Week 1, cont'd

Day 5 (June 30) - DAY OF HELL

Up 'til now, we'd been quite blessed with beautiful weather, well-maintained wheels, and efficient biking. NOT SO TODAY!

Cover me, Joe!
In the morning, we woke up near the bike path and realized that it was quite popular on this stretch of the river. "Bonjour!" "Bonjour!" Whoever said the French aren't friendly are seriously mistaken. It's hard to discreetly change into your sports shorts when there were so many schoolkids and retirees walking and cycling past and looking over onto your campsite. We imagined their teachers admonishing their charges, "Now, don't be like those kids!"

Ooo, chafing.
Unbeknownst to Hilary before this trip, bike shorts actually come with padding in all the right places, and rightfully so. Sadly, her shorts were still wet from being washed the night before, and despite the padding, she was feeling a bit pained from all that pedaling. Aï. She had to put on a replacement pair sans the booty pillow, and oh, it huuuuurt.

Oh, let me just tighten my spokes here!
We only biked a few kilometers downriver before we stopped in Villandry for breakfast, known for its castle, and even moreso for its gardens. It being Monday, we were running low on edible goodness and wanted to go shopping. Villandry doesn't have a grocery store (even a little one!), it turns out, so we snacked on dried fruit and nuts, and hunted for a public toilet (most towns we've been to are reliably GREAT about this -- free, clean public toilets in the middle of town -- welcome site to the weary traveler).

Having noticed that his wheel was wobbling a bit and concerned about it warping under all the weight it was bearing, Joe sat down next to his bike on the concrete and noticed that a few spokes on his rear wheel were loose. Ah! He'd seen a friend of his tighten spokes before, and thought that he'd just take a few minutes and tweak things a bit. Hilary returned from filling her waterbottle, plopped down next to him, and felt one or two loose spokes on Hygina as well. Let's tighten those too!


Lesson number one in bike repair: Joe is an amateur repairman. To Hilary, bike repair consists of greasing up the bike chain with WD-40 and pumping up the tires.

Lesson number two: always check to see if what has been done to one bike WORKS before doing the same thing to the other.

Um, my wheel doesn't turn anymore
Right.

We took the next two hours tweaking and spinning, spinning and tweaking our wheels which we had just foutu in less than five minutes.




But we choose to look on the bright side of this:
1) Hilary learned that you can tweak spokes (who knew you could tweak spokes??).
2) We discovered that Hilary is an excellent spoke-tweaker, in case we ever need to tweak spokes again in the future. She earned a bike-fixing merit badge.
3) We passed the hot noontime hours in the shade.
4) Hilary's bike shorts dried in the meantime.

Retracing our steps
Reader, at this point we encourage you to check out our route on Google maps, if you haven't done so already. The visual might be helpful.

We got back on the road around 1pm. Gee, it was hot! Must've been 30 or 35 degrees C! (Though both originally from REALLY HOT parts of the US, living in Europe has spoiled us, and we now find this wilting.)

We crossed the river at Langeais, hoping to find food there. The local baker (great sources of info!) directed us, "...left at the roundabout, and straight for about 1.5 kilometers."

Right.

At the roundabout, the sign said, "Just 2 minutes from here!"

Uh-huh.

In the scorching heat, we struggled back upstream for 5 kilometers in search of this bloody grocery store. Relieved, we rolled into the parking lot and let the cool A/C wash over us. (We didn't find anymore dried bananas, but we did find granola for a euro less and with less packaging!)

But we were dismayed when we looked on the map and realized that we'd essentially retraced our progress, simply on the other side of the river, rendering null and void all that distance we'd just sweated over.

Reflections we had as we picnicked in the shade next to the LeaderPrice:
- Why is it so hard to go grocery shopping??
- Why are stores so far-removed from town?
And, having passed tons of recycling bins for glass, but still towing around days' worth of plastic and paper wrappers:
- Why is it so hard to recycle plastic and paper in this country??

Another pretty bread



More bloating
Hilary pounced upon and put away 500 grams of fromage blanc ("For the active cultures!).

Lesson learned: Don't mix hot weather and high quantities of dairy products.

Okay, cool castle
Langeais is a tiny town with a powerful-looking castle. Whoa.



Where is the SHADE???
The first few days along the river we'd had no shortage of trees and greenery to keep us cool, even when it was already lovely weather. By the looks of our map, we decided to recross the river in Langeais, thinking that that was our best bet for shade.

Nope.

So, we sweated and panted most of the distance we covered that day. It was slow and hot going, lemme tell ya.

Joe likes fast things
This is Joe drooling over the Bugatti we happened to pass in Veyron. ("It's the fastest performance car on earth! You probably won't ever see one again!")



