360 Degrees Longitude

by John Higham

  Katrina and Jordan had already polished off all the books we had brought with us, as well as an extra infusion we had picked up in the U.K. September, tired of the preteen genre, bought a copy of The Da Vinci Code, and then placed it in my front right pannier.

  We had been advised that Versailles was a better base than Paris proper, as it was easier to approach and maneuver by bicycle. We planned to stay in Versailles to be tourists for a few days, leaving our bikes locked up at the campground and traveling into Paris using the Metro.

  We settled into a five-star campground near the Palais de Versailles that soon enough would be seared into our memory as the Campground of Shame: the worst of the worst and the one by which to judge all others.

  The morning following our arrival we made preparations to go into Paris. September returned to our tent from the shower. “How was it?” I asked.

  “Awful. It’s the insult-to-injury type. And in a five-star campground, no less.” The Campground of Shame still had more to offer, but we wouldn’t discover that until later. With no real agenda except to spend the day in Paris, we soon found ourselves sitting on a bench along the Champs-Elysées.

  In our party of four we were rarely more than an arm’s length from another and the kids wanted to be part of everything. As a consequence, no conversation was too trivial or too private to interrupt. We ate our lunch (yet another ham sandwich!) and watched a mind-boggling number of people rush past us. “Six billion is a really big number,” I muttered to myself more than to anyone else. It seemed a planet’s worth of people was pushing past us at that very moment.

  “What!?” the children demanded. “What are you guys talking about!?” It was as though the fate of the world hinged on every syllable we spoke; everything became a four-way conversation. We did find a solution for about an hour when we got to the Eiffel Tower.

  “Race you to the top!”

  I gave it my all for about two flights of stairs, then happily abandoned the lead to Katrina and Jordan. We paid about thirty dollars for the privilege of climbing halfway up the Eiffel Tower, only to find that it cost another thirty dollars to complete the journey by elevator to the top. In the interest of sticking to our budget we sent Katrina and Jordan into a hopelessly long queue to wait to go up to the top by themselves. They felt very grown up, and we were free to enjoy a conversation without its being punctuated by “Huh? What did you say?” If only they’d had a room for rent on the first deck.

  • • •

  When we’d first arrived at the Campground of Shame, we had the place virtually to ourselves. We set up our tent and had a nice chat with a father-daughter pair from Oklahoma who were cycling roughly the same route we were.

  However, the population of the campground exploded while we were in the city. “It looks,” I said, casting my eyes about, “as though the six billion people we saw along the Champs-Elysées followed us …”

  “… here.” September had noticed the same thing I had and completed my sentence. Everyone was under the age of twenty-five and sporting a ring or stud on the odd body part. “There must be some sort of festival or something.”

  It was the or something. Live 8, a rock concert devoted to raising awareness of the upcoming G8 meeting, was scheduled at locations around the world with people gathering planetwide for music and demonstrations. One of those places just happened to be at the Palais de Versailles, within shouting distance of our tent.

  It’s not that I don’t like The Cure, but I don’t like them rattling my fillings loose at 2:00 a.m.

  • • •

  “Okay guys, today we’re going to visit two important places. One is the Louvre, probably the most famous art museum in the world.” There was a collective groan from my audience of two. I needed to work on my intro.

  “The second place is the Palais de Versailles, where …”

  “Hey, Dad!” Jordan cut me off. “Isn’t that the place where the queen with the big hair used to get mad at the men because they would pee in a corner because there weren’t enough places to go to the bathroom?”

  “Yes, Jordan. Marie Antoinette.” Jordan was clearly retaining what he was reading in his Horrible Histories books. Seeing where men would pee in the corner of the palace in defiance to the queen was worthy of a visit in a kid’s eyes.

  Unfortunately, when we arrived at Versailles we found it had recently closed for renovation, so we made our way to the Louvre.

  The Louvre happens to be free of charge one day a month and we happened to arrive on the very day. We stood in line with all 6 billion people who had been following us around Paris, inching past François Mitterrand’s now (in)famous glass pyramid that doesn’t have 666 glass tiles. It has 673, but that just doesn’t elicit the proper emotion for the conspiracy theorists, so the urban myth endures. But counting them gave us something to keep our mind off of the searing sun until we finally crossed the threshold into the Louvre and blessed climate control.

  “Okay, we could spend a week here and just scratch the surface, so we need to prioritize,” September advised, “or else we run the risk of attention spans expiring before we see what we came here to see.”

  I gave September a blank stare. “So, like, what did we come here to see?” It isn’t as if I’m a great patron of the arts. I knew that the Mona Lisa was lurking about, but that was all. “I are an engineer. I don’t know nothing about art,” I said, summing up the situation succinctly.

  September smiled and gave me a little pat on the shoulder. “It is your short attention span that we need to be careful that we don’t exceed, not the kids’.” With that we made it our mission to see the Mona Lisa, which took another forty-five minutes. Half the population of Japan was queuing to have their picture taken in front of the famous painting. We hopped into the queue and another forty-five minutes later we had our few milliseconds next to it.

