Vive la Lance!!! (Day 2)
I woke up that next morning, Saturday, well-rested but alone. And the time was short. I needed to find a ride to the next stage of the Tour or I’d be left behind. I walked through the campsite listening for English speakers but I found none. The situation demanded that action be taken so I walked up to a guy packing up his van and asked for a ride. After consulting with his brother, I was on my way across the German border and into the French countryside, stopping off at various points to cheer on Lance. Of course the brothers didn’t know I was a Lance fan when they picked me up. They actually thought my accent was Dutch. When they found out I was from Texas of all places, the HEART of Armstrong country, I was dang near thrown out of the car. My seatbelt may have been the only thing that saved me. For the rest of the trip I was known as Chad Armstrong.
Leave it to me to step into dumb luck but these kids were amazing. Brothers from Hamburg, just out of the military, and wanted nothing more than to have a laugh. And at no point did they “essen” or “trinken”. Everything was “fressen” or “saufen”. That earns high marks from me. They were travelling in high style as well. They had rented a VW van that resembled more of a spaceship than a car. The roof opened up into a bed, a full kitchen saddled the back seat and a satellite TV kept us all up to date on the parts of the tour we had missed. I only wanted a ride, they gave me an adventure.
We missed the last bit of the stage that day. It was probably better that I didn’t see it. Discovery got rocked. And don’t think those Germans didn’t forget to remind me of the results all evening long.
After getting lost several times and listening to the brothers bicker about it, which for some reason made me laugh, we nestled into a campsite and set up for the night. After an over-priced, undercooked meal at a nearby snack house, the brothers went out for a ride on their bikes, leaving me a chance to venture into the town of Le Bresse.
I wandered into a tiny bar on the near side of town. It wasn’t much but the people were jovial and there was beer. I got waved over by a table full of elderly Frenchmen (and women) enjoying their evening with a glass of wine. French was all that came out of their mouths and a quizzical smile was all that appeared on mine. One of the men remembered about 15 words of German from his high school days and together with the four words of French I knew, we managed to carry on a laughter-filled conversation for about an hour.
And let me take a minute to say something about the French hospitality I encountered: it was absolutely amazing! Although the French have a menacing stare which would out-rival even the German stare (which I didn’t think was possible), it was almost always followed with a “Bon Jour!”. Even after telling people that I was from Texas, I was greeting with nothing less than a smile or a nod, which is something I couldn’t claim about the other side of the Rhine.
After the laughs I made it back to the campsite to find the brothers entertaining a mass of Germans with their televised highlights of the days Tour events. Eventually the lights started to fade and we all made our way to bed. Despite the menacing clouds which loomed over us during the day, there were nothing but stars at night. Another lucky stroke for a backpacking kid without a tent.