“We go straight on route 167,” my friend Ellery says looking over a large map of France unfolded on his bike’s handlebars, “then we turn onto another road towards the small city Melle.”
“Sounds good,” I reply, groggily only half-listening. The words “go straight” and “Melle” are all that sinks into my memory, hastily filed away within a disorderly mental index of thoughts, preoccupations and dreams.
It is a gray early morning in central France near the city of Poitiers. Ellery leads the way riding in front. French roads often contain numerous rotaries instead of intersections. At each one, I look ahead to Ellery and take the same turns he does. I love rotaries. My bike glides around the asphalt circles like a water skipper atop a pond’s surface.
In the first town we reach, I stop for a red light, and my friend continues out of sight ahead. At the town’s end, I reach another rotary, and suddenly realize I have carelessly forgotten where we are going. I stare at the rotary confusedly like a blind man looking for a cane in the dark. A road called 167 veers to the left, but a vague memory tells me to go straight. I’m unsure which option to choose.
We have traveled 8,500 miles and rarely gotten seriously lost or separated. Instead of navigating with a modern GPS system, we rely on road maps and asking directions. We only carry one map because frequently buying them can become expensive. Ellery rides faster than me, so he navigates, riding in front, and waits for me at rotaries when we switch routes. If a problem occurs, we can communicate with cell phones.
Even the best organizational systems are subject to sudden demise. Ellery’s phone is currently out of minutes, and for days we have not passed through a town large enough to put money on it. But if I send him a message, I know he will come back for me.
I send him a message, but it does not work. Instantly, I realize that I’ve carelessly forgotten to check my balance and am out of money, too. There is no way for us to communicate.
For a moment, I stare at the rotary trying to link vague memories from my conversation with Ellery this morning into coherent fact.
“Should I go on route 167 or stay straight,” I ask myself.
On a gamble, I decide to go straight.
In the next small town I reach, Ellery is not waiting at the first rotary as I expected. I have ridden almost 15 miles and know he never goes this long without stopping and waiting for me to catch up. It is obvious that my friend and I are separated.
The road to Maille
I am horribly lost, and, to make matters worse, it is Sunday, the day in Western Europe where all shops outside of major cities close. The dismal possibility that I won’t be able to buy a map anywhere dawns upon me.
With no better option, I cruise through the town in hopes of finding a shop miraculously open. Instead I just hit another rotary. There a sign points left to a large town called Maille. I smile, mistaking Maille, for Melle, the town we set out for this morning. I turn left toward Maille believing that I am headed for the right town.
“If I can ride fast enough,” I think, “hopefully I will rejoin the road Ellery is on and meet him as he’s riding back to find me.”
As I continue toward the wrong town, Ellery has long since turned back in search of me.
“That’s odd,” he thinks upon returning to the first town we passed through, “I glanced back and saw Levi very close to this spot.”
He rides back down the road a ways to see if I broke down.
I ride 10 miles through a downpour. My heart sinks when I soon reach a small town called Maille. I know the town I want to reach is at least 40 miles away, so it is clear I mistook Maille for the similar sounding name of another town.
Now I am more lost than ever.
‘Do you have a map?’
On a Sunday morning Maille looks like a ghost town. Everyone has retreated indoors for a day of rest and time spent with family. The town is devoid of life.
While searching for people, I spot a woman unloading recyclables from her car into a public recycling bin.
I stop and use my horrible French to try and ask her for a map, but she doesn’t understand me. Desperate, I try saying the word “map” in English, Spanish, and Russian, all the languages I can say it in.
“Map, mapa, karta?” I try. She shakes her head confusedly. “Map, mapa, karta?” I say once more miming the act of holding a map.
“Ahhh, une carte,” she says, pronouncing carte like kahht. “No, I don’t have one. I’m sorry,” she says.
I thank her and leave, my spirits reinvigorated. The woman may have not have had a map, but by inadvertently teaching me the word “carte” she has given me the tool I need to find my way out of this situation.
On the outskirts of Maille, I ride past a farmhouse where an old farmer is walking to his car. I turn into his muddy driveway.
“Excuse me, do you have a kaahht?” I ask him in my labored French.
“Oui, oui,” he says, pulling out a map from his glove compartment. “Where do you want to go?” he asks.
My eyes quickly scan the map he hands me until I at last find the name of the town my memory forgot.
“Melle,” I utter triumphantly when I spot it.
Just 40 more miles
The kind farmer offers to give me the map. I thank him and use it to plot a direct course for Melle. By getting lost, I have gone almost 30 miles out of my way. Melle is 40 more miles away from here. I have just barely enough time to get there before sunset.
I ride hard against the wind and find my way onto route 167, the road Ellery and I were on this morning. In an hour, I come to a small town and decide to continue alone, hoping my friend is somewhere ahead.
Meanwhile, Ellery has ridden all the way back to the point where he last saw me and then returned to the rotary where I first became lost. He waits for a long time in case I return from whatever wrong direction I left in. At last, hoping that I have found my way toward Melle and am somewhere ahead, he gets on his bike and be-gins sprinting, riding as fast as possible, to catch me.
We have ridden in cold rain and against fierce winds for a month. Sometimes the weather barely enables us to cover 30 miles in a day. We are nearing the trip’s end, but the closer we get, the harder it is to continue.
That afternoon, I push on against brutal headwinds without stopping. Rain and even hail pour down upon me. The hail feels like needles pricking your skin as it hits my eyes. I put on sunglasses to protect them. Cold seems to burrow under my rain jacket into my skin.
“I hate this!” I yell at the sky in a moment of frustration and fatigue.
At dusk, I ride into Melle and see Ellery’s bike parked outside a small cafe. I am overjoyed to see him. We examine our maps together and learn that we each took a different road to Melle.
“The hail storm made me so cold that my palms turned purple,” Ellery tells me. “I came into this cafe to warm up, changed out of my rain gear, and ordered a glass of wine hoping you would later arrive.”
That night we sleep in a warm hotel. The following afternoon, we ride through yet another soaking rainstorm. But it is warmer today and I begin reflecting on what I have seen during this trip: the vast expanses of Asia and the fascinating differences between Eastern and Western Europe. Despite this trip’s physical difficulties, I still feel so fortunate that I have had the ability to travel, observe many different ways of life and gain so many valuable insights about the world we inhabit.
Torrents of cold rain fall upon me and the wind blows wildly against my face.
“We are so lucky to be here,” I remind myself overwhelmed by this truth, “so lucky to be here.”