To Montpellier

October 20, 2024

First, a few photos I missed including earlier.

It took me a minute to remember what this shot was about. Rachael wanted to remember how windblown I was when I got back from my ride to the Gacholle Lighthouse.

Rachael’s impatient for us to get to dinner, but I thought we could wait just a minute. That little spike isn’t a tower, by the way - it’s the top of the mast on a large sailboat you can barely make out the outline of in the darkness.

Rachael was just laying down in bed for the night when she suggested I look out the window.

Today is our last day in the Camargue, and of this first half of our nearly two month sojourn in the south. Today we bike to Montpellier, and from there we’ll catch the train in the morning to Perpignan near the base of the Pyrenees and begin our final month of the tour in French and Spanish Catalonia.

Back to back moon shots! This one is from the following morning, before breakfast. It’s still pretty high up in the sky, which was disappointing. I would like to have seen it closer to the horizon so I could show you a moonset over Sète.

It’s another flat twenty miler today, without any drama requiring a play by play narrative. Photos will suffice to give the feel, mostly from Rachael’s GoPro.

It’s a busy scene - dogs, walkers, diners. You have to pay attention.

We didn’t care enough for La Grande-Motte to stop for many photos, but it was nice that this one was in Rachael’s fan.

Hypremodern La Grande-Motte is a pretty crappy town to bike through, if you want to know the truth. There are about two miles like this, on these concrete slabs with gaps wide enough that you have to be careful to not drop a wheel into one. It’s our second time through the place, and our last. I won’t forget this time.

Race! Here’s one I can still win, at least.

Sound track: Body and Soul, by Gerry Mulligan & Paul Desmond

I’m sure Montpellier, a thriving modern metropolis and one of the largest cities in France, must have a ton of excellent restaurants to choose from but the Italian cafe we end up with isn’t the most exciting. It’s a self-serve place with a buzzer you get handed after you place your order so you know when it’s ready for pick-up - one of those kind of places. Good enough, filling, but not something to write home about or share food photos from.

Afterwards we bike the six blocks to the Best Western we’re booked at right across the street from the train station, but it takes us awhile getting there. First, we’re stopped by a guy who hollers out “Bike Friday” as we roll past, so of course we stop for a chat. Bob and Venus are just our kind of couple, newly arrived in Montpellier after coming here from their former home in Las Vegas by way of a two year stopover in Mexico. We find a lot to talk about and we could have stood on the sidewalk a long time if I didn’t realize I needed to go to the bathroom and cut us off so we could get to our hotel.

And then we were held up further because without my realizing it our Garmins hadn’t actually located us. I was following the route toward the hotel, not noticing that our position wasn’t actually advancing with us until I finally did and we had to backtrack (and climb) the five or six blocks we overshot by.

Bob and Venus called out to us when we biked past them: Bike Friday! They ride a BF tandem themselves.

Toward late afternoon I decided I wanted to go out for a walk to see at least something of the city again (we also stayed here for three nights seven years ago) and Rachael decided to join me. We don’t cover as much ground as I’d been hoping though, because of a new situation: I’ve got a knee problem. Not the usual old advanced osteoarthritis condition I’ve been living with, but what appears to be an actual injury.

I noticed this last night on the short walk to our restaurant and back last night but didn’t really think much about it. Today though it’s clear that something is going on and it’s quite difficult to walk any distance. I think I must have stressed or torqued it standing on a railing of the bleachers trying to see into the bull ring earlier in the day.

I did some reading up on all the different kinds of things that can go wrong with knees, and based on symptoms and pain location it looks like I may have a hopefully minor injury to my medial ligament on my right knee. So that’s a consideration, one that will likely affect our activities in the coming weeks. If it’s that, it should respond well to the usual kinds of conservative treatment; so we’ll do that, take it day at a time and see how it goes. Hope for the best.

Montpellier has a robust urban transit system, with trains coming by constantly. You have to pay attention.

On the Place de la Comedie. The one previous time we stayed here we had an apartment on the fourth floor of that building. It wasn’t as great as you might think it would be.

I was taken with this scene, and pointed out to Rachael the reflection of the rose window on the building ahead. It looks like a painting, she thought.

And she’s right. It’s a nicely done instance of trompe-l'oeil.

If it had been a reflection, it would have been of this.

A smoke shop and a bike make a natural pairing.

The prefecture building of the Hérault department.

On wonderfully colorful Rue du Bras de Fer, our favorite lane in the neighborhood.

The best concept for a fountain I’ve seen for awhile.

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Today's ride: 20 miles (32 km)
Total: 4,350 miles (7,001 km)

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