Carol & David's Excellent Adventures PART XIV - A Fall In the Alps - David A. Braun Copyright - November 1998 After quite a while paying attention to weather and seasons, I have drawn the conclusion that, for me, autumn, no matter where I live has either ONE glorious day per season, or none. I spent many autumns in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, both of which have some fantastic eastern deciduous forests. I whiled away a few years in Colorado, which has mostly evergreen and aspen trees. No matter where, either summer is suddenly over and winter commences, or else there is autumn. In order to have autumn, there must be some cold and rain, followed by some cold and dry. And then, to have THE day some gentle, southerly, warm, airflow. The perfect autumn day, for me, has warm temps, crystal clear skies, clear roads, and falls on a weekend. We had one here in Grenoble, this past Saturday. Carol and I were supposed to take a short bike trip to a nearby town variously described to us as "very pretty with lots of lakes" and "sort of like a French version of Venice." Annecy is less than an hour from Grenoble on the autoroute. (Or, I suppose, all day if you take the scenic route through the mountains and MAKE it take all day.) Carol had a minor malady and didn't feel up to it. Maybe next weekend. After two on Saturday afternoon, I decided that THIS day was Rare, and too good to miss. Scant minutes later; I was in the Chartreuse. I thought that this might be a good day to try to photograph God's Own Hairnet [1] above Chambery. In some little town, about halfway, I came upon a traffic jam. Exercising the natural superiority of the motorcycle in such a situation, I rode along the verge to the front of the queue. No, I would NEVER do this in the USA because it would be bad for my health. But the French recognize the fact that if all the bikes are at the front, within the first ten seconds of the blockage being removed, all the bikes are GONE. Making the added delay to the cars a few seconds at worst, and obviating the need of the bikes to execute passes along the way. So there I was, at the front of the queue, and what did I see on this FINE autumn day? Skiers. It seemed to be roughly a hundred of them. They weren't your normal, run of the mill skiers. They were all wearing some sort of cross-country roller-blade sort of ski device, and carrying street poles. About a minute after I arrived and took this all in, there was a whistle trill, and they were off, looking like an exhaltation of lark, gawkwardly poling their way up the incline in a flurry of elbows and knees. After a few minutes, the chase van gave chase and so did I. When I pulled along side the chase van, the driver looked over at me. She indicated that if I proceeded slowly and cautiously, that I could pass the pack. I did. They were strung out over more than three kilometers already. The front runners had legs that trees would be glad to have for trunks. And then they were behind me. The last time I got this far north was in a Mercedes Benz rental car. It is a LOT better on a motorcycle. The road is five times as wide on a bike. The physics make your body a LOT happier on a motorcycle than they do in a car. (Sam and Mary had both been a little queasy in the car with all the curves.) I was halfway glad that Carol had not come. There are two speeds you can go on a bike: your pace, and any other pace. George Carlin holds that anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac and anyone who drives slower is a moron. Carol prefers to go slower than I do. When she is my passenger, I make every effort to accommodate her. The benefit of the exercise for me is that when she is my passenger I have lots more attention available to pay to the panorama. The benefit of solo riding is the Dance, especially on these roads, especially on this day. My eyes can not possibly absorb the brilliant hues as fast as they are input. The colors range from Ferrari Fly-Yellow through the oranges, from umber to ochre with a neon or two thrown in for good measure, to a riotous Ducati Arrest-Me Red. I pause a few times to make a few photographs, which I hope will be stunning when they are developed. The truly amazing thing to me is that it is a Saturday, well into the afternoon, within shouting distance of a largish city, and the road is MINE. It is all but deserted. Imagine cruising the Smokies or trying to take in the Aspen over some Colorado pass on a glorious, warm, sunlit, October SATURDAY afternoon and finding that you own the road. The leaves are just starting to fall from the trees. It has not rained in a couple of days and there are no wet leaves lurking in the corners to slurp us off the road. This is as Good as it gets. I appreciate it with a grin so wide I consider that the top of my head may fall off. I popped out of the tunnel and headed down into Chambery, stopping twice to attempt to capture the Hairnet on film. After I cleared the cliff section and had made my way across the valley to the parallel road across from it, I tried to get a picture of where the tunnel comes out. Pursuant to taking a side road and then deciding that this would NOT get me to a better vantage point, I discovered myself in one of the rarities in my life wherein I actually had to back the bike down a road I rode up. If I tried to turn around, I would drop off an Ugly place. And I was close enough to the ingress to feel