bike trip: 5

In the dark that night, I heard Paris unzip the entrance of the tent. He was tying a tarp on to cover it. Rain began to blast down seconds before he crouched back in. He was only lightly soaked but a few seconds later we would all be totally drenched if he hadn't tossed on the tarp. It rained hard hard hard and we were all awake now in the tent.
"I don't know what woke me up, but I could smell the rain and I knew it was gonna rain," he said.
"Holy shit! Listen to that rain. We'd be soaked if it weren't for you Paris. It's so lucky you did that," I said.
"I smelled the rain," he said.
Garth mumbled half asleep, "Will our things be alright?"
"My bag's out there," I said, "but I'd be drenched in two seconds if I go outside. And I'd never get to sleep. Cold, too."
"I don't know, I just smelled the rain."
"Good work," I said.

We woke up for real several hours later. The ground was wet and the sky was cloudy and cold. I hefted on my wet backpack and marched up the hill with Garth's cell phone to walk along the highway, hitch a ride to the next town, Cambrai, and telephone Paris where I was once I had my new bike. Back at the tent Garth and Paris would pack everything onto their bikes and eventually head off to Cambrai.
I walked backwards so the drivers could look me in the eye when they refused me a ride. Me, walking alone with a backpack and a thumb. Them, in their luxurious cars they had so much money for, travelling twenty times faster than me, empty seats in the back, but no! No chance of sharing their speed and comfort for one who doesn't have a car. Me, who's obviously a serial murderer because I walk on the side of a road. In my face, they saw the dreadful features of a man who sticks his thumb out for carrides with as much ungallant cowardice as he slashes his knife across innocent throats. And maybe it's cause I'm an American, too. No French person would dare parade along the side of a public motorway witha button-down shirt whose sleeves end a miserable three-fourths of the way down his arm. And those blue jeans. American. And those sneakers. Wearing them for comfort, is he? Comfort. All those Americans want is comfort comfort comfort. Go look for your comfort in Iraq, why don't you, American. You won't get it here in the back seat of my car on these thirteen kilometers to Cambrai, France.
A car came from the other side of the highway and turned around to pick me up. The driver was a man in his fifties. We conversed in French.
"I saw you coming down this way, but I had all these boxes in the back seat. Then I said to myself, oh, but this young man, walking all this way alone... So I moved the boxes there on your left and I came back. I'm going to Cambrai, by the way, so I can take you as far as there," he said.
"That's exactly where I'm going. That's perfect," I said.
I explained about my need to purchase a new bicycle and he said he was going right to a huge commercial zone where I could find a good outdoors store. He noticed my accent. I told him I was American and I'd been living here for two years.
"Your French is unbelievably good for an American," he said. You'd think the guy never heard an American speak fluent French before. And you'd probably be right. The conversation turned to comparative lifestyles.
"So much in America," I said, "is about chasing the money. And finding solutions for your problems with money. I came to france for the joie de vivre." Pause. "But."
"But," he agreed. He knew what I was going to say.
"Yes, it's changed I lived here four years ago for a few months. It was wonderful then. a feeling in the air in Paris that makes eveyrone fall in love with living there. A major city but so charming. So simple. All the people so laid back. And cheap. Living was cheap."
"It's the euro."
"Everything's got so much more expensive. And life feels hard now. All the faces in the metro. So gloomy. You can see the people are tired."
"There's not enough jobs any more. In the town where I live, there's no jobs for anyone. If you have a job, you stay and you work. You work harder. We used to think we had job security, but now we don't know."
"I was refused for a working permit. Six months ago. Six months I haven't worked."
I told him the convoluted details of my visa situation. Like every French person I've told, they think it's wrong wrong wrong but nobody goes knocking on the door of the Minister of the Interior to demand justice that I be allowed to work.
But I explained to him, "Now that I've learned to survive with almost no money at all, I see that whe you're deprived of all material things excpet the essentail, you relaize how much most things yo used to buy or used to want are not important. You consider what you have and you appreciate it so much more. And especially, you realize that the people you love are most important and just spending good time with them can make you happier than anything you thought you needed to buy.
He nodded and shook his head and nodded. Most people don't understand when I talk like that. In any case he understood I was a friendly guy.
"Thanks for picking me up," I said.
"Everybody is so scared, thinks any person they don't know might be a serial murderer," he said. "But I don't think so."
"You have to take the risk," I said. "If everybody thought everybody else was a serial murderer and hid from the world like that, well, then it's like you've made everybody a serial murderer. That's the world you believe to exist."
"Yes," he said, "people must not be scared of each other."

