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.