PBP 2019: The Hotel California is in Mortagne-au-Perche, and you can never leave!

Conversations quoted below were originally conducted in French; they're retold from memory here, and written in English.🗣🇫🇷

I booked a room in Mortagne-au-Perche for Wednesday night. The finish in Rambouillet was a scant 75 miles distant from the hotel; my 90-hour event time limit would be up by around 11am the next morning.

Rough math of making 10mph progress meant I'd want to allow myself 8+ hours to complete that last leg -- rough math because, at that point, who-knows-what could easily conspire to add or subtract a couple of hours to that time. It'd all gone so well up to that point that I was willing to "buy" a bit of a buffer by skimping a little on sleep in any one go.

So! Add a couple of hours to eight, call it ten....Ok, don't stay in Mortagne-au-Perche much past midnight; lingering as late as 3am would be pushing my time-budget comfort limit.

I'd rolled into town with good friends (old and new!) and good vibes, with the sun shining and shadows getting long. I scarfed down dinner in the control cafeteria with Megan & Eric -- delicious, heart-warming vegetable soup that I found even better with the pasta tossed in:

This is mine. What are you having?

I also grabbed some control cafeteria food to take with me to the hotel, plus some food for later down the road to keep me going through the wee hours of the morning.

Now, despite pretty meticulous planning for every day of my three-week sojourn in France, I somehow had not previously looked up the route from the control to the hotel! No worries, it's a small town, and my phone has signal.

Wow! It's like....barely two blocks from the control site, and its front door looks out onto the course! Haha!

GPS blob at left end of blue trace is control parking; right end of blue trace is the hotel.

I parted ways with Megan and Eric, and headed down the street & around the corner to my hotel. 

༺═──────────────═༻

Now, I say hotel -- but it's really just a nice little restaurant with a couple of rooms above:

I usually like to plan out my brevets: I consider my goals, how I want the event to go, get an understanding of conditions, the route, the weather, and services, and so on. However, the longer the event distance, the more difficult it becomes to reasonably anticipate how things will be going later in the ride. I don't overplan for what I can't reasonably foresee; I leave more ends loose, and expect to "wing it" a bit more later in a long ride...or maybe I should simply say that I permit myself increased flexibility with each passing kilometer!

In that spirit, I had not phoned ahead to this hotel to inquire about the logistics of storing my bike during my brief stay. (Heck, there was no way I could have known beforehand if I'd make it to Mortagne-au-Perche with enough time in the bank to use the room!) My bike strategy for Hostellerie Genty Home was to wing it, and negotiate bike storage on-site when I rolled up.

I parked my bike out front of the hotel, with riders continuously whizzing by the front of the hotel as they headed away from the control and out of town for the countryside, destined for Rambouillet.

I went to the front desk of the restaurant / hotel:

Restaurant / hotel desk; stairs behind lead to lodging.

The gentleman at the desk had my reservation, and everything was in order; he checked me in and gave me a key to my room, just upstairs, one of only several rooms at the establishment. I then brought up the question of storing my bike.

He thought for just a moment, then said "Just go bring it around the back of the building. I'll let you in the door, and you can store it there."

Hey! Perfect!! (Right??)

Sure enough, he was standing at an open door when I came around; he let me into the storage room behind the restaurant. Perfect. :)

My impression of door locks in France is that they tend to be more substantial than those in similar contexts in the U.S., and a surprising number of them (in my limited experience) require a key for entry AND exit. Given that I planned to depart around midnight, or a bit after -- and there would certainly not be any 24-hour staff at the front desk at such a small establishment with so few guests! -- I wanted to make sure that I could let myself out, with my bike, in the middle of the night. I asked:

"I will just sleep for a few hours, and then continue my ride. May I leave with my bike in the middle of the night?"

Uh-oh...I could instantly read on my host's face that this was not going to be as simple as I hoped. He asked:

"What time?"

"About midnight."

"No, that is much too late. You cannot leave at midnight!"

Uh-oh.

"How late can I leave?"

"How early can you go?"

Ehhh...the situation was rapidly....not improving.

Now, I must say: while this was a problem, I was absolutely loving it!

