Meuseying Along

July 10, 2023

Haybes to Dreuze

This has to be a shorter entry, because I spent too much time bike riding today. Sometimes just because of wat the campgrounds are spaced out, I either have a choice of stopping it 1:00 p.m. or continuing for a longer day and stopping it like 4:00 p.m. probably I've should have chosen the former, but I did the latter, and then there's just time setting a tent and washing me and my clothes, plus I had to spend an unexpected amount of time seeking food this evening. After 91 km today and a similarly long day yesterday, I think tomorrow is going to be a quieter day. I'm not sure I want to say in this particular small village, but I might do like a short day and stay in a hotel or something.

Today's track in red. Missed an opportunity to get a photo of a sedan in Sedan alas

The Meuse cycle route is very good, just about as good as a Belgian cycle route. Alongside the river for most of the time, which is much more interesting than it can now because there is animals in it come up and it just looks very steady being there very wide and river-y.

I think I'll just do the things that I saw today, because that's quickest:

A tandem bicycle where the front person is recumbent. This must have been some sort of extraordinary prototype bicycle, I've never seen anything like it.

A bicycle pedestrian tunnel that goes alongside a canal tunnel. Those words probably don't make much sense because you've never seen something like this before because they don't exist in the United States but:

A boat passed me in this tunnel going the other way.

Occasionally there was a cyclist (this is me)

Layers of rock uplifted and tilted that I would have better words for if I were a geologist

I also stopped and tried to help a woman who seem to have a flat tire, and I asked her if I could give her any tools to help her. She asked me for scissors, which seemed strange but, being helpful, I asked her if a knife would do. She said yes, and then she took my knife and cut the tube out of her tire, apparently to make it easier to walk with it. I feel kind of bad about this because I feel like maybe I could have patched or tire if she hadn't sliced it open in front of me, but oh well, you can only help people so much. She said she didn't have very far to walk.

I also had something of an interesting it adventure trying to find food in the evening. There were supposed to be a very nice restaurant next to the campground where I'm at, but it is closed on Mondays. I was so wound up about being fully stocked on food on Sunday, that I forgot about the fact that so many things are also closed on Monday. I went looking around in the village here, I even tried to use an automatic pizza machine, which was broken. Dismayed, I resign myself to the idea of having to bike to the next village in order to get a kebab; as I was doing that, though, I noticed a sign for a "produits regionaux" store. Even though I'm figured it was probably closed like everything else on a Monday evening, I biked by, and it wasn't closed yet. So I was able to buy a bunch of yogurt and a gigantic head of lettuce. I thought it was going to make myself a tuna salmon salad, with a can of fish that I bought yesterday, but actually in the end I realized I didn't feel that hungry so I just had yogurt for dinner and apparently I'm going to eat a lot of salad tomorrow.

I asked for the smallest head of lettuce

Bonne nuit.

Today's ride: 91 km (57 miles)
Total: 466 km (289 miles)

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