Feels Like Vosges

July 14, 2023

Dom-Rémy-la-Poucelle to Brainville

I only rode 50 km today, but it felt almost as hard as the hundred kilometers yesterday. The hills are getting steeper and longer as I get more into the Vosges mountains. I can see from the elevation profile of the route that I designed, though, that as soon as I make it to the source of the Meuse, it becomes statistically downhill in the same way that it's been statistically uphill so far. And I can feel those statistics in my body, which is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to reaching the source.

The day started at 3:30 a.m., when I felt like I had some small bug bites. After searching around my tent for a little while and killing a few small insects I found, in case they were the culprit, I started to hear a scuffling sound. Maybe somebody was adjusting their sleeping pad? And it was just very loud? But no, this was a quiet sound that was nearby. Maybe something was trying to eat some of the food on my bike? It was in heavy zipped bags, but who knows what some rodents might try. I stared at my bike for a while, which was illuminated by a street light. Nothing.

But still more scuffling sounds. It seemed to be coming from underneath my tent. I got out of the tent, grab the shoe, turn on my headlight, and looked underneath. There were spikes. It was a hedgehog. Which was trying to find grubs underneath my tent. Or something like that;I don't know exactly what hedgehogs do underneath tents. I gave it a tap with my shoe, which caused it to roll up into a ball and make a pulsing, hissing sound. My roommate's girlfriend in college had a pet hedgehog, so I am quite a bit more familiar with hedgehog habits when they are antagonized than the average American (by which I mean "anyone who lives in the Americas"), although seeing and hearing them strangely gave me a twinge of nostalgia for 1997. I also now have a very difficult time thinking of anything other than their German name, Igel, since the appear in about 50% of German children's books. I didn't know their French name until the next morning when I looked it up (hérisson).

I then proceeded to do something that I had never done with my roommate's girlfriend's pet hedgehog, which was to slowly whack it with my shoe until it was 10 feet away from where I was sleeping with my shoe (which I was still holding in my hand). Since it was still rolled in a ball, it just rolled along.

I went to the bathroom, and came back. It was lying on its back with its four paws sticking straight up into the air. Had I killed it? Surely an encounter with the Fox must be worse than this. I hissed at it. It snapped back into a ball, perfectly healthy-like.

I went back to sleep.

I woke up. Today was Bastille day (or "quartorze Juillet", as it is known; apparently calling it Bastille Day is about as unusual as calling the Fourth of July "Declaration of Independence Day"). I didn't really have any plan for what I was going to do for 14th, but I figured if I just started biking across the countryside I would see something. And this was in fact the case. In the first village, because everything was going to close in the afternoon (Sundays, holidays, and often Mondays), I went to the first convenience store to buy some things. But outside of it the street was closed and there was some sort of military procession thing. I asked the woman inside the convenience store what exactly they were doing, and she said it was basically some sort of military procession thing. Okay. I went back outside and joined the small crowd that was watching a bunch of French people in assorted uniforms.

I couldn't identify them all, but it looked like multiple branches of armed services, press probably police and firemen. A person in white wearing a sash, whom I presumed to be the Maire, give a speech that seem to be a lot about France, courage, and several other abstract nouns that I didn't quite catch. The Marseillese was played (on a recording). Another woman gave a speech, but her PA was facing away from the crowd, so even if I had perfectly fluent French I don't think I would have understood what she said. Then a song was played, musically very consonant with the Top Gun soundtrack. The lyrics repeatedly mentioned France, mentioned Charles de Gaulle at least once, and more abstract nouns of virtue. After it was over, several people then walked out from the column and saluted the rest of the column, and then there seemed to be an order to end the ceremony. All the uniformed people took off their helmets and hats and one by one wandered off into the small crowd to talk to what appeared to be their parents or families. It was a strangely formally nationalistic ceremony, strongly resembling a Catholic mass, except for the Top Gun song. Like in the United States we do nationalism, but it's always jingoist macho nationalism, like a squadron of F-18s over a football stadium. This felt More like something more or less unchanged from the 1950s. I don't think you would catch Germans certainly, or probably even Englishmen doing anything like this.

I checked off my box that I at least had one Bastille Day experience so it would be different from all the other days.

After that, I just climbed hills for hours. It was a hot day, but I always had lots of water and having a long sleeve shirt and just keeping my shirt wet all of the time kept the temperature down.

Listen I'm telling you that the Igel started it

I took a nap here for at least half an hour. This was part of what seemed like a standard regional highway, except that there were zero cars on it. It was great.

The Mouzay, another small river that crossed my path several times today

One of the blissful downhill sections that went by very quickly but did add to my kilometer count very nicely

One of the lows of my day was this terrible gravel connector, except gravel sounds like small rocks and these were big rocks that were a lot of work to go over

Tomorrow I'm within striking distance of the source of the Meuse, like 60 km or something. But I'm tired (although I am going to sleep early) and it's supposed to rain most of the day, so who knows what will happen.

Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 741 km (460 miles)

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