PBP 2015: Everything else, vol. 3

After completing PBP 2015, my head was filled with a year's worth of stories and experiences that I'd accumulated in a little under ninety hours. In the days following, I jotted down little snippets & notes about the many people I'd met and the many things I'd seen.

I wrote up some of my most-cherished memories -- some of the longer stories -- in the weeks following the event. In the past year and a half, I've gone back several times to have a look at my cryptic (to anyone else!) little list of memories, and they've warmed my heart each time. Few of them, on their own, hold enough weight to make for a blog post; taken together, they are, to me, more than their sum.

This is the third set of those tiniest of anecdotes from those magical four days in Brittany in the summer of 2015.

WHACK!

Many families come out to the side of the road to see and cheer riders rolling through the villages that dot the Breton countryside. Often a child will extend a hand for a high five -- well, more of a horizontal five, rather than high up, since it's natural to allow some safety space for the bike.

This was really great, and fun for everyone. That said, I was a little torn about it: if it were to go wrong, things could go south in a hurry for everyone involved. There are lots of good reasons for abandoning PBP, I think, but colliding with a child while kind of goofing around is probably not one of the better ones.

I decided to go for those outstretched hands when it felt safest: slower speeds, quieter moments, lots of space on the road, and no other riders close by. I learned to ease up, coast, really relax my arm and hand, and let my arm drift backwards as we connected for a "horizontal five" clap.

One afternoon, one such perfect moment presented itself. Here's the setup:

BigSister ~ Parent1 ~ Parent2 ~ LittleSister

BigSister is aged maybe 14 or 15, LittleSister about 10; each has her right arm outstretched in the typical fashion as I approach.

I coast & slow, drifting curbward juuust barely enough, reaching out far with my relaxed, gloved right hand to bridge the gap to the kids'.

BigSister: tap! A routine, clean, gentle contact, and a little cheer.

Now, as you might imagine, it doesn't take much time to roll from one end of a four-person lineup to the other. What could change in just a couple of heartbeats?

To my surprise, at about ParentOneAndAHalf, LittleSister sprung into action: feet planted squarely, facial expression transformed suddenly into one of pure, focused, dogged determination, she twisted her whole body around, pulled her arm back with the wind-up, and swung her arm like a baseball bat, timed perfectly to nail my outstretched hand: WHACK!

Mischief managed, a veritable home run! My whole hand really stung! Hahah!! It was AWESOME!!

I'm still laughing about it as I write this.

Just a...moment?

I rolled out of my Mortagne-au-Perche hotel in the wee hours of Thursday morning. I'd cut my sleep a bit short to give myself a big buffer: I'd accumulated a real variety pack of aches & pains (the knees, the Achilles, the hands, the derrière) that conspired to slow me down, and I wanted to allow myself sub-minimum-rando pace so that I'd be sure to finish within the time limit.

I had a hard time warming up and finding my rhythm in those pre-dawn hours. There were many riders on the road at that point, a good number of whom had start group letters before mine. We all trudged along, nobody really speaking much at all. A couple of times I got off to walk, just for the physical relief.

When I could get my position just right, the assorted aches & pains wouldn't really bug me and I could put some more pressure on the pedals. Now, this was all very relative, given that this was the fourth day on the bike, but I was able to motor through the masses of fellow haggard riders when I felt less discomfort.

One of these riders jumped onto my wheel. It was fine. After a good long while motoring (relatively!) down that dark country road, I wanted him to take a turn. We didn't seem to have a language in common, but I sat up and motioned him through. He didn't come up. I tried again, and he said, quite clearly, "Moment!" 

All right, ok -- he needs a moment. No biggie.

He pulled up alongside me. I turned to face him...and he took my photograph, straight in my face, with a flash camera, in full darkness. Ouch!!

Let's just say that we didn't ride together after that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What's hard?

One thing's for sure: PBP means a long time on the bike. While I was able to thoroughly enjoy myself through most of the physically demanding spells, every once in a while I'd get a bit down.

Yeah, it's hard. It may even be stupid to ride 1200k, eh? (Don't even go there.)

Sometimes you wonder if you'll be able to finish, just because it's hard and it's so long. Then, as you stare out blankly at the riders ahead of you, your brain suddenly registers what your eyes see:

At times like this, it becomes blatantly obvious how easy you've got it. So what if your ass is a little sore? You're pedaling with two legs, for chrissakes.

You tell yourself to suck it up, appreciate how easy you've got it, and you pedal your (sore) ass back to Paris, thankful that you can, and thankful that your ass will be fine in a week.

I made a joke!

I must have been feeling pretty good on the return to Loudéac. I was on schedule, more or less, a good 100 miles in to the return to Paris, and looking forward to another four hours of sleep in my hotel. Of course, control business comes first: get that card stamped!