that the exercise made sense. It turned out to be much faster (I imagined) than proceeding down to the end, wherever that might be, and turning around. There are things which you see which can not be photographed. The Grand Canyon comes to mind, as do the British Crown Jewels. A two-dimensional representation of a three (plus) dimensional experience just doesn't cut it. In the Alps, there are lots of wonderful VISTAS which you can SEE, but due to either geography (no place to stop or to stand) or construction interfering with the "image," you just can not make a good photograph. Back up, past the Hairnet and through the tunnel. Back over the pass and down to the town where the ski race started. Two hardy souls were still skiing along toward the summit. These guys had abandoned the race and were uphilling for the sheer joy of it. I had a petite epiphany that the places on the road where the lines are recently repainted are the places where the media had great photo-ops during the freshly run Tour de France. After this realization, I paid particular attention to the view where the lines were new. Back into the little town where the silly race started, and back into another traffic jam (deja-queue). I quickly skirted the dozen or so cars and was in second position. My initial thought was that they were having some sort of award ceremony for the winners of the race. No. once I arrived at the head of the pack, it was obvious that this was not a ski-race crowd. The folks in the street were older. The car in front of me began to move and so I followed. No, this was some sort of parade we were following. I followed the guy I was following and he started passing the parade. So did I. Then, he turned off. I continued passing, slowly. Up ahead, I saw some guys in uniform carrying some French flags. I asked myself, "Could this be some sort of memorial parade for something that happened here fifty-five or fifty-seven years ago [2]?" After all, there is a Museum of the Resistance in Grenoble and many memorial spots in the Vercors. And there is an avenue in Grenoble with a sign commemorating eleven Grenoblois being carted off to Buchenwald one cold November day. I continued alongside until, suddenly, within ten meters of the front of the parade, I had the embarrassing realization that this was a funeral. One of the things I liked about moving to Tennessee in the 70's was that when there was a funeral procession on the highway, folks on the OTHER side of the road would pull over and stop to show their respect. Well, shit. I never before saw a small town funeral procession on foot with a bier cart. How was I to know? OK. I found myself ten meters from the front of a procession going God knows where. I was tooling alongside on a motorcycle (a QUIET one) wearing a loud blue Cordura suit. I'm an American, in France, with Grenoble tags (38), in the same department (38). What to do? What to do? A quick mirror check showed a car close behind me. I sped up and was done with it. The city limit sign arrived, not too soon (at it the speed limit doubled), and I was gone. My reflections were sombered by the ceremonies. It is all over in a trice. Autumn. Life. Appreciate those glorious moments. My friend Edward once told me that the secret to life is to take Big Bites. But to chew thoroughly. I must agree. A set of switchbacks carried me up and up, into the three-thirty autumn-afternoon sun. All at once, healed over about half way to the horizontal, the front end tucked. I had the realization that I had hit gravel with the front tire and lost traction. Time began to expand. I had a moment to think. about how great this ride was and what a shitty way it is to end it with the sound of plastic and metal grinding marks into the macadam. The speedo says 60-kph. I think to calculate how many feet per second I am travelling so as to estimate how far I'll slide. 60-kph is 60000 meters per hour is 1000 meters per minute is, let's see, 60 seconds goes into 1000. 100 divided by six is about. GEEZ! There's no guardrail. at least it is only a hill and not a cliff. Will we go over or stop before then? When the front end of a motorcycle tucks, there are many wrong things possible to do and very few correct possibilities. Sometimes, a lost front end can be found by opening the throttle to lighten the front end. Sometimes a bit of counter steering will catch it, just like when the rear tire steps out. But, there are times when either of these strategies will result in a highside, the bike catching traction and then pitching you over it. There are times when your body and your bike remember things that your mind is just too busy to think about. This was one. I doubt that we covered more than five feet with the back end not tracking the front when, instead of finding the chin-guard of my helmet making that peculiarly loud (and expen$ive) grinding sound on the road, we were again on our way. Sweet. No chance to test out the rivets studding the palms of my gloves or the articulated, plastic, spine protector velcroed into my padded, GoreTex riding suit. I LIKE this bike. Yes, it can all be over in an instant. An autumn, a fall, a life. But not today... for me, anyway. Live each moment like it is your last. Because... you just never know. [end] [1] Photo to be linked later. Check back [3] after New Years. [2] WWII [3] http://www.deathstar.org/~flash NOTE: There IS no C&DEA #13, YET. It is only partly penned.