I found just the right bike. Bigger. To support my weight with the backpack so the back tire doesn't get squashed again. Taller. So I can ride like a normal person, not all crouched over like a toad. Newer. The old bike was used. I thought it a bargain at 80€. This one was new. Shiny. With a bell.
As in stood by the cashier, clutching my throat while the credit card machine sucked out 130€ I earned last January, Garth and Paris showed up. I told Garth about the hitchhike ride while Paris bought riding gloves.
"Aren't they gorge!"

Since I just shelled out this staggering sum, more than a quarter of what I thought I would spend on the whole trip, I figured, what the fuck, let's eat somewhere nice for a change. There was a horrible-looking cafeteria across the parking lot that wa bound to have ridiculous imitations of proper cuisine rotting under heat lamps for just a few euros more than I would pay to eat yet another can of green beans and the cheapest cheese on the shelf.
The joint was nearly empty.
"It's so depressing here!" remarked Garth. "I love it. It reminds me of North Carolina."
"Wow, this is so ghetto!" said Paris.
It was too early for any hot foods. We walked along the cafeteria tray line picking up things like bread rolls, a donut, cold tuna salad on a leaf of lettuce on a cold white paper plate, an orange, a banana, coffee.
We sat in a booth.
"This booth reminds me of Florida," said Paris.
"Reminds me of North Carolina," said Garth.
It was around this time that Paris pointed out anything that reminded him of America.
"Guys, isn't this place ghetto? It's great," said Paris.
I had inisisted to Garth that Paris's use of the word ghetto was derogatory. She took it to mean a complimetary appraisal of a person, place, or thing. We haggled over the nuance of it among ourselves, but she now turned to Paris and directly asked, "Paris, if a thing's ghetto, is it good or bad?"
"It's like bad... but in a good way. In a cool way. Or it's cool... but in a bad way."
I found this answer to be satisfyingly meaningless. I had explained to Garth earlier, "I don't care if he means it in a good way or a bad way. You must understand he doesn't even think about it when he uses this phrase. he uses this phrase because he's heard Paris Hilton use it. And what Paris Hilton is to Paris is a model of perfection. She is a flawless epitome of whatever he believes her to encapsulate. Be it glamour, be it wealth, be it fashion, be it snob, be it fame. He aspires to one or many of the above-listed traits. The closer he comes to Paris Hilton, the closer he comes to the desired trait. Now I don't take Paris as a literalist when he describes a thing as ghetto. I doubt he's ever seena ghetto nor had his heart exposed to the real miseries that give the ghetto its reputation as an undesirable dwelling-place. Undesirable, that is, to those who seek fame and glamour and other things like clean toilets and massage showers or casual weekend getaway cottages complete with coffee pot, rustic fireplace, and a picturebook of places called Toscana, Santorini, or Oahu. Nothing like that will be found in the ghetto by one who would seek them there. So if he doesn't literally know what he's talking about, why does he persist in classifying a great many things under this borrowed terminology? I will tell you why. Because he's only thinking aboutParis Hilton and trying to get closer to Paris Hilton and every time he says a thing's ghetto--and he may as well say gorge--all he really wants to express is that he sees himsefl a devotee of Paris Hilton and he wants all aorund him to acclaim him near the goddess that he worships. The definition of ghetto and gorge is trivial compared to the simple way he feels declaring his love of Paris Hilton through repetition of her words. It's as if the words I hear come out of his mouth are, "I am the arbiter of fashion," when he declares something gorge and I hear, "I want always to be beautiful," when he declares something ghetto."
"But he just thinks it's funny. He's not serious."
Paris went on to point out everything that was low quality about the restaurant. Garth and I were just as aware of the poor lighting, the tired workers, the fat teenagers with greasy hair, the poor quality of the food, the service, the booth, the chairs, the cofee, the ice machine, the silverware, the floor, the ceiling, the wooden beams, and the dirty windows overlooking an ugly parking lot, we just didn't feel it added to our time pointing each one out.
In the bathroom, which was around the corner (so ghetto) in the adjacent fluorescent-lit mega supermarket, we took turns going to the bathroom, brushing our teeth, washing our face.
I was alone with Garth while Paris was away. She directed my attention to the hideous old woman at a nearby booth with flabby hippopotamus arms and a drooping maw into which she shoveled mashed potatoes.
"When I'm old I want to look like that," she said.
"Nooooooo!" I cried.
"Wouldn't it be cute to be a fat old woman. Bluh bluh bluh." She imitated the chomping jowls of the booth beast.
"Nooooooo! that's horrible. Please don't turn into that."
"Oh, I will. Won't you give me a kiiiiiiiiiiiiiss when I'm like that? Bluh bluh bluh."
"Of course I will."