  “So, why is that painting so famous?” Katrina asked.

  “That’s why we have Google and Wikipedia. Between the two of them they know everything.”

  “I thought you said you knew everything,” Katrina said coyly.

  “Well, I had to tell someone in case I forgot some detail, such as why the Mona Lisa is famous. See how it works? By the way, isn’t it time to be going?”

  September cast one of her looks in my direction that let me know I was about to be given a lecture in art appreciation. “You know,” she said, “the French make fun of Americans for this very reason.”

  I feigned stupidity. “Because we look up stuff on Google?”

  “Non! We just got here. The French accuse Americans of being monosyllabic mouth breathers because they rush into the Louvre, see the Mona Lisa, then scurry away. By leaving now you are proving them right.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m okay with that. They make fun of us for our two-week vacations, too. But I know if I go to my corner Super Wal-Mart at 3:00 a.m. to buy the Brady Bunch-size pack of Twinkies, that Wal-Mart will be open. And if I stop in to use the facilities, hey, I don’t have to worry that I left my personal bar of soap at home.” I gave my dear wife the most heartfelt smile I could muster, batting my eyelashes for added effect.

  Standing in line for the Mona Lisa followed by all this rumination had generated basic needs. September made a dash to use the facilities. She came out of the restroom with big news.

  “Dan Brown has clearly never been to the restroom at the Louvre, or anywhere else in France for that matter; Robert Langdon could not have escaped like he did.” September explained that Robert Langdon, the main character in The Da Vinci Code, evades the French police in the Louvre by finding the tracking device planted in his pocket and embedding it into a bar of soap from the ladies’ restroom and throwing it out the window. “That could never happen, because there is no soap in any restroom in France. The book is a fraud.”

  “Does this mean we can go now?”

  “Non!”

  • • •

  We wanted to retrieve our shipment of books, part o
f the kids’ school curriculum, before we left Paris. We had mailed them to friends from home, the Bennions, who had been living in Paris. We had hoped to visit the Bennions in Paris but unfortunately events transpired that brought them back to the States before we even arrived. Our package of books would be forwarded to friends of the Bennions who would hold them for us. We had been checking with them daily, but unfortunately, we made the mistake of entrusting the package of books with the U.S. Postal Service and six weeks was not long enough to get it across the big water. I had mixed emotions about this, because after the whole family had read a book, we would often leave it behind. I was now quite a bit lighter than when we had set out, and if we got a new shipment of books they would land in my right front pannier.

  On the other hand, the times when the kids were reading were those rare moments when it was quiet enough to think. I grudgingly had to admit that we needed books. We could no longer wait for our package from home. We found an English bookstore near the Louvre and bought another month’s supply of reading material.

  Jordan’s Journal, July 3

  Today we went to the Louvre. It was really crowded and we saw the Mona Lisa. It took a long time. Then the best thing happened! We found a bookstore that sells books in English! Dad got grumpy because all of the books we wanted were too heavy. The bookstore was really fun. I got Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in English.

  • • •

  With the help of the TGV, France’s version of the bullet train, we crossed the Alps and were cycling onward toward Evian, of bottled water fame. Evian is on the shores of Lake Geneva, known in the French-speaking world as Lac Leman.

  The road that follows the shores of Lac Leman is narrow, with no shoulder. Large trucks carrying bottled water to stores around the world roared past us. Not only were large trucks roaring past, but American Steel. We were enjoying a lunch of, you guessed it, ham sandwiches on the side of the road, when a bunch of big guys on Harleys, carrying, of all things, fresh baguettes and a picnic lunch, thundered into the same roadside rest area.

  Harleys? In France? The Harley riders were large burly men decked out in black leather and—egad!—cowboy boots! If I hadn’t known any better I would have thought I was in Texas … except that when I spoke to the Harley riders, they had the cutest Inspector Clouseau accents.

  I was having trouble holding onto my stereotypes of Frenchmen, Harley riders, and Texans. The Harley crowd wanted to know about us and we wanted to know about them, which after all, is the raison d’être of travel.

  September used her high school French and the French cowboys their best high school English, and after exchanging stories we bid our new friends and their cowboy boots adieu and continued eastward. Within a few kilometers, we were in Switzerland.

  www.360degreeslongitude.com/concept3d/360degreeslongitude.kmz

  Bouveret, Switzerland, on the shore of Lake Geneva, is breathtaking. The prices, I mean are breathtaking. The scenery isn’t too bad, either. Bouveret is also home to a campground and a waterpark. If only I had a crystal ball, I would’ve avoided a summer-long guilt trip.

  4.

  Cyclus Interrupts

  June 8–July 20

  Switzerland

  Three years prior to the World-the-Round Trip, we had brought our tandems on a cycling trip across Switzerland and Austria. One purpose of that trip, other than to simply ride our bikes in the Alps, was to learn how we coped with longer duration trips than we had previously done. That trip took on a mythical quality for the entire family.

  One of the things we enjoyed was taking a gondola to the top of Männlichen, of World Cup fame, and hike down to the small town of Grindelwald. The hike was several hours long, and we stopped for a picnic lunch partway down the mountain, looking over the entire valley. Per Katrina’s pleading, we took the seeds from an apple and planted them.

