Tallone

The saint at the gate. There were lots of religious imagery around the place.

The main house--which had thick stone walls, two fire places, and a light. Of which I had none!

My truly humble abode. It was big, but all the harder to warm up.


My ride up into the snow. It was so bright and pretty! But the ride home was COLD.


Citroen! I was trying to take a picture of the mountains in the background. Otherwise, it's just a picture of the parking lot at the beach. The beach was pretty. No pictures.
High cloud on a lovely day. This was taken in a parking lot in Giasconnetti, where we ended up after a series of haphazard run-abouts. Sylvian had said that a friend of his was going to Corte for the afternoon, so we went to the library to wait for him. Then Sylvian left his phone in the library after it closed, so he couldn't call his friend to find out where we were meeting him. So we went to the beach instead, and then, on the way home, we passed his friend who had been waiting for us at the house. Giasconnetti was a pretty little town, but it was just a shopping trip, and with Sylvian glued to my side, it was hard to do what I wanted, mainly, buy bread and EAT MEAT! I snuck away and had a pastry in the parking lot. Apples and custard and pastry. Yum.


I went to a party in Tallone! It was at the hall, and we were invited by an ancient man whose name was Charles and liked to tell me how to make wine and sausage. A crew of women made a really heavy, tasty polenta made out of chataigne--chestnuts. It was somewhere between cake and pudding, and not very sweet, but super yummy. There was also really thick, dark sausage from the town across the valley, but I feared the wrath of the militant raw vegan, so abstained. Okay, I snuck a little taste, and it was good! Then the deserts came out--and a LOT of them. Cake--several different kinds of cake--plus cookies and fruit. The fruit was mostly used as missiles by this guy at the other end of our table.

Then, The guy in the middle broke out his accordion, and he and the guy to his left sang until their voices broke. Apparently, most Corsican songs make fun of themselves, and there was a rather famous Quebecois song in the melage, but I didn't know it.













This is something, or it used to be something. My bike is parked inside! But seeing it reminded me of the Chilcotins, where my family has a cabin. The land there is full of abandoned shacks.











Cork Oak! Isn't it pretty? They're everywhere, and huge.














And cork, close up.













These are the tools I had to work with!!! The tires on all the wheelbarrows were flat as pancakes. But at least the saws were sharp, an improvement over the situation in Laroque.













The Shitbox! Well, that's what it was called. I thought I misunderstood Sylvian at first, because I was in French mode. Nope! Well, compost toilets have to be emptied. The compost from the toilets is ready after a year, and is generally used to fertilise trees and not gardens, due to a very small risk of passing on--I don't know. E.Coli? Anyway, anyone getting grossed out needs to visit a farm. Fertiliser comes from somewhere.













These, I think, are lemons. Well, they are citrus, at any rate. The closest one kind of looks like the Venus of Wilhendorff, or...? I swear it's not from the fertiliser...













This is just to prove that EVERYTHING can be made out of pallets. And at the farm in Tallone, everything was.













The dog and the cat. A really annoying cat. A really big dog. He was a Great Pyrenees, I think, and looked just like my parents' dogs, but BIGGER. Total sweetheart, though his size scared me when he started leaning on me.













And this is my little stove, my little leaky stove that filled my bungalow with smoke and stained my clothes with the stink of fire. I'm cooking! Coffee and chesnuts. Chestnuts are really quick to do, which would why I was such an utter failure at them as a kid, and coffee boiled with cinnamon is not too bad. Not a bad start to that day, let me tell you!

Nimes

Nimes! This was where I spent Christmas--though not in the water. The city is full of Roman ruins, as you shall see. And sunshine!
Above is a section of canal in the Jardin de la Fontaine. I think it was built by the Romans, but anyway, it's a big park with lots of statues all through it. I spent Christmas day sitting in the sunshine and drawing pictures of people and their long shadows crossing the main square of the park.

Below is the...okay, I forget. But it was under renovation/cleanig, and looked pristine under the scaffolding.

Need I explain? Grafitti.


