When we were in our mid-fifties, we wanted to take a special vacation.  Our usual vacation would be to go somewhere and explore by camping or backpacking but we were ready for something very different.  The first question was ‘where shall we go?’.  Neither of us had ever been to Europe which was our first choice of location.  The problem with this selection is we are ‘grass’ (outdoors) people and not ‘cement’ people (city).  My idea of visiting Europe is not to ride around all day in a bus expelling lots of fumes.

 During our discussion, I ran across an article advertising Seeing Europe By Bicycle and it originated in Chattanooga.  Steve called the leader of the group and talked about the possibility of joining that group.  When he got off the phone, he said ‘the trip leaves Chattanooga in six weeks’.  We can go if we can build up our endurance to ride 50 miles for two consecutive days’.   We signed up for the trip that same day and then went out and bought ourselves fancy bicycles.  These bicycle trips turned out to be our very favorite vacation.  Before we retired from bicycling, we had taken nine trips to Europe in Germany, Scotland/England. Spain, Northern Loire Valley France area, Northern Italy, Ireland, Tuscany, middle France, Catalonia area of Spain, and Austria.  I’m going to talk about our trip through middle France where the worst day we ever had turned into the best day we ever had.

There were about 12 people on these trips with half from Chattanooga.  Our guide was from Holland.  He made the hotel reservations ahead of time in all the little towns where we would spend each night as well as dinner reservations.  He made detailed directions of the route to take each day.  We were almost always riding through farm land or the country past vineyards and beautiful park like terrain.  We ate breakfast together in the morning and dinner together each night.  The daily bicycle distance we road averaged 50 miles.  Since each of us had a detailed route sheet, we broke up into little groups so everybody could ride at their own speed.  It is not surprising to note that Steve and I were always the last ones to get in every night (I’m just glad I could get there at all).  One more thing common to all bicycle trips; Steve and I carried lots of miniature bottles of Jack Daniels in our panniers.  We would give one out each day to someone we met that was especially helpful or kind.  At dinner time, everybody wanted to know who got the Jack Danial’s award and why and that would start a discussion of everybody’s highlights of their day.

Now to my story of middle France.  That day would be our longest ride ever of 95 miles and the day started out cold and rainy.  It did not take me long to realize my rain gear was faulty and I was drenched and very cold.   In addition, I was pretty old to take up bicycle riding and wasn’t conditioned for the sport.  I compensated for this by stopping about every mile to stand still for a few seconds.  Standing still in the rain made me even colder.   I told Steve, we had to find some place to stop, get warm, and get food.

All small towns in France have a florist, a church, a bar, and a bakery.  We scrutinized the next little town for a bar on our route.  We saw a house with BAR written on it in neon lights.  That looked like the perfect place.  We parked our bikes and walked in.  The living room had a bar occupying the entire room and every seat was filled.  The wife proprietor took us to the adjacent dining room to a table and signaled we should give her our wet clothes.  She took them and put them in her dryer.  Then their son, who looked to be about 12, came over and pantomimed “are you hungry?”  We nodded “yes”.  A man sitting at the bar caught my eye and pantomimed “Are you cold?”  I nodded “yes” and he went out to his truck and brought back a ratty old jacket for me

They had a radio playing music at the bar and it started playing “Delta Dawn.”  Steve and I decided we would show them how we danced in America so we got up and started swing dancing.  The bar crowd went wild and all started clapping.  About that time the proprietor’s son came out with our food which was bacon and a big pile of egg followed by their daughter with our dry clothes.

As we were eating, the other patrons started drifting over curious about why we were there.  Steve got all our maps out and put them on the wall communicating where we had been and where we were going.  I guess we had traveled about 300 miles by that time.  They were impressed as bicycling is so popular in France.

It was time to be on our way.  Steve gave the husband proprietor the ‘Jack Danial’s’ award and all came out onto the porch to wave good bye as we rode off into the sunset.  The kindness and attention showed by all those people is what turned our worst day into our best day.  We will never forget that experience.

Steve took a picture of the patrons before we left.  He sent it to the Postmaster in that little town with a note to open the letter and if he saw anybody he recognized, give them the photo.

The picture follows: front row left to right: daughter who brought dry clothes, me, proprietor wife, proprietor son who made breakfast, man who loaned me his ratty old jacket.