Carol & David's Excellent Adventures - Part IX 
To Die - Julliet/Aou^t '98
By David Braun 
Copyright 1998
     
Tuesday, 17 Julliet, was  "Best Deal" Day.  So-called because we got a 
holiday off from work and still get paid.  Around sunset, at about 10:00
P.M.  Sam and I went to the fireworks, down by the river, a two-minute walk 
from home. 
     
We stood on the quay along the river, roughly equidistant between two 
bridges, and about fifteen meters away from a speaker stack.  The speake rs 
emitted battle sounds; machine guns, mortars, rockets and such.  Red smoke 
and fire roiled up from both bridges.  Then music commenced.  The perfectly 
symmetrical fireworks from both bridges, ascending across the canvas of the 
blackened sky were in time to the music.  As the finale of the first number 
approached, fireworks started shooting from the bastille, about a thousand 
feet above us, across the river.  Then they also started shooting off from 
two additional locations, midway up the hill crowned by the bastille. The 
two bridges were shooting bookend fireworks while the three sites up high 
in between matched each other, in counterpoint to the bookends below. When 
the music was over, a voice from the speakers started reciting articles 
from the constitution (which sounded to me a lot like the Constitution of 
the United States of America, only in French).  A jazz/Cuban sorta rhythm 
slowly faded up in the background and then the pyrotechnics started up 
again.  A third number followed.  This time, it was Ludwig Von.  The whole 
experience was psychedelic, the antithesis of sensory deprivation!  I loved 
it!  To quote my nine-year-old son, "I believe that was one of the best 
fireworks displays I have ever seen."  (Funny thing is that these are the 
exact words I was thinking moments before he said it.)
     
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Don DeLillo, author of a book I'm reading, talks about "the fresh air 
inspectors," a bunch of old guys who hang out on the corner in the city.
  
When I read that phrase, it clicked.  Sunday it was pretty hot down in 
Grenoble.  I went for a ride in the Vercours, Vercors, Vercour, Vercor..
 
Merde!  I will NEVER be able to spell anything in this country.  In the 
French language, the following letters are sometimes (but not necessarily 
always) silent: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.  
     
Some examples: "le oeuf" (the egg) is pronounced "l'oov."   But the plural, 
"les oeufs," is pronounced "le-zoo," because the "euf" becomes silent along 
with the "s," which is NEVER pronounced on the end of a word (with the 
exceptions being either when that word is followed by a word starting with 
a vowel, in which case "s" becomes "z"-sounding, attached to the front of 
the next word, or when the final "s" is in someone's proper name, in which 
case it is THEIR choice if it is pronounced or not.  (Depending on whom you 
ask, the HP plant is located in either "Eyba" or "Eybanz," spelled "Eybens.")
     
"Bureau" (office, desk, or bureau, context dependent, as if you could 
possibly tell from the context if someone left something in their desk, 
bureau, or office) is pronounced not unlike the Mexican word for donkey.
However, the plural "bureaux" is pronounced identically to the singular,
just like most plurals.
     
Pren, prent, prents, and prennent are all pronounced the same.  Believe it 
or not, that is how verbs are conjugated, in spelling only. Note that "t", 
"ts", and "nent" are all generally silent.
     
To create an adverb in English, add "-ly".  In French, add "-ment," 
pronounced (nasally) as "mo."  "Mots" (words) is also pronounced "mo."
     
"Au revoir" is "oh-vwahg," because of the silent "re" at the start.  The
final "r" is not dead, yet, it is merely in the process of being strangled.
     
While the French alphabet does include an "h," the French simply cannot 
make an "H" sound.  "HP" is "atch-pay."  And "Hello" is a cockneyfied,
"'ello."
     
They have, in fact, institutionalized removal of "s".  Whenever a letter is 
spelled with a circumflex (or Chinese hat) that means there USED to be an 
"s" following the letter with the hat, ex: ho^pital ("op-ee-tal") =
hospital.
     
The United States is spelled "les Etats Unis," pronounced "lay ze-tah 
zu-nee" (due to connecting the final esses to the fronts of all the next
words).  But if something is IN the USA, it is "eaux Etats Unix," 
pronounced "oh zetah zuni."  Note that the "x" now sounds like a "z."  
Which in any case is a much better than the United Kingdom, which is a LOT 
harder to find in the phone book, because it is pronounced "Royaume Uni.
"
     
Incidentally, if something is *in* Grenoble, it is "a Grenoble."  *In*
France is "en France."  *In* my house is "chez moi."  *In* my desk is "en 
bureau."  But, *in* my office is "au bureau."  I *think* I might have 
gotten all that right, probably not.   So, that context stuff might work
after all...    hmmm.
     
But, I have digressed (considerably)...  I went for a ride in the 
mountains west of here.  (I can say, but not spell where I was without 
looking at the map.  It's "Vercor," I checked). 
     
Where was I?  Oh yeah, in the mountains, with the Fresh Air Inspectors. It 
was pretty hot down in Grenoble on Sunday.  Neither Carol nor Sam was 
interested in vacating the apartment, so I went on my own.  As I ascended 
into the Vercor, a lump of Alps to the west of Grenoble, the thermometer
shed degrees at my rate of climb.  And I noticed the Fresh Air Inspectors.  
They were everywhere, parked along the edge of the road.  They parked their 
cars (with the tags all ending in "38" for Grenoble), spread out with 
folding tables and chairs, or on blankets, in the shade, by the streams, and 
unpacked their picnic lunches, all over the Vercor.   
     