Door knocker. It's an arm! Get it?The Arena where the Romans (my ancestors!) fed men to lions and such. Apparently they held executions during the breaks while everyone went and got drinks.

I am particularily happy with these two photos of the Matador. One of the Spanish Queens (or maybe she was Spanish and married one of the French kings?) brought bullfighting to France. I'm not into bullfighting, but I liked the statue. And did you know that PETA holds a Running of the Nudes?Lights. Christmas. Arena. Night. Or dusk, anyway.

I took the train to...somewhere, and then rode my bike out to the Camargue, a salt and fresh-water marsh along the coast. It was windy and the road was flat and straight and it took my about three hours to get to the coast! This was a field I passed with, I doubt you can see, a 'Non OGM' sign--no GMOs.


And then I saw toros, small black bulls that are particular to the Camargue. Cute!
And then I finally got to where I had been headed--the salt flats. The PINK salt flats. No, you can't tell from the picture, and to be completely honest, I could barely tell in person. It took me a bit to find them, hidden behind the sand piles and salt work grounds, but there they were. Definitely a place to return to, in the summer!
On the return, I took a different route, much less windy and far more beautiful. And, full of flamingos. Yup, Flamingos. And to look at it, this blog was brought to you today by bad pictures.
I went to Avignon! I could not take a picture of myself, sur la ponte d'Avignon, because, as you see, the Avignon Bridge doesn't really bridge anything. Actually, I could have. I just didn't feel like paying to go onto a half destroyed bridge. I was hungry!No one will ever be able to tell, but the tree on the right? Full of persimmons. Kaki, in French. I thought they were decorations.

This post may be a little scattered...

This is the garden at the foot of the hill in Tallone, on Corsica. There wasn't much growing, but I liked the spiral design.

The bee hive on the way down to the garden. One day I must have passed too closely, because a few bees followed me down, and they seemed to be trying to bury themselves in my hair and clothing.


La Col de Colsada (or something). I biked partway from Tallone to Corte, though not to Corte since this is what I ran into on the mountain pass. I rode in the snow for a few kilometers, just to reach the pass. That's the Mediterranean in the background. Such a lovely day.
And then I left Tallone. Sylvian drove me partway to Porto Vecchio, and shortly after parting ways, I had to stop to take this picture. It was a gray and soon to be rainy day, but the light and the angle was perfect for this reflection.

This is some rather rad art I saw in a gallery window in Nice. Nice is beautiful. Nice is very, very rich. You could feel how much money is spent in Nice.

I loved this piece of art. I've got the names of the artists (the background is another artist's work, but the compliment each the other very well) and the gallery somewhere...

This guy was sharpening knives in the back of his truck/jeep thing.

Nice was absolutely beautiful, in part because of the sunny weather. Many, many artists have and still do live in or visit Nice because of the light, and the south of France in general. The clouds! If any of you have looked through my photos before, you'll know I have an obsession for cloud formations. So beautiful! Oh, and the building was pretty stunning, too.
This is St Cesaire. (Ha ha! You can't even tell what you are looking at. It's a town on top of a hill...) I stopped there for lunch at 2, then continued what I expected to be a short ride to Mons. Wrong! The descent out of St C should have told me what was to come. A very, very long ascent. Through very beautiful land filled with olive terraces and old stone buildings. The road was bumpy and narrow, and there was little room for a bicycle and a car, let alone two lanes of traffic. That said, I only saw three vehicles, maybe. It was a nine km ascent to Mons, and after my 80+ kms already done, I was fatigued. I pushed my bike up a lot of it, which was barely any slower than riding, really.
I arrived in Mons, where it is so windy at times--like now--that there are rocks keeping the tiles on the rooves! I called my host only to discover that I had the wrong number! I was tired and thirsty (I did not heed Darren's advice that when in doubt, save the water!) and there wasn't much--or anything--open in Mons. But I found a little art gallery which turned out to be run by a lovely woman from San Francisco who has been living in France for 15 years or so, and designs and makes her own jewelry. Valerie said, 'Who are you looking for? Oh, I know Alban!' and she took me home and made me tea and we chatted until Alban came to pick me up.
And now here I am, happily in Mons, or close to it. I went for a bike ride today and realised I didn't know how to get back! But I figured it out. I went and did the same hill that had beaten me on my arrival. I just had to conquer it! Even without luggage, it was tough. But still so pretty.