There were plenty of riders making use of the services there at Loudéac Tuesday night, but, when I walked into the control room itself, I was the only rider there among ten or more booklet-stamping volunteers staffing the tables. It was the quietest control room I'd been in, that's for sure!

Now, I don't remember exactly where my conversation was going with the volunteers -- perhaps we were talking about the direction I was going, confirming that I was inbound? Was it the difficulty and fatigue? -- but I realized, in the flow of the conversation, that I could make a joke!

Now, this is a risky business: it seems like whenever I've tried to make a joke in French, I've had to explain what I meant. That generally doesn't make for a good joke.

Maybe it was the fatigue getting in the way of better judgment, but I went for it. I said, "Je fais Paris...presque!"

I was shooting for a little jeux de mots -- a little play on words. "Paris...presque" sounds close enough to "Paris-Brest." The word presque means almost, or, as I was hoping to elicit in this case, the sense of nearly: what I was trying to say was "I'm going to nearly make it to Paris, but not quite!" while having it sound just like "I'm doing Paris-Brest."

Three. Or. Four. People. Suddenly. LAUGHED!! Hahahaha!! I did it!!!

It was a nice little moment....but I've, uh, stuck with my day job for now.

PBP 2015: Everything else, vol. 2

After completing PBP 2015, my head was filled with a year's worth of stories and experiences that I'd accumulated in a little under ninety hours. In the days following, I jotted down little snippets & notes about the many people I'd met and the many things I'd seen.

I wrote up some of my most-cherished memories -- some of the longer stories -- in the weeks following the event. In the past year and a half, I've gone back several times to have a look at my cryptic (to anyone else!) little list of memories, and they've warmed my heart each time. Few of them, on their own, hold enough weight to make for a blog post; taken together, they are, to me, more than their sum.

Here's the second set of those tiniest of anecdotes from those magical four days in Brittany in the summer of 2015.

A lifetime of PBP?

I set out from the event start in SQY at 8PM Sunday evening. An hour or two later we'd made it well into the countryside, and the route took us along a narrow road through a small village as darkness slowly fell. Centuries-old homes hugged the pre-automobile road, and many of the village's residents were on the street or at their windows, watching the spectacle and cheering on the riders.

A father sat on the sill of a large, low, open window at street level, with his toddler daughter on his lap, the two pointing, chatting, and waving at riders whizzing by. Certainly this was the child's first PBP; I found myself wondering if she'd remember this four years hence, when the event came by her home the next time.

Skip to Monday afternoon: a beautiful, sunny, summer day, rolling through the beautiful countryside, several hundred kilometers covered. I was well-fueled, aches and pains had not yet accumulated, and circadian rhythms had me alert and feeling good despite having ridden through the night before.

Outside a country home, a family sat behind a table at the roadside, with cheers and refreshments for riders. As I rolled by I was offered du café! and de l'eau!, but I declined with a non, merci! as I was all topped up from the previous control.

However, as my eyes returned to the road ahead, I thought I'd perceived some cake there on the table. Suddenly I needed cake! I made a smooth demi-tour to circle back to confirm what I thought I'd seen: j'ai vu du gâteau? The simple response of oui! had never been sweeter to my ears, and the family was happy to offer a piece of yummy cake.

Now, by this point I had caught on that some people offering goodies appreciated tips of loose change at their tables, while others sternly refused. When I asked one of the people at the table if I could leave a little change, he politely declined; he asked, rather, if I'd be willing to send a postcard from my home town to mémé (granny), an elderly woman sitting there with the family. I happily accepted his slip of paper with mémé's address, and promised to send a card.

As I continued down the road, I thought about mémé, perhaps in her 80s or 90s, and I wondered how many PBPs she might have witnessed through her lifetime. I thought, also, of the toddler I'd seen the night before: had mémé sat on her father's lap, watching PBP many decades ago? And how many PBPs might that little toddler eventually see as the years unfold? Would she be mémé one day, almost a century in the future, awaiting postcards from riders around the world?

I felt like time had collapsed a little bit, showing me the past and future, all at once, right here in the present. I began to feel like I was doing my teeny, tiny little part, as one of some 6,000 participants, to help keep alive this long tradition of PBP, so that many other riders might have this same opportunity long after I'm gone.

I dearly hope that mémé enjoyed her postcard.

Shhh-what??

Tuesday night, about 11PM. Loudéac control on the return. Tired.

Everyone's tired: riders, volunteers, everyone.

Hungry: riders are hungry. The cafeteria line's moving too slowly for the hunger, but the legs & asses are glad to be off the bike a bit, and they aren't inclined to move quickly anyhow. It's pretty quiet: nobody's got much energy, and who knows what language anybody speaks.