The French word for "air conditioning" is easy, "climatisation."  But for 
some reason, the French have trouble with the CONCEPT.  Climatisation is a 
rarity here because, as someone pointed out to me, "You only use it for two 
months out of the year."
     
I got a new rear tire recently, deciding to hold off another kilo-kilometer 
for the front.  The bike handles much better with rubber on the rear 
between the tire carcass and the tarmac.   I'm looking forward to some on 
the front, too.   Then I can REALLY get down to nullifying those chicken
strips.
     
Sunday I went to Die (pronounced "Dee").  The roads in the vicinity, to 
quote CW McCall, "look like a can full of worms, one of 'em looks like 
malaria germs."  The road to Die is a road to die for, but hopefully not
ON, or more likely OFF, because if you don't pay attention every INSTANT, 
that is where you'll be (off the road, which means IN the air, or possibly 
in an aerie, if you're LUCKY). I took a photo of my bike in front of the
end of city limits sign (with a diagonal line through the name), which 
could be interpreted as "Don't Die."
     
In any case, I think I found "le Carrefour du Temps" (I made that up), the 
French version of the Crossroads of Time [1].  It was GREAT.  There was 
this road through the woods, over a pass, with about 318 curves or so in
about 18 km.  (Like someone ever actually counted...)  Weaving my way 
through the silent woods, I realized that the sound of brake pads on a 
drilled brake disk is very much like the cicadas of summer on a warm night. 
 I started thinking about "the Cicadas of Speed."   But then I came to the 
top of a pass where you can ride along the and look down into two separate 
valleys at the same time.  Cool!  Only 3300m or so in altitude, but it 
LOOKS a lot higher here than it does in Colorado.
     
But the REALLY exciting thing is that you go through this stretch of road 
drilled into the side of the mountain/canyon, sometimes as a tunnel and 
sometimes as some sort of Indiana Jones and the Flume Zoom sorta road.  In 
places the route, pasted, suspended, and woven to, by, and through, the 
side of a cliff, is WAY too narrow for two vehicles unless they are both
two-wheeled.  There are roads here that are so curvy. well; I saw the 
taillights of the guy behind me.  In places, a bit of the road fell off the 
mountain, so they moved the centerline a little to "fix" it.  Sometimes 
there are a few pillars to let you know not to fall off.  Sometimes the 
pillars have been knocked (or else just fell) off themselves. .  You 
violate the laws of physics here and you're liable to find yourself in the 
type of trouble money can't fix.
     
Tuesday (4 Aou^t), I received an email from a fellow on the C&DEA 
mailing list.  He told me that he had just read the latest installment, 
having just gotten home from his vacation, riding his motorcycle in France 
and Italy.  He suggested that if I had not already done it, I should ride 
the twenty-one hairpins from Bourg d'Oisans up to L'Alpe d'Huez.  According 
to his handy mileage minder it's only 37.9 miles from Grenoble and would
make a nice day trip.  This was the second such suggestion.  The first was 
from a bicyclist on the list.
     
"Hells bells," I thought, "I've got people coming thousands of miles to 
ride these roads in my back yard."  So, Thursday, "on my way" to work, I
rode down to Bourg d'Oisans and up to L'Alpe d'Huez.
     
It was not bad, if you like twenty-one switchbacks winding twelve 
kilometers from the valley floor into the overcast sky, poking through the 
clouds, with the final five klicks in brilliant sunshine looking up at the 
pristine snowcappers and down at the cottony cream, filling the valley 
below.  Not bad at all.  I took some pix, though the framing was not as 
good I'd hoped I'd be able to get due to the narrowness of the road.  All 
that, and I got to work by  09:15.   Yeah... we coulda done a LOT worse 
than to move here.
     
Somewhere along the way, I lost a damned visor-screw off my helmet.  
Yin / yang.  Murphy.  Life.
     
One of my business contacts, Jorma Hekkanen, who works for a Finish company 
(in Finland), said,  "If you just climb high enough you will find either
heaven or snow!"  I found both.
     
Since I remembered to take the camera this time, .gif's are likely to 
follow, eventually.  (Don't hold your breath.)
     
<end>
     
[1] "Crossroads of Time," or "Deal's Gap," also known as "the Dragon" is an 
infamous motorcycle road in my old stomping grounds, at the border between 
North Carolina and Tennessee.  It used to be famous.  But, to paraphrase Yogi 
Berra, "That place is so popular, nobody goes there anymore."  Which is to 
say, that law enforcement and emergency services in the area have gotten
overly fed up with the small percentage of idiots biffing themselves (an d 
occasionally others) off the berms whenever the sun comes out.  In response, 
John Law has begun a harassment campaign targeting motorcyclists. Two (or 
more) bikers travelling together, even well under the speed limit, are 
stopped, ticketed for racing, bikes towed, riders arrested and required to 
post bail.  Insurance and equipment violations are not ignored.  People with 
twenty accident-free and violation-free years on their driving record can 
lose their license after conviction in the kangaroo court.  Yes, this sort of 
"justice" happens in America today.
     
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