The clouds seemed to be making way for more sun. we put on more lotion and headed out. A late start ot the day, but we hoped to cross the border into Belgiu by the end. Only noon and I'd already spent 134.65€.
"Oh, Garthy!" cried Paris.
We followed signs for Valenciennes at the Belgian border. The road we were on led us, to our complete surprise, to merge with traffic on the major auto route linking Paris and Lille. Suddenly we had gone from fields and farmhouses to deafening trucks and cars going 70 miles an hour. Valenciennes was only 10 kilometers away, so I thought we could survive on this road until then and get a better one after. A truck going the opposite direction honked three times. The driver wagged an index finger at us. I waved back. On we rode with tony of high-speed metal flying around us.
A green truck with flashing lights came by a little too close for comfort. It appeared to be stopping in our so-called bike lane which was actually just the shoulder of the auto-route. The driver honked and we stopped. Only Garth was just far enough ahead of Paris and i that she heard nothing of the truck over the raging auto-route noise.
"Garth!" I cried.
"Garth!" screamed Paris. He banged on his sirens. I rang my dinky bike bell furiously. Garth heard nothing and kept on riding away.
"You must get off the auto-route at once," screamed the man who stepped out of the vehicle. They were highway security.
"We were just following one of the smaller--"
"This is not for bicycles. You have to go now or we call the police."
"We meant to--"
"Your life span on the shoulder is fifteen minutes. In the traffic it's two. We see this all the time."
"We'll go. Can you go tell our friend up there?"
"Okay. And we're gonna wait at the off-ramp to see you get off this auto-route. Never for bikes. Never."
We saw them talk to Garth half a mile ahead of us. We all proceeded up the off-ramp with a little thanks-for-saving-our-lives salute to the highway security men waiting below in their green truck with the flashing lights who saw this all the time.

We went through several French towns that were thoroughly depressing and bleak. "Oh, Garthy!" I thought of Emile Zola. Germinal. What did these towns do during the revolution? What happened here during the war? Who are these people now? Paris pointed out that all the architecture was post-war. He could tell that everything was built here in the forties. It was not true. Many buildings were from the 1800's and looked it. But I wasn't gonna argue. It was the first matter of historic or cultural attention that Paris tooka pseudo-interest in.
"See that building. It was built in the forties. Everything here was bombed during the war."
We heard that ten times that afternoon.
But it's true the towns were thoroughly depressing and the same. Six teenagers sitting on the steps to someone's house. A sign that the town probably sucks. In one town I found a post-office. I had to mail a DVD of a short film I had finished editing with Paris back to the producer who was waiting for the English version.
This was a good source of laughs. Paris and I did the editing together. He's very skilled with computers. I had to add the dialogue for the English version of a film I had shot in English and French. But it turned out I hadn't gathered all the English dialogue I neede from the actors. The last possible day, I had to get four more lines of dialogue recorded and there were no actors to give it so I ended up speaking the dialogue myself. Two different characters. One male and British. One female.
When the woman gets her purse stolen I had to fake a male British-sounding, "Let him have it." And then a terrible female falsetto, "Don't let him take it!"
In the restuarant scene, I did the man's British, "This is a great place." And when the woman gets up to go to the bathroom, I dubbed a terrible female falsetto, "I'll be right back."
Paris liked to get a laugh out of me by mocking my falsetto "I'll be right back" and the overly British "This is a great place." Paris found many contexts to use the former phrase, such as any time any person left the others. And for the latter, he liked to employ it any time we seemed to be in any place.
But the depressing towns of northern France were not a great place and Paris and Garth seemed visibly distressed and quieted at each row of identical 1940's housing we passed.
Our route had shifted from Valenciennes. We knew we were heading towards Tournai in Belgium but had no idea when we might cross the border. With the dread ugly towns wearing on our mental health, we needed to be lifted into a higher state of purpose.
And then one road answered our prayers by changing from a French road to a Belgian road so suddenly that we didn't see the sign proclaiming Belgium, surrounded by a circle of stars until it was twenty feet in front of us. A noteworthy milestone in the bike trip. Paris took a picture of me and Garth in front of the sign. We had now left the country we started out in. It would all be a true foreign adventure from now on. Things would become less familiar. Already, what was this Jupiler beer being advertised on pubs? Now we are in Belgium. Remaining, the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, and southern and central France.