After receiving my beautiful purée (mashed potatoes), shuffling my body and ushering the tray along toward my turn at the register, mechanically scooping potatoes and inserting them into my mouth, a rider behind asked for his food: shhhhKON. The cafeteria volunteer stared back blankly.

ShhhhKON. Riders in line turned to look and stepped back a little bit. The rider from Japan looked as tired and hungry as the rest of us.

ShhhhKON. Suddenly, it clicked: I faced the rider, put my thumbs in my armpits, flapped my elbows up & down, and said...chicken? He nodded yes!

I faced the volunteer and relayed the message -- poulet -- and resumed shoveling my potatoes.

Making up for Steve Martin?

As a kid, I listened to Steve Martin's stand-up comedy LP records. I remember a little bit he did about French:

It's totally silly, but it highlights the difficulties, even if he's taken it to the absurd extreme. I've learned a good deal of those "different words" that the French have for everything, and I could see the differences that made in my interactions with folks supporting the ride:

At rider check-in, volunteers were stationed under flags to indicate language. When I got to the head of the line, I made my way to a British flag to collect my packet and receive instruction from the volunteer.

She started by asking if I was English-speaking. I confirmed that I was, but that we could speak in French if she preferred. I could see her entire body suddenly relax! She thanked me, explaining that she was simply getting fatigued from having to speak English. A tough job!

Flash forward to the post-ride, early Thursday afternoon. I was hobbling back from the ride finish to the hotel, and I ran into BFK. BFK had finished at the pointy end, the fastest American rider in 2015. He'd finished the whole ride before I'd shoveled my purée in Loudéac, but he was paying the price: he needed Ibuprofen! I knew where the pharmacy was, and I offered to interpret.

We entered the pharmacy chatting away -- in English, of course -- wrapping up our conversation before approaching the counter.

As we approached the pair of pharmaciennes at the counter, one turned to the other, gloomily said anglais, and asked her colleague who should take this one.

I switched up my language, and let them know that we could speak in French. They were both relieved, as they had been muddling through many conversations in "sign language" as they helped achy riders at the finish!

I really hope that there is no grain of truth to Steve Martin's telling of his visit to France, but it makes me wonder how frustrating it might get on a bad day if you're having to help many people, across language barriers. Big thanks to the volunteers and many others who supported this event!

A familiar face

Outbound at 220km, in the wee hours of the pre-dawn morning, I pulled in to Villaines-la-Juhel. This was the first stamp control, and my first access to my drop bag and a change of shorts. I needed some food, too. I'd seen some cafés on the way into town, open for the event, but decided to go straight for the control, take care of business, and maybe get some food from the cafeteria.

The control was pretty crowded. Finding a free bike parking space was a little tough, and there was a bit of walking to get to the check-in and cafeteria.

The cafeteria was mobbed, and I didn't know where to find my drop bag. I tried asking a volunteer where the bags might be, but she had no idea -- the drop bag service wasn't part of the official program.

I filled my bottles from the handy spigots, and walked out of the control.

Where's my bag? There was bike food in my bag, too. And how far back around the corner was that last café I'd seen?

I walked back the way I'd come, back past my bike, to look back around the corner, to see if I could spot the café I'd passed.

Ugh, no, it was some blocks away. It wasn't the end of the world, but I was tired, and little things were suddenly getting complicated. I returned towards the control.

"Hi, Greg." It was none other than RUSA#7, Bill Bryant! (Bill was watching for Lois's arrival, just inside the entrance to the control.) It was so nice to see a familiar face.

I asked Bill if he knew where I could find the drop bags. He pointed to the big Hertz rental truck parked next to us: "Isn't that it right there?" Yes...the same truck I'd stuck my bag in a day or two before, now parked right in front of me. Oof.

It was such a little thing, but Bill's helping hand was just the right nudge at just the right moment; it got me mentally back on track and on the road toward Brest. Thanks, Bill!

PBP 2015: Everything else, vol. 1

After completing PBP 2015, my head was filled with a year's worth of stories and experiences that I'd accumulated in a little under ninety hours. In the days following, I jotted down little snippets & notes about the many people I'd met and the many things I'd seen.

I wrote up some of my most-cherished memories -- some of the longer stories -- in the weeks following the event. In the past year and a half, I've gone back several times to have a look at my cryptic (to anyone else!) little list of memories, and they've warmed my heart each time. Few of them, on their own, hold enough weight to make for a blog post; taken together, they are, to me, more than their sum.

Here, then, are some of those tiniest of anecdotes from those magical four days in Brittany in the summer of 2015.

Bonjour...?

I was more than a little anxious taking the start of my first PBP, and my first 1200k at that. I tend to over-pack a little, so I left the start with enough food to easily cover the first 200km, and then some.