And we passed the château of Ussé, said to be Sleeping Beauty's castle:



Though only 4 km out of our way, we were unimpressed in our overheated state and thus content with the view from afar:



And we passed a nuclear power plant, going around which took us several kilometers out of our way (weeeeeeeiiiiird):


Um, should we be going South?
And then we got lost in a maze of backroads for.

Hilary makes a sacrifice
It's about this point that Hilary realized that she was getting sunburnt on the three inches exposed on her forearms between her t-shirt sleeves and her gloves. Undeterred, she sucked it up and kept her nose to the grind!

Really, this isn't West Virginia
Interestingly enough, we passed to round-headed guys cruising down the highway on 4-wheeled ATVs. The last thing we ever expected to see in France.

What happened to Avoine?
As we were leaving Avoine, we saw a roadsign indicating that, no, we were in fact in the twilight zone and it was several kilometers south of itself. We kept seeing signs after that indicating Avoine, Avoine, but never did figure out what happened.

Wake-up call
Late in the afternoon, we caught up with a kid half-riding, half-kicking his bike down the highway, skater-style. Turns out his chain had broken. Despite Joe's best efforts, there's little he could do without the proper chain tool. Yikes! Should our chains break along the way, we'd be stuck kicking our bikes down the road in the middle of nowhere as well. Better pick up another tool!

(By the way, Joe lent the kid his cell phone so he could call home for someone to pick him up).

We're now in the western hemisphere!
Yep, we passed the prime meridian.

Wine and fizz
Alcohol is not good for exercise in this kind of heat, so though we thought we'd be tasting the delights of the region as we passed all the welcoming caves, we actually only stopped for the first time in Saumur for an apero.

Shew! White wine is the only way to go after a day like this. Joe had a glass of Coteaux du Layon, a sweet, golden wine. Hilary, on advice from friends in Dinan, toasted a flute of Saumur brut blanc, a dry sparkling white wine (which she actually prefers to champagne...).

Unstoppable!
Holy smokes, we put another fifteen kilometers behind us, even after all that! The day was actually turning into chilly evening when we found the perfect campsite near a sandy beach on the Loire...

Darnit, and we wanna camp there!
...only to find two lovebirds had nestled in for the evening, loud music, blankets and all. Shoot.

Prickly daisies and a damp tent
We kept hunting for well over half an hour, and finally, our best option was a field infested with some kind of really prickly flower. We tried pitching our tent where the sun would warm us and dry out the tent in the morning, but even failed in that! Joe kept getting some kind of prickly seeds tangled up in his socks, which took forever to weave out of the fibers. Aï, aï.

Quicksand
Joe decided to go for a quick dip in the river before calling it a night, so he left Hilary at the campsite and waded in the water. It was quite shallow and the mud was squishy, so he kept going out. Yikes! Suddenly the mud gave way and the current picked up! Backing slowly up the bank, he eased out and just sat in safety. We found out the next day that there is, in fact, quicksand in the Loire and it can be dangerous in places. Good to know now!

Time traveled: 1pm - 7pm; 8pm - 9:30pm (7.5 hours)
Distance covered: Savonieres to Chenehuttes (75 km)
Expenses:
- bread: 1.35
- groceries: 5.38
- wine: 7.00
Total: 13.73




Day 6 (July 1)

Fantastic host family!
We got into Angers precisely at 1:30 pm. It was again roastingly hot, so we were happy to knock on the door of Joe's former host-family, the Collets, a 70-something-year-old couple who had housed him during his studies here five years ago.

While M Collet took his sieste and Mme was volunteering at the prison (really, these are some amazing people), Joe took Hilary around Angers for the guided tour. We ate dinner that evening with the Collets and their son, and, at their urging, took showers (what? we stink?). Ahhh! Hot shower! Clean clothes! How great it felt! (We kept touching our heads, feeling the clean hair). They were super-kind and encouraged us to stay the night with a wink of the eye, so our tired bodies got treated to a comfy bed!



M Collet told us about his own fantastic bicycle adventure: when he was 12 years old, his whole family took a month and a half to bike from Brussels to Toulouse -- to escape the Nazis! "The best vacation of my life," he said. We believe him.

After a delicious dinner, the Collets shooed us out the door to walk around Angers some more.

Foods we can eat uncooked
We came up with an interesting list of things we've found we can eat without cooking:
- tomatoes (or any other veggie) from the can
- refridgerated cordon bleu
- smoked fish
- semi-fresh refridgerated pasta
- chicken bites
- pizza

Refridgerated products are tasty, even uncooked!

