I rode all the way here with a smile on my face today. No rain. Bright, sunny skies. A pretty easy, flat 30 kilometers or so through little French villages that were like out of a storybook. Gorgeous old country homes next to Lake Geneva, flowerpots bursting over balconies, fields of wheat, a perfect breeze. I even heard Edith Piaf coming from the second floor window of one of the houses (I mean, seriously). It was stunningly beautiful and exhilarating. Turns out the forecast for rain is actually for tomorrow, the day we have to do 78 kilometers. The day we have a couple of serious inclines (and descents). We are watching the weather closely and trying to hatch a Plan B. Just in case it really does rain (alot). We can’t descend rain-slicked mountains at 30 miles an hour. Even our recklessness doesn’t go that far. Last year’s Plan B, which thankfully we never had to employ, was the “Find the Guy with the Van” Plan. And beg / bribe that guy to drive us and our bikes to the next destination. That plan always seemed a little iffy to me, but less so in Gabriel’s home country. Here, with our limited language skills, it seems even less plausible. Anyway, that’s a worry for tomorrow.

We stopped in a charming old village called Yvoire for water and coffee. Cobblestone walking streets lined with creperies and wine stores, flowers everywhere you looked. From there it took us less than an hour to cross into Thonon-Les-Bains, a larger town still on the banks of Lake Geneva. We were following the GPS to our hotel. Gabriel was ahead of me, and we had moved onto a sidewalk because the street was too small for us and a car. That’s when Gabriel slightly miscalculated his width (with the panniers on his sides) and hit his left pannier on a street sign as he pedaled by it. He hit it hard enough to send him flying off his bike, me letting out a scream watching him from behind. Then an amazing thing happened. He hit the ground, did a double roll, sprang up and landed on his feet, in kind of a ta-da pose, and then made a thumbs up sign to let me know he was okay. Oh my God, it was a move straight out of Cirque du Soleil. Truly spectacular, like he had planned it or something. We both just stood there in shock and relief. He doesn’t know how he did it, but he did something similar one other time in New York when he tripped down an escalator at the Waldorf Astoria. He must have some kind of amazing muscular acrobatic instincts. I haven’t laughed that hard in a really long time. Its so scary to see the other person fall, but when you realize that they’re okay, my God its so funny to keep re-visualizing in your head. My shoulders were shaking laughing all the way to our hotel.

The first thing we always do is wash our bike clothes in the hotel sink and hang them to dry for the next day. Then we shower, stumble around the village to find a place to eat, nap, and then wake up again as the air starts too cool off. Today I’m listening to children splashing in the hotel pool as Gabriel furrows his brow over the map of tomorrow’s route (working on that Plan B). We’re in a small, cute hotel, nothing fancy but we have a balcony to dry our clothes on which makes it special in these circumstances. I’m trying to practice the French phrases I’ve learned from a podcast on anyone we come across– waiters, etc. Pretty much every time I struggle to sputter out 3 words or so, whoever I’m talking to answers me back in perfect, barely accented English which makes me feel very very silly. Yet I persist because I want to practice. Gabriel laughed at me because at a restaurant in Geneva I stopped the waitress to ask: “Puis-je regler par carte de credit?” Even though we perfectly knew the answer was yes. Another guy I stopped to ask: “Yatil un banque pres d’ici?” And it was a genuine question, I really was looking for a bank cos we had to pay the guy who fixed my bike in cash. But the guy I stopped seriously made a face like “What the hell is wrong with you?” Like he thought I was having some kind of verbal fit or something. So I repeated “Un banque?” He understood that and quickly pointed across the street and scurried off, looking spooked. So maybe my accent needs some work.

The rest of the day involved alot of cream sauce and Gabriel gulping water cos he got a little sunburned. We’re going to get up super-early tomorrow and start riding because the rain supposedly won’t start until the afternoon. We still don’t have a real Plan B. 🙂