The first stop for official services was at an event center called Le Carré du Perche, in the town of Mortagne-au-Perche, at just under 90 miles into the route. I'd chosen the very last time slot of the 90-hour start group, so quite literally thousands of riders had taken to the road in groups of 250 every 15 minutes just ahead of me before I'd taken a single pedal stroke...and they seemed to have all settled in for a big party there in Mortagne-au-Perche at 2am.

All I really needed was water at that point, but I thought I'd check out the food offerings. Bike parking was pretty full, so I just set my bike down gently on the ground in a reasonable spot where others had done the same. Barbecues were raging outside, with long lines -- and I'm vegetarian. I made my way to the indoor cafeteria, which was also absolutely mobbed.

Ok, forget the food. How could I just get some water and be on my way?

Fortunately, volunteers were staffing this nice little beverage bar:

As I approached, I bonjour'd a volunteer of perhaps 10 or 12 years, who was more than happy to fill my bottles with water.

Now, this had been a concern of mine going into the event: sure, you say bonjour as a greeting in the morning and through the day, bonsoir as a greeting in the evening, and bonne nuit to say farewell at night. Sure, you can say salut at any time, but what's particularly suitable for 2am? I suppose 2am is night, but bonne nuit is for farewells, and it's so close to morning that good evening just seems wrong.

I decided there and then that I would ask an expert, so I presented my puzzler to the young gentleman fetching my water. He had no idea! Each option seemed a little wrong to him, too. We had a good little laugh, each goofily offering up bonjour, bonsoir, and bonne nuit repeatedly through our giggles, and I felt very relieved that I couldn't be wrong, if there was no right answer!

I offered him one of my thank-you tokens, which he proudly showed to his papa, we said some silly good-byes, and I was on my way.

It's all in your head

I think that for most riders setting a typical pace, there are often other riders around, whether ahead, behind, or going the other direction. Sometimes you ride in larger groups, or smaller groups, or even in pairs with a newly-made friend from some random spot on the globe. Some stretches of countryside are peaceful and quiet, with not a bystander to be seen, while other spots and times offer many roadside supporters cheering you on.

On my return, I'd had a big Wednesday afternoon pasta lunch at the control in the small city of Fougères. I took to the road with a full belly, an aching body, and a fatigued head.

I was about 65 hours into my ride, with another 200 miles 'til Paris: mostly done, but a looong way to go. As I rode out of town, solo, quietly grinding up a short, steep block, I passed a gentleman standing at the side of the road. As I crept by, he clapped softly and said to me, C'est que dans la tête.

Wow. He'd read me like a book, and he was right: at this point, making Paris or not was all in my head. Onward!

Road rage, à la française

As you start to make your way closer to the turnaround in Brest, you can almost taste it: you're about to reach a big milestone, the true halfway mark -- at least on the map, if not in your head.

As I made my way deeper into Brest, I found myself in a small line of half a dozen fellow tired riders, steadily grinding up an incline on a main road through a neighborhood in the middle of Tuesday afternoon. The street was not huge, with one lane of traffic serving each direction.

Each lane was too narrow for a motorist and a cyclist to share side-by-side, but, taken altogether, the entire road did offer enough width to fit a car in each direction, plus space for a cyclist -- if the cars scooted over, with the oncoming motorist hugging the curb and the overtaking car straddling the center line a bit to give room to the cyclist.

Sure enough, there was a fair amount of motor traffic on this little neighborhood thoroughfare. Motorists were slowly queuing behind the little line of cyclists creeping up the incline, and the motorist in front wasn't having it -- he wanted to be on his way.

What did he do? He started honking his horn, shaking his fist, and shouting out his window...at the oncoming motorists who weren't scooting over to allow him to straddle the center line, to safely pass the cyclists!

What a moment of clarity for me: this gentleman, despite the noise he was making, had seen the obvious solution whereby everyone could win, rather than yelling at cyclists to get off the road. I smiled inside. :)

May I please just crawl into a hole now?

A bit after dawn on Wednesday morning on the return, a rider came alongside, and I thought the polite thing to do would be to say hello.

At this point I'd become accustomed to looking at riders' number plates, which featured a flag of the rider's home country. In the morning light, I was sure I'd recognized the French tricolore, so I started out with a bonjour and began a conversation in French.

Partway through my sentence, I realized that I had somehow seen the colors completely wrong in the dawn light: they weren't the bleu-blanc-rouge of the French flag, but, rather, black-yellow-red. Oh! Those are the German flag colors!

I felt stupid, and switched to my very rudimentary German for some bumbling guten Morgen, as best I could.

The rider looked at me, and, in perfect English, said: "I'm Belgian. You can speak English."

I can laugh about it now, but, at that very moment, I just wanted to crawl into a hole.

French flag

Belgian flag

German flag