Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
misty damp and dismal gray—I mean grey—churning the sea to frothy lumps of white cap
and gruel as most passengers heaved over the rail. We watched like students and learned an-
other lesson. Most passengers had hurriedly ordered sandwiches and coffee and gobbled and
swilled quickly to beat the rough ride. We had watched them with envy, hours since break-
fast but constrained by $5 a day. When the puking started hardly a mile out, the dining area
emptied as most passengers moved swiftly to the lee rail. Some tables remained served but un-
touched. David had three half sandwiches. I sat down to a brand new platter of French toast.
We dined on the house, picking out two untouched coffees and asking the galley for a reheat,
s'il vous plait
. We felt fairly satisfied and seasoned and ready for France. Out on deck, the sea
and snacks rose, but an eye on the horizon got us to the French coast with the French toast
held down.
Rolling off at Ostende we headed for Paris feeling purposeful and bound for deep penet-
ration of left bank reality. Dead ahead was the truth that would change us from Midwestern
children of the suburbs to worldly men. Maybe we would get black berets and wear them by
necessity. Giant eucalyptus trees lined the French country roads on either side in perfect or-
der, twenty or thirty to a cluster every few miles. Air pockets between each pair of sentries
buffeted like giant kids swinging pillows, perhaps to humble our worldly insight with a beat-
ing as introduction to French hospitality.
Paris is not a biker's town. I remember feeling sort of okay, wending through the arron-
dissements in six lanes of traffic doing sixty, shifting lanes bumper to bumper, thinking it was
crazy but I was good, very good, good enough for this action any day—when a screamer shot
past doing a hundred ten, weaving like a wounded comet. I could never do that, and seeing
another guy do it made me wonder if those skills were necessary to survive there. That guy
looked like a high-miler.
More importantly, I didn't want to do that. I wanted out as quickly as we rode in. Paris was
dirty, unfriendly and expensive. Call me philistine or too young to appreciate the arts, but I
found a day at an art museum to be so uplifting and rewarding that I wouldn't need another
day like that for a long time, maybe not for the rest of this lifetime. David swore that he loved
it, maybe more than anything ever in his life—fairly challenging me to deny that
this
was why
we had come. He demonstrated his point by scrutinizing a painting of some people on horse-
back on a woodsy road with everything in black or brown or dark green. He soaked it up like
a true intellect and art appreciator for five minutes, ten minutes and fifteen. I left and came
back and left again as he wallowed in artistic delight, imagining the very thoughts and sensit-
ivities of the masters, his forbears in art.
He attributed my restlessness to chronic attitude. I couldn't argue. Attitude had been a
problem enumerated on report cards for the first twelve grades, and though the revolution of
the 60's justified my “attitude,” anyone more willing to accept the conventional social norm
could still build a case against me.
