NEEDLING

REMINISCENCE BEFORE PACKING

Seems like there’s nothing I can do to rectify the mess in my studio. I need time, patience, more time, trash bags, and willingness to work diligently for several hours at a time. I am sure that if I put my head and my arms to it, I could have the whole place cleaned out in two or three days. At least have all the stuff that needs to thrown away or given away out of here. That would leave me with all the stuff that needs to either come with me to Texas or be temporarily relocated to Claire’s basement. The furniture, if I can allow myself to call it that, is going right back to the place I found it: the sidewalk. I might even leave it here for the next occupants. The bike I’ll unfortunately have to give it away, because I can’t pack it up for the plane, and because already it hasn’t been used in months on account of it needing a new back wheel, and the prospect of it rusting away in a basement is too much. I’d rather somebody was making good use of it.

It sure has served me good and proper. I’ve been very rough with it, have taken it literally thousands of kilometers. It deserves better than a basement, or me. I’ve treated like an unwanted stepchild for the last several months, ever since I came back from my long trip from the States a year ago. I haven’t had the money to buy a new back wheel until recently… and now? Well, why should I spend the fifty Euro needed, plus fix the breaks, grease the chains – it needs a new chain too – and so on, when I won’t even be in France but a few more weeks? Selfish of me, I know. I’m also way out of shape physically, and taking on the Parisian streets with my mean machine once more might prove fatal… so I’ll give the poor sucker away to one lucky individual.

But here I look at my bike as I write this sad passage, and I think back on my trip from central France to Gironde and back up to Normandy… all those hills, those unending hills where at the beginning I had to step off my bike and push her up to the top… cars driving by me, honking at me in a friendly or mocking manner, usually a friendly manner… waving at me saying stuff like : Courage ! And then once I passed the major breakthrough, before I knew that I would be able to keep going, that point when instead of pitching my tent, I rented a hotel room… instead of giving up that day… I couldn’t take it anymore, too difficult… and on that particular day, I’d barely ridden twenty kilometers or something and I stopped in a village, had a sandwich and a drink while sitting on the village square looking and feeling miserable.

I called a friend of mine to tell him I was giving up, that I was taking the first train back to Paris… and he said, look, Francois, just take it easy, go rent yourself a hotel room, have a big nice diner in a restaurant, spend a little money on yourself, do your laundry, sleep in a nice bed… and in the morning, think your decision over again. I did just that, and in the morning I felt like I could take on unending kilometers of pedals up any hill god wanted to put in front of me. I got back on the saddle and the hardest hill of the trip, the largest hurdle had been fought and won…

I look at my poor little bike that I’m going to leave here in France instead of ridding it through the hills of Charente, those hills covered with sunflower fields, Pinneau de Charente vineyards… that little cemetery on top of a hill I stopped at one day with a strong wind blowing the tall Pleureurs across the stone walls on top of that hill overlooking hills of sunflowers and dark clouds on top… what a reststop… I’m not sure I could ever find that place again even if I crisse-crossed every road in that country… and then came the flat country of Gironde, you can do eighty, one hundred kilometers in one day and be fine… but there, the best was while camping out on that large camp ground and getting up every morning to take an easy ride to the morning market where the oyster men and women were waiting for me... right there on the street, you could start your day with a dozen oysters and a bottle of white wine… then go to the beach, take all your clothes off, and doze away your morning between dips in the Atlantic ocean…

My bike, it’s going to be a hard one to give away…