  Nearly every day for the past three years when I would walk Katrina and Jordan to school the conversation was nearly identical:

  “Do you think the seeds will grow, Dad?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “You remember where we planted them, right?”

  “Yes. We wrote it down, and took a picture.”

  “And when we go on the World-the-Round Trip we’ll go back to visit, right?”

  “Without fail.”

  “How big do you think the apple tree will be?”

  “I suspect about a foot high.”

  The apple tree had become the stuff of legends in our kids’ minds. Visiting it was a top priority for the World-the-Round Trip.

  As we cycled across the Swiss border everything changed; the road widened, we were presented with our own cycle path signposted all the way to our next destination, and most important, the Evian trucks were not allowed on the cycle path.

  You gotta love the Swiss. It’s as though their national pastime is being smug about how beautiful their country is and then being out in it. The country is very well set up for doing just the sort of thing we were doing. There are nine national cycle ways, as well as numerous regional cycle ways and endless numbers of hiking trails, all of which are clearly signposted with travel times and distances. I credit all the outdoor activity with keeping the Swiss slim, even in the face of the ice cream stands and specialty chocolate boutiques that seem to adorn every street corner.

  I found that when you tell someone that your favorite place to cycle is Switzerland, you instantly get a little respect. But here is a little secret—four of those national cycle ways are along rivers, lakes, and valley floors. You cycle between the Alps, not over them. And if you come to a mountain pass, you can throw your bike on the train; they are ubiquitous.

  Slowly, we were chipping away at our route to Istanbul. The Rhone River route was to be our companion for several days, then we would connect to another route that would take us to Lake Constance where Switzerland, Germany, and Austria come together. From Lake Constance we would follow the Romantic Road into Germany and the Danube River. The Danube would take us all the way to the Black Sea. The shores of the Black Sea would take us right to Istanbul.

  Our first night in Switzerland was spent in Bouveret, camping where the Rhone River flowed into Lake Geneva. Looking up river we could see the narrow Rhone River valley with cliffs towering above the clouds. But it was the sailboats with their gleaming white sails set against the blue sky and blue lake that spoke to my wanderlust. Where were these boats’ captains, and why weren’t they taking us out on the lake? Even though we didn’t go sailing, I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place. The following day we put Bouveret behind us and entered the narrow valley that was cut by the Rhone.

  In the near term we were heading for Zermatt, about three days’ ride from Bouveret. High in the Alps near the Italian border, Zermatt wasn’t exactly along the Rhone River cycling route, but it wasn’t too far afield. We would simply follow the Rhone River cycle path to the city of Visp, then take a cog-wheel train up to Zermatt for a few days’ diversion. Then we would continue on to our apple tree and beyond.

  Jordan’s Journal, July 8

  Today we rode our bikes for a long time. We didn’t mean to ride our bikes for so long, but we were looking for a campsite. We had a map and a guidebook that told us where some campsites were, but when we got there, they weren’t there anymore. We were so sad. Then we found a campsite with miniature golf. I hit Mom in the face with a golf club accidentally. Dad says her blackeye looks “smashing.”

  Our guidebooks, maps, and well-meaning but misinformed people sent us off to no fewer than six campgrounds that had recently closed. As sunset approached, I said in desperation, “I vote we go into Martigny-Ville and look for a campground. If we can’t find one, let’s grab a hotel.” September wouldn’t have been hard to convince but the kids were another matter. To them, sleeping indoors was a cop-out, and they were infused with a fervent penny-pinching zeal. In an effort to sabotage a whine-fest about sleeping indoors I mumbled in their direction, “I am at the end of my rop
e.” After six weeks of togetherness, this was a code they now knew only too well.

  A grandfatherly gentleman with two young children was cycling along the same path we were. They pulled up beside us just as I was planting the hotel seed in the kids’ minds. He spoke very little English, which complemented September’s very little French so that we could communicate very little.

  He nonetheless patiently communicated that Martigny-Ville did indeed have a campground, and it was on the far side of town. That was the most we could understand. As we prepared to go our way, to our surprise he followed us. As dusk approached he dropped off his grandchildren near what we presumed was their home and led us about seven miles through town and to the campground. Eternally grateful, we said good-bye to our new friend as he made his way back home in the dark.

  This was another example of a complete stranger helping us in a pinch, but it was significant for another reason. It had been a long and tiring day. The promise of a place to stay had been dashed time after time, often after we’d gone veering down side roads, only to find a dead end with no place to camp. Through it all the kids complained not once. It was a breakthrough. I recorded in my journal later that night:

  John’s Journal, July 8

  We knew there would be hard days when we started. Maybe we underestimated just how hard. But we have been able to clear each and every hurdle thrown at us. Katrina and Jordan have started to see the adventure in every little thing. Jordan has changed the most in the last six weeks. For example, when we were in England, if I asked him to help pedal up a hill, I couldn’t tell that he was helping at all. He is now a very good stoker. He is starting to thrive in this environment.