October 18, 2024
To Le Grau-du-Roi
I’ve barely opened the door to our room when I come up from breakfast when Rachael hits me with the bad news: we have a problem, a big problem she grimly announces. And she’s right, it really is a big problem this time - my phone is dead. Black, the classic Black Screen of Death. It isn’t actually dead, as we realize when we attach the charger and hear a beep of acknowledgement but no visual sign of life. Its very strange, because the phone was fine when we went to bed last night.
We try the most obvious thing first, forcing a shutdown and restart; though it’s hard to tell if anything is happening and if we’ve succeeded in shutting it down when the screen is black already. We try this a few times to no effect, and then we try calling it from the other phone but hear only silence. Grim.
I do some research next, and find out that there are quite a few articles and videos on this problem with this particular phone - a Samsung Galaxy S22. I watch one of these videos and for the next fifteen minutes we try every suggestion it offers. Number one, shutting at down and restarting it again, had already been tried. Numbers two thru ten are all variations on the same theme - tap it with your fingers, first on the front, then on the back, then on the sides; then try again, tapping harder; and then harder still. In between, try restarting it again. I think the idea is to hopefully break loose something that’s gotten stuck somewhere.
Nothing works, so we try our last recourse short of hitting it with a hammer - the passage of time. It’s still black when it comes time to leave though, so we resign ourselves to the bleak conclusion: we need a new phone. Having two functioning phones is a must-have for us. We need them so we can contact each other as well as so we can track each other on our Garmins. We’ll be fine for a few days, but we don’t want to wait another month until we return to Portland so we plan on buying a replacement; and we know what we want - a newer Samsung, like the S23 that Rachael has now with its great camera, or the newest model - the S24 with the option of a built-in audio translator. I’ve been wanting to upgrade mine at some point anyway, so that’s some consolation.
Rachael finds that there’s a small electronics store here in town that sells cells, so we swing by on the way out of town just on the chance they have our phone in stock. Our hopes pick up when we see an array of phones in the window, one of which is a Samsung; but it’s the only one, and it’s the 10 year old A07 model. The owner has probably been carrying it for years hoping someone will finally be desperate enough to take it off her hands.
So with nothing else to be done now we ride out of town for maybe the last time, a moderate headwind slowing us down on our completely flat ride to Le Grau-du-Roi. We hardly stop at all, though we’re set back when we come to the turnoff to the foot ferry across the Petit Rhone and see a sign that it’s out of operation, likely until next spring when traffic picks up. So that’s bad news - I hadn’t even noticed I’d mapped us to take the ferry - but then we see there are two distance markers to Aigues-Mortes placed at the junction - one by way of the ferry and one by the D38 we’ve been on. They’re both the same 29 kilometers; and since we’ll pass through Aigues-Mortes it looks like we’re not being harmed by the change of plans.
Eventually we come to our turnoff and leave the D38 for the bike path along the Rhone-Sète Canal, and I take my one shot of the day - the long view down toward Aigues Mortes two miles ahead. Other than that, we just ride.
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Sound track: Baia, by Laurindo Almeida, Carlos Barbosa-Lima & Charlie Byrd
We arrive at our hotel by one and sit down at the table we’ve reserved for ourselves for lunch. Over our meal we discuss our situation and do some research. It looks like there are two phone stores within reach - one four miles back in Aigues-Mortes, which if we’d been aware of it we might have stopped in at on our way through; and another four miles ahead in La Grande-Motte. Neither of us really wants to bike there and back this afternoon so we plan on making a run tomorrow to whichever of them looks the most promising after doing more research. We’ll be passing through La Grande-Motte in two days on our way to Montpelier, but that won’t work because it’s Sunday and they’ll be closed. So tomorrow it is.
Later in the afternoon I go out for a walk along the waterfront and back to the jetties where a spur of the Rhone-Sète Canal comes to the sea here. Le Grau-du-Roi is a pretty place, a mix of tourism and an active fishing port. It offers impressive views across the bay to nearby La Grande-Motte and even to Sète about fifteen or twenty miles due west. it looks like an enjoyable place to spend a couple of nights, although it’s disappointing to think that our layover day will be tied up with a hopefully successful run to a cell phone store.
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Today's ride: 24 miles (39 km)
Total: 4,301 miles (6,922 km)
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