LynnAnne's Bike

Yesterday I had a grand adventure retrieving a bicycle from the suburbs of Paris. A friend had used a bicycle during Paris-Brest-Paris and left the bicycle at the hotel she stayed at for me to pick up and use during my stay in France. Since I had also stayed in the town where her hotel was in the past, I figured it would not be terribly difficult to take the train to her area, walk to the hotel, fetch the bike and retrace my steps. The train ride out wasn't the hard part. It took me about 45 minutes to reach St-Quentin-en-Yvelines where I started my walk to the Auberge de Manet, LynnAnne's hotel.

It took some wandering to find the first street I needed to walk on, and I only managed to do so because I stopped at the Campenile Hotel where I had stayed previously and asked for directions. They seemed surprised when I told them I wanted to walk to the Auberge de Manet, but told me what street I was looking for and I set off on my way. I noticed that none of the streets were named as I had thought they would be, but I continued in the direction I thought I should head until I realized how hopeless this journey would be. I stopped breifly to ask a woman where my second turn was and she pointed it out to me, but also was surprised that I wanted to walk there, especially without knowing the area, and said if she were me, she would take a bus.

I returned to the train station and tried to find a taxi, since I have never been too certain about getting on strange busses, but there were no taxis to be found. I asked at the information desk how I could possibly get to the Auberge de Manet and they also told me to take a buss- the 414 that cost less than 2 euro- and gave me precise directions on how to find it. I found the bus stop, got on the crowded commuter bus, and held on tight to a handlebar near the driver. He pointed out the stop that I needed to get off on and I easily found the Auberge from there.

At the Auberge, I explained my situation to a confused receptionist, but luckily another man overheard my story and understood. He went to the coat room behind hte desk and wheeled out the bicycle in its pink glory and I thanked him profusely. I asked the recptionist to phone a taxi for me which whe did, and waited 30 minutes in the Auberge for a taxi. I noticed the sunlight starting to hit to the tops of the trees and started to grow a little concened of the time of day, as I had no watch, but the taxi arrived shortly after I finished eating an apple and away we went back to the train station.

The driver was very friendly and we talked breifly about the bicycle and I explained how my friend had finished using it on PBP and lent it to me. It turned out that he was also a cyclist- he had spent the last weekend cycling in Provence. He has hopes to do PBP in four years if his health is good then (He looked about 50 years old). It was very nice to be able to connect with someone about bicycling and perhaps I will run into him again someday. I commented on the interesting television monitor / computer mounted to his dashboard that had a map which tracked our direction, but he did not understand what I was trying to say and when I pointed to it, he said happily, "Ah, it's GPS!"

At the station, I unloaded my bike and suitcase from the taxi and rolled it into the terminal. Not sure how I was to get it through the ticket receiving area, I asked a man in front of me to help out holding the blockade for me. He held the door, I pushed the suitcase under the turnstile (correct word?_, I handed the bike over the turnstile, put in my ticket and went through myself. It was eight o clock at this time and my train to downtown Paris left at 8:25. There were few people on the train so I was able to put my bike in the main area with my suitcase next to it and sat on the suitcase next to the bike for the entire train ride.

An hour later, I arrived in Paris at my stop and began walking back to my apartment. It was dark but the streets were not completely desolate. I asked once again in what direction I was to walk and a woman pointed me in the direction of the bridge over the Seine. I knew fairly well where to go from there, and after a half-hour of walking while dragging the 25 lb suitcase, I arrived back at my apartment. I was worried my host-mother would be angry with me for disappearing until late at night, but when I arrived home she said she was glad to see me and figured I had gone to find my bicycle. We then ate dinner (around 10 o clock) and I recounted the events of my day. Finally, at midnigt, my day was over and I went to sleep satisfied.