That one moment I can be singing out loud cycling through a french village in the sun, and not soon after be grinding through thunderstorm on what would turn out to be a snapped rear axel, is almost too staggering contrast for me to handle. Such euphoria pursued to closely by calamity. I guess its the hardship I deserve.
A speaker of my headphones breaks and clatters to the ground, the last noise it will make. Camera refuses to capture a singe image of rain soaked field. I breakfasted late, and not because i rose late, but because, disgusted by the quantity of food that I had eaten the night before I resolved to put thirty kilometres between where I lay and the first taste of porridge.
It rains, but its late in the afternoon, and its warm so that I don’t care that I am wet. Its in these conditions that I feel most like an explorer, like a lone pioneer, because few people would be as stupid to be out in these conditions. And so, as the lycrists turn tail to their homes (worried about getting their components wet) and the randoneers cower under trees, I pedal on, grinnning and splashed with grime.
Cycling in the rain is only good when there is a hope that the sun will come out again. I am glad to be maybe the only one on the road when that happens, when country smells emerge, and when the steam rises off the cows.
The flow of water clears the blocked note on my harmonica, so that i can tootle a full scale with one hand on Rose’s arm. But it is an unhappy pair who struggle ino Nante, and slump into the warm apartment of Gwenelle and her friends.
Today was a fight to Nantes. Despite it all. I made it 142km later.