Ok, first off, I was in good shape: there was the control a block or two away, with sleeping available, and I could certainly get cleaned up at the hotel first regardless, and there would always be other sleeping opportunities down the road (right?) aaannnd....if I just kept going, the grand finish was only 75 miles down the road!

So, why was I loving it? Well, I was in a good mood, set to bring in the final leg of my second PBP in much, much better form than my first completion in 2015. I was having an adventure! I was speaking French! I was negotiating a subtle, difficult situation across cultures, norms, and language! So exciting, so stimulating! I mean -- who would come to PBP just to ride bikes?!?

Our conversation was starting to go nowhere, in circles, when a young restaurant staffer popped his head into the storage room from the interior door that led from the storage room to the dining room; he needed the boss to attend to something.

"I'll be right back."

So, there I was with the young gentleman, and my bike, there in the storage room.

I learned long ago about a strategy to get permission to do something within a large bureaucracy: Shop your answer. You keep asking different people until one of them offers a pathway that suits your needs. Why not try that here?

I explained the stalemate situation to the young gentleman, who quickly offered:

"No no, he's just saying that; you can leave whenever you want."

Oh-ho! But how to achieve this?

Unfortunately, the original monsieur returned to the scene just as the staff member was offering me options. The staffer quickly shut his mouth and returned into the restaurant. 

We quickly came to a short-term agreement, agreeing that that there was a gap between us -- but that I was there, now, and would certainly get cleaned up and get some amount of sleep. We agreed to table the matter for the moment and get me to my room.

༺═──────────────═༻

A quaint, lovely room, illuminated by long rays of sunshine coming through the windows on a warm evening. I opened all of them fully in hopes of getting the room a little cooler for some sleep. Riders passed by steadily in the street just below, their freehubs whizzing as they took the corner, curbside bystanders gently clapping to encourage each passing rider.

I ate a bit more food, plugged in my electronics to get things charging, got cleaned up in the shower, ate a bit more food, and sorted out all of my clothes & gear so that everything would be ready for departure.

Departure! How would we make that work?

With all of my gear staged to depart, the only items left were the night's brief sleep...and negotiation of my exit from the building, with my bike. I headed back downstairs to sort that out.

I met the gentleman at the desk. He clearly had been thinking it over:

"Have you got a phone?"

"Yes."

"Call me at this number whenever you're ready to leave and I'll let you out."

A way out?!?

Hey, cool! A plan!

I took the slip of paper, paid for my stay, thanked him, and headed up to bed.

Would this work? Would there be an answer to my call at midnight or 1am? Time would tell! I set my alarms and turned out the light.

༺═──────────────═༻

Whhhhzzzzzzzz, clap-clap-clap: another couple of riders gently buzzing by the hotel. Then another, and a couple more. Clap-clap-clap; "Bravo!"

I would drift off to sleep, but would rouse frequently due to the slightly elevated temperature of the room, and each time hear the whhhhzzz clap-clap-clap of riders inching closer to Rambouillet, with encouragement.

Fatigue eventually got the better of me, and I got maybe an hour of solid unconsciousness, but awoke again to the whhhhzzzz clap-clap-clap. I'd had enough of a nap to take the edge off -- nowhere near enough to make up for the mounting sleep debt, nor to carry me through 'til dawn! -- but there was no way I was going to get back to sleep anytime soon; time to get into the saddle and get the ride done.

༺═──────────────═༻

With my stuff ready to go, I gathered everything up, gave the lightly-used room the once-over for anything left behind, and headed downstairs. It wasn't quite 10:00pm yet.

Monsieur was at a table quite near the stairs, finishing his evening meal with the woman sat across from him. They turned to me as I approached.

"I couldn't sleep well, so I had better go."

The woman agreed:

"You had better go."

Ha! The senses of "I agree" and "good riddance," all in the same breath!

Not quite two and a half hours after arrival, the gentleman who had checked me in bade me (and my bike) farewell as he closed the hotel's storage room door behind me. Alone in the cold, dark night, I was warm, refreshed, and all bundled up, about to take a surprisingly-chilly descent from Mortagne-au-Perche into the countryside and begin a long, long night trek across Normandy.