat and even though I must continue carefully, it is not
as full of holes and other nasty surprises as it was before Dijon.
Today during the lunch break, I had a very peculiar
craving for sugar. After finishing my Tartine I swooped on some three croissants
left that were actually intended for the breakfast. I put chocolate spread on
them and after eating them all but one, I succumbed to the temptation of
scooping out the chocolate cream alone. I realized after a while that there was
not much left in the jar so I took the pleasant duty of finishing it off.
Afterwards, I realized that I have another type of chocolate cream in my
luggage and it would actually be a good idea to compare them. So I opened up
the next jar and scooped out until I felt it is all too sweet, so I ate the
last croissant left. A minute later, I was wondering how the other sweet bar
could taste like so I opened it. That finally stopped me from my munchies
because it was so utterly sweet that I simply could not eat more of that. Unfortunately,
I did not close the jar properly and all the chocolate cream spread over my
luggage. It took me almost 2h to clean that mess up.
About 6 pm I ran into fishermen festivities and had a
great opportunity to soak a little bit in the French folklore atmosphere. Once
again, I urgently needed water and once again I was saved, this time not with a
hydrant, but a special water canister that was there to refresh other guests. I
have decided to keep at least 4 liters of water with me, because 2,5 l is
woefully little in this soaring heat.
In the evening the “national biking route” was
becoming worse and worse and I was totally pissed off how anyone could dare
call this Cinderella's lane a national
bike route. My grandma has a better road in her garden and she has some camping
tables, too. I could also take any forest lane in Slovakia and call it the
national biking route. It was simply too good to be true at the beginning with
the French bike routes. Therefore, I decided to ride along roads to speed up
this utterly boring journey along the canal that looked last 400 km about the
same.
After my short break for dinner I was for a shock – my
tire was flat and my pump was gone. It probably fell off somewhere on the road,
so I was literally screwed. I located the nearest pump on the GPS and set off
for that direction with the flicker of hope that they might have a car pump
there. It was about 5 km away and I tried to be faster than mosquitos that were
after me. It is interesting that I totally forgot how it feels to go on foot.
Firstly, I thought that 5 km is nothing, but after a while I thought that it
takes ages to get there. Yet, I had big luck in unluck. I saw a cyclist, the first
after an hour, and asked him with my hasty French if he did not have a pump. He
did not, but pulled out something like a soda capsule and was so nice that gave
me a brand new air tube that he tried to blow Unfortunately, again, his
marvelous invention did not blow the tire, but blew up by itself and we were
lucky that nobody got hurt. Afterwards he called a friend of his to come by car
to help out. He brought a pump, yet he did not have a compatible valve.
Therefore, he had to go back again and fetch the right one. In the end, we
managed to fix the tire which I really call a stroke of luck so late in the
evening. I do not know how I could possibly fix it alone. Even if there were a
pump on the gas station, I am not sure how long it would have taken me to fix
it, providing that I know it only in theory. I was unbelievably happy that ths
coincidence saved me from many other troubles. I cannot believe that they did
not wanted to accept any money for their help. They just told me that I must
enjoy my trip to the fullest because something like this stays in memory
forever. Well, I do not know what to say – despites all difficulties; I always
find the way out thanks to nice people around. I actually had a damn good
reason to be in Orelan the next morning which you will be described soon with
all juicy details.
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