nostalgia

Ah, yes, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. It’s much worse. Le Tour is on and I’m not in France. No reason I should be: my pattern—since 2007—is to go every second year: 2007, 2009 and 2011. This time last year I am two days from flying out of Tulla for Paris via Bangkok.

I leave Australia for the first time in 2007. That visit to France lasts ten days. My subsequent visits last 16 and 28 days. I’ve not considered anywhere else. When I travel with my good woman, I’ll go to the Balkans, but that’s years away. Until then I’ll return to the Pyrénées to pedal up all those roads I didn’t cycle on my other sojourns.

All good woman’s Serbian friends are in Europe, seeing friends and family, escaping Melbourne’s bleakness. My good woman is at home on the couch, nursing her broken arm, yearning. Her daughter is in Belgrade, where tomorrow’s minimum is 24 degrees. Melbourne’s max is 14.

I revisit last year’s blog, uphill into the wind, a training diary of my preparation for cycling the Alpes and Pyrénées, six months training around Bendigo, then those glorious 28 days on the wrong side of the road, hunting down vegetarian food, bumbling along with my meagre French, stepping into the street to be a flâneur. It spirals upward in memory.

Riding the back of the Dandenongs with Nicky and Rock, I speak aloud my thoughts about my next trip to France. Observing the two-year pattern means 2013 is on. I tell them I’m over hauling arse up the grand climbs; I’m nearly 61, too heavy, not enough time to prepare for that sort of torture. Maybe one grand climb. I want to pootle around the French countryside with three friends.

They make ooh-ah noises, but they signify nothing. I’m on my own here.

I drop into the bike shop the other day and Mick tells me he’s off in 12 days. At first it doesn’t register: off? where? Oh, France. Of course. This year’s bike shop tour. My feelings gallop off in all directions. I try to say the right things: Have a great time. (Bastard!) Mumble something else. (Bastard! Bastard!)

He says next year he might go after Le Tour, August, cheaper, easier to move around a bit, not stay in the one gîte for ten days. I’m all over that. Count me in, I gabble. I suggest September: the French all holiday in August. I hear September is the time to go to France.

MM HQ instruct us to put together a professional development calendar for 2013. Sasha and I spread it across the board room table. I scratch out September. Sorry, I say, but I won’t be presenting any PDs in September. I’m saving all my holidays from this day forward. I’ll be in France, la belle France.  

Rock on.