Time traveled: 10 am 1:30 pm (3.5 hours)
Distance traveled: Chenehuttes to Angers (44 km)
Expenses:
- maps: 10.20
- groceries: 7.50
- coffee: 6.00
- bread: 1.40
Total: 25.10

Day 7 (July 2)

Royal treatment
Coming downstairs, we were greated by a classic French breakfast spread out over the table: coffee, juice, croissants and pains au chocolat, homemade jams and butter. Really, they spoiled us.

Rain and hills...
After stocking up on local foods at the market in Angers, we left and got lost for a bit in the suburbs. Up and down and around we biked, puffing up and coasting down hills. When the clouds broke, we were fortunately right next to a skate park, and we took shelter and ate our lunch under a skate ramp. Hooligans? Pshaw! Skaters rock.



Lenin Café
Communist propaganda the middle of nowhere:

Wild parking lots are harmful to nature's liberty!
Keep this place free and natural!

Sleeping with the cows
Hunting for our campsite for the night, we followed a national hiking trail across some cow pastures. Hilary, east-coaster from the country, showed Joe, mid-westerner from the city, how to navigate barbed wire fences and shoo cows. We found an old open building that looked warm and, even more important, sturdy against approaching storm clouds.

"It's perfect!" Joe announced. "It's even covered with soft dirt!"

Hilary explained to him that that was cow manure, both fresh and disintegrated all over the floor, and that we'd probably have bovine friends hanging out with us if it rained.
Finally, back down near the river, our trusty old friend, we shooed away Bessie and Gertha and tried to find a place protected by a nearby hill and a small tree where the sun would hit us in the morning.

Lucky us! Shortly after setting up the tent, it began to POUR rain. We tossed our bags in the tent, hung the headlight from above, and huddled in the middle, trying not to touch the sides, as that would have made the tent leak. Trickles started coming in at the seams, which mopped these up with towels and t-shirts. Damp, but not wet, we opened the tent's screen so Joe's feet could stick out without his head touching back wall of the tent.

Time traveled: 11:30 am - 10 pm
Distance traveled: Angers --> Ancenis (68 km)
Expenses:
- market food: 20.10
- grocery store supplemental: 8.87
Total: 28.97

Day 8 (July 3)

We'll be in Nantes by noon!
Yeah, right. We didn't even wake up until 10:30.

And then, we found that we had miscalculated the sun AGAIN -- it's strange being so far north! So we had to wait a while for our tent to dry out before we could leave.

Detour
Approaching Champtoceaux, our lovely route by the river was CLOSED due to construction! We were rerouted uphill...and uphill and uphill...pain is temporary!

Cliff diving
Back down by the river, we found the hiking trail again, and tried biking on it. Hint: don't do this. Hiking trails are not made for bikes with wide loads. Hilary almost lost her bike off the cliff, and only saved it by digging her calf into her pedal. Yeah, ow is right.

We found nice flat road again somehow, and expected easy sailing.

Except the wind was blowing the wrong way! Try tacking with a bike. Heads down and pedaling hard, it took us nearly two and a half hours to go 15 kilometers!

Ding ding!
Joe is a master of city biking, having dashed through traffic in Philly, Chicago, and Paris. The trams in Nantes almost got him this time, though! Crossing the tracks at a busy intersection, he assumed the tram would go off to the left, but it kept coming straight at him. Another close call!

Time traveled: 12-4:30pm
Distance traveled: Ancenis --> Nantes (44 km)

July 3 - 7
Franco-American weekend with Laura and Julien!

It only seems right to spend the fourth of July weekend celebrating franco-american relations with the people helped us kick British booty 300 years ago!

In Nantes, we were greeted by Laura (Joe's sister) and her boyfriend Julien. What fantastic people! Laura came over to France six years ago and fell in love with Julien. The rest is history.

They not only put us up for the weekend and let us take showers (or rather, insisted), they helped us repair Hilary's bike, water seal the tent, let us commondeer the computer so we could blog our hearts out, plan the next stage of our trip, and they invited us to Julien's 27th birthday party down by the beach!

We gave each other stylish short haircuts, too ("Look! If I don't wash it, it just looks like there's gel in it!).


We had a GREAT time hanging out with them, and we're sad to leave. But, the next stage of our trip starts today! We're leaving Nantes today and heading to Rennes, then on to Dinan and St-Malo.


Tour de France
Funny enough, the greatest bike race in the world came from St-Malo to Nantes today! We're about to go downstairs and see them come through, just a block away. We plan to take their route at least part of the way -- so cool!

We'll try to blog more regularly on the road this time.

D'accord, à plus!