cycling

Looking forward and back

September 12, 2013 By ColleenBusch

I could list many favorite things about La France. The graceful language, fun to speak and even more fun to listen to, the relentlessly edible food and drinkable wine, the long history and beauty of the country. The joie de vivre par-tout.

Every day we pass through many small towns, and I’m always struck by how well cared for the homes are–even a crumbly hundred year old stone farmhouse will be dotted with flower beds and decked out with colorful shutters, blue and orange and red. It warms my heart as I pedal past.

Arriving in and exiting towns, however, is decidedly not one of my favorite things. Many people all trying to get somewhere on teeny, tiny streets. The leisure of the lunch hour is nowhere in evidence. It’s dog-eat-dog, or car-eat-bike. You muscle through, with a little prayer that you will emerge intact, pointed in the right direction.

Leaving Sarlot Le Caneda, after staying two nights to work around the rain, we managed to ruffle the feathers of a numbers of drivers, getting in their way as we tried to navigate to the bike shop for some air in our tires. The bike shop was closed, and just for good measure, a bee stung my ring finger to bid us farewell. Ouch.

Our days in the saddle have been great. We typically start around what we call “the crack of 11.” We ride through gorgeous countryside on relatively quiet roads. Castles pop up everywhere. Cows watch us, chewing their cud. Sometimes cars, or other cyclists, pass and give a thumbs up. Yesterday I rounded a corner and came upon a puddle of sheep, lounging in a pile, heads resting on flanks. I stopped to take a photo and they watched me cautiously but then decided I couldn’t be trusted and dispersed, to my disappointment. Once one of them turned tail, that was it, they all did.

I have a rear view mirror that attaches to my helmet–very helpful when touring. I’ve been thinking how it’s always important to see both in front of you and behind you on the road, and in life. You can’t just look in one direction. Well, you can, of course, but why would you want to? You’d miss so much.

Tomorrow is the last day of riding in this region–the Dordogne, Lot and Cele valleys–and then we return to Toulouse to meet friends and head to the Pyrenees! Woo hoo!

Let's see, I think we're here... — Let’s see, I think we’re here…

View from our room in a 14th century home in Figeac

Intimacy with all things (on a bicycle)

September 5, 2013 By ColleenBusch

Our first day in the saddle–a 70km loop starting and ending at Les Eyzies, where there’s a fine restaurant named after Cro-Magnon man and a hotel with a piscine:

Here’s a little collection of images and video from the ride, which rolled up and down all day through quiet countryside. Of the many crops being grown we saw corn and more corn, sunflowers, grapes (the three treasures?) and tobacco, a fourth treasure in France. It’s amazing to me how many people still smoke in the world outside of Berkeley, California, which is a lot of world!

I think one of the reasons I’m so enamored of riding a bike is the feeling I have of no separation from my surroundings. I breathe the local air, smell the smells, commune with the cows. In a car, on the other hand, it’s easy to feel removed from others, to feel a sense of opposition and distance. I like the speed of the world from a bike. I like hearing the world. I don’t love the late summer heat (and either do my legs, judging from the heat rash), but I accept it, doing its heat thing.

The photo of John thumbs-down at the street sign is leaving a town called “Mouzens.” Those of you schooled in Zen might appreciate the pun…No Zen in the Dordogne?

Tomorrow we pack up and leave Les Elyzies with panniers full–no more loops but a point-to-point ride from this point out. I’ll say more about that in my next post. Thanks for tuning in. If you have friends who might enjoy the blog please send them along for the ride!

May all beings ride bicycles.

A birthday train to Les Eyzies

September 4, 2013 By ColleenBusch

I woke at 4 a.m. this morning, jet-lagged and hungry, and remembered in a wakeful fog that today is my birthday. Forty four! Perhaps appropriately, we head to Les Ezyies, where there is a Museum of Pre-History. I love the notion of a time before history. In my 44 years, my own personal pre-history, that would be before my parents met, or even before either of them learned to ride a bicycle. There’s something encouraging about pointing towards a place on one’s birthday that is rich with archeological finds from the Paleolithic period–some 10,000 to 200,000 years old. Makes 44 years seem like nothing to get too excited about.

In the late 19th century, during the first bicycle boom, at the age of 53, Francis Willard learned to ride a bicycle. “There’s more taught by the bike than meets the eye & ear,” wrote the leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Willard looks a little brittle in this pic of one of her early rides, before she’d mastered balance:

But her writings about learning to ride are far from tight. “I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning-wheel we must all learn to ride.” May we all be so inspired as to never become brittle of mind, considering ourselves too old to take up something completely new and challenging, as the bicycle was in Willard’s day.

Sitting in the Saddle

August 26, 2013 By ColleenBusch

For years I’ve been watching the supreme athletes of the Tour de France pedal up the passes in the Pyrenees–and been awestruck by the scenery that surrounds them. Tomorrow, I’m heading to France with my bike (and my husband) to cycle up some of those same summits. I won’t be racing, but rather, basking in the natural wisdom of mountains, the pleasurable grit of a challenge, and the daily succor of French food and wine. I’ll be discovering a part of France I’ve never been to before. I’m not sure what I’ll be moved to write about yet, but I’ve been thinking that if bicycles had existed in Buddha’s time, Buddha definitely would have been a wheelman. I’ve also been reading a lot about cycling history, especially as it relates to women’s liberation. Here’s an inspiring photo that speaks to that theme:

Stay tuned. We’ll be warming up in the Dordogne, between the Loire Valley and the Pyrenees. I’ll write next from our staging ground in Toulouse.

Colleen