March address!

466 Avenue de Castres

31660

Bessieres, France.

But don't send stuff there until after the 15th of February. Up until then, use the Mons address.

It's really beautiful here, and I succeded in cycling from Nice to Mons, though I pushed my bike up much of the final 9kms which was gruellingly uphill.

And thank-you to everyone who has sent letters! You can't imagine how nice it is to receive letters while on the road. I've been smiling all day since reading the ones I've received thus far!

And, yes, aparently I make glaring errors when typing on a French keyboard. Like typing a 'w' instead of a 'z', or a 'q' instead of an 'a', as in Alban. I couldn't figure out why everyone had addressed my mail to 'Qlban'. Tant pis!

??

I just gave Mcgill 300 CDN. Looks like I'll be in Montreal in July. And sweating through the SIS/MLIS programme starting in September.

Exciting? I was sort of looking forward to another six months in France, which means I'll just have to come back. In two years.

Nice!

Is beautiful. It snowed most of the two hour train ride from Marseille to Nice, but Nice is snow-free and warmer than Marseille, mostly because it is lacking the ferocious wind.

The architecture here is amazing, and I can't stop myself from looking up, which is hazardous when the side walk is uneven in places and littered with dog droppings. And it's beautifully sunny.

I'm out to get my bike tuned up, and to wander around a gallery or two in my new! gray! leopard-print! jeans. Rod Stewart's 'If You Think I'm Sexy' is playing right now, and I prefer the Revolting Cocks' version. A perfect note to take my leave on.

And it's not too late to mail soomething to me!

Things I Miss

Being on the road is a whole lot of adventure, and I love it so. But there are a lot of things I miss whilst I am a-vagabonding. Foremost on my list is hanging out with friends and seeing my family! But there are other wantings. Today I popped onto Facebook, which tends to bore me, but which gives me something to do while I'm waiting for someone or for a train. A friend had posted a link to this, which ignited my book lust! I love Keith Thompson's work, whom I had no knowledge of until twenty minutes ago. I've read three of the Scott Westerfeld's four Uglies/Pretties series (and liked them well--Australians seem particularily devine at YA SciFi/Fan), and I am now SITTING ON MY HANDS I'm so excited to get them on a copy of Leviathan. And thus, one of the things I miss: books! I think I have to work in a library or a bookstore, because I feel rather incomplete without the presence of BOOKS. Perhaps this is a failing; perhaps not.

And here is a little list of things I miss, just to make one:

1. Riding my bike with Venus (which occassionally included a picnic in the graveyard. Bubble tea!)
2. Latish dinner and bubble tea at Beefy Beef with the crew from Oakridge. They encouraged my cravings for both meat and the sugary wonder of bubble tea, though with coconut, and not tapioca.
3. Wine with any combination of friends, and lots of loud talk, and louder laughter.
4. Hanging out with Ian and Venus, and whichever unsavories they'd dragged up as companions. And the lovely food that went along with it. I don't know if my stomach usually hurt afterwards from laughing too much or eating too much (or both). And the pleasant ride home afterwards.
5. Night rides with friends. Night is the only time for riding on the west side, and perferably during the week, when the yahoos are at home and not out drunk in the streets.
6. Laughing. The laughs are still around, but they are much more rare these days. Gardening and doing masonry just don't bring on the laughter very often.
7. I suppose I should also admit that I do miss my evening shifts at Oakridge, with some of my favourite co-workers and my favourite patrons.
8. Riding out to my parents to hang out with the family and the dogs. I did this too infrequently!

My craving for Canadian magazines shall soon be satiated, when my lovely mother sends some in the mail.

All said, I'm still happily on the road. And on the road I shall be soon, to Porto Vecchio and then Bonifacio. I'm getting a ride most of the way there, which leaves me with only 40 or so kms to do instead of more than one hundred. Then Sardinia! For a day or two.