September 8, 2018 Logistics Day Baron France

It would have been nice to sleep in today after yesterday’s long journey from Vancouver to France. However by 4:00 AM I was wide awake and could no longer lay in bed.  I guess in all fairness I had gone to bed at 9:00 PM so I did get 7 hours of sleep so it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.    As I was the only one up I just kept quiet and read a few e-mails and surfed the web until everyone else was up.

After breakfast Earnie had to return his rental car so Ken, Agnes and Betsy went to Charles De Gaulle airport where Earnie had to drop the car off.  They were also going to do some grocery shopping and some other errands so this meant that Sally,Juerg, and I had the place to ourselves for most of the morning and well into the afternoon.

Juerg and I set to assembling my bike.  It turned out to be quite a big job as I had taken the rear derailleur off and somehow the derailleur cable and the chain had gotten twisted and we had a terrible time trying to untwist them and I final wound up disconnecting the cable and threading it back around the chain. Finally everything was back together and fortunately I had gotten all of the parts into the bike bag.  I had gone out to the garage the day before we left and found the seat post clamp on my work bench so I was having a panic attack that I may have forgotten something else but I sure didn’t want to unpack it.

The afternoon was absolutely perfect. Beautiful blue sky, nice warm but not too hot, not a breath of wind. It was too nice a day to not go for a ride.  So Juerg and I put on so bike shorts and we were off.  The excuse was a shakedown cruise on the bikes.  We headed west on the main road out of Baron which is still a pretty small road. The Garmin found the map and Surly was working well.   A few kilometers out we came to a side road which was only about 3 meters wide so we turned up it.  I thought it was flat here but after a climb of about 1 to 2 kms long we reached Montepilloy. In this tiny village was the ruins of an 1100’s castle.  The sign said the castle was in use through 1429 when it was occupied by Jeanne d’ Arc and Charles VII.   We didn’t go through the castle but rode on.  We came to the second little village of Montelognon.  The streets were less than 10 feet wide.  Such a cool little place.  In Montelognon we saw our second War Memorial.  It listed 18 men killed in WWI and of the 18 there were 5 sets of two names (10 of the 18) had the same names. I can only assume that these were brothers. This was probably 20% of the population of the village and 100% of the young men.    We had lots of fun on the ride and while it was only 22 kms it was a lot of fun.  My Surly Long Haul Trucker is such a great bike to ride.

For supper the shoppers had brought burgers home which I cooked on the grill.  The table was set in the yard and we ate supper outside.  Juerg had brought some Champaign when he had driven in from Switzerland so we enjoyed burgers and Champaign for supper.  Good food in a very fun place with good friends.  It just doesn’t get any better.   

Terry

Pictures from yesterday added