Introduction
From a dark closet in Saint Paul, Minnesota, this is “Don’t Remember Me Like This.” I’m Nathaniel Barber. Don’t Remember Me Like This is a homemade, nonfiction podcast and diary thing. This week I’m reading part two of Allez, Américain! The exciting and dramatical conclusion of a two-part story about a very long bicycle ride across Europe.
If you missed part one of this story, I highly recommend you go back one episode to enjoy this odyssey in its proper order. And as a warning for listeners, this episode contains two homophobic slurs. That they are in French doesn’t make them any less hurtful and dumb.
Lost
Jerome drove me to the edge of town. He dropped me at a fork in the road. It was still early in the morning, and there was a cool, gray drizzle. We shook hands and promised to see eachother again—sooner, rather than later. He took the road towards Paris and I started pedaling towards Luxembourg which I would never reach.
Almost immediately, the directions I’d written on the back of a receipt stopped making sense. None of the names of the towns I rode through matched any of the names I’d meticulously plotted from the gamey lobby computer of our hotel the night before. My map wad, or what was left of it, was useless in the rain. And without a wifi signal, my phone was similarly useless. In the heavy overcast I couldn’t even orient myself to south-east.
My gut told me to head that way, whatever way that way was. But there were no roads in that direction—just a vague, magnetic pull. I biked for miles and miles looking for any road I could take. Even a path would do. Finally, in the distance, over a tall roadside guardrail, down a long muddy hill, across a field with rows of vegetables and a scarecrow, and up another steep hill I could see a road.
That was the road. I was certain of it.
I was officially done with heading this way and that, wasting hours and miles looking for a connection to go the right way. I’d locked in on my target. It was across a steep valley and wide swath of farmland. But I’d had enough of trying to find a way to get me back on route. I decided to make my own route and walk in a straight line to make the road.
It took some doing to hoist my bike and bags over the tall roadside guardrail. In a mess of wet branches and soggy ferns, my bike and I slid down a long and steep embankment of mud and undergrowth. I stopped for breath and to chart a less reckless path to the valley basin. And there, among the familiar old-growth beech, cedar, sequoia, poplar, oak, fern, moss, the rich decay of matted underbrush, black mud, worms, cold, fog, and drizzling rain, a biting punchline occurred to me: Here, I’d come all this distance, through all this hassle to torture myself in a scheme that, while stunningly beautiful, seemed identical to any number of paths I could have ridden from Portland to the Pacific Coast. With a cell phone signal.
Standing at the foot of the hill at the edge of the farm, the bursting rows of what looked like cabbages or collard greens, were much larger than they appeared from up the road. Trudging across the field I had to hoist my bike high over my head to keep from clipping the leafy greens, as one would ford a river with a suitcase. Even then, I had to push hard to wade through the ripe crop which scraped and pulled waist-high and muddy, thoroughly caking me in farm. I was almost at the halfway point across the field—passing the scarecrow a couple furrows over—when a thick cloud of blue smoke suddenly puffed from under the scarecrow’s wide brimmed tweed hat. The scarecrow was not a scarecrow. It was actually a small man leaning on a shovel and lazily smoking a corn pipe. Likely he’d spotted me way up the hill in my conspicuous tennis ball-yellow cycling jacket. I must have stood out like a beacon against the wet forest. Probably he’d also heard all the shouting and swearing as well.
As an American, I half expected a faceful of buckshot. But his soft chuckling indicated he’d found this cartoonish trespass across his farm quite amusing.
I offered him an apologetic nod and pointed to the road up the hill, “Est-ce la route du Luxembourg?”
He nodded affirmatively and wheezed, "Allez, Américain."
Autumn
The nights became progressively cooler until one morning I woke up soaked through in freezing dew. It’d been a rough night which I’d spent in a cornfield tucked away between two rows of corn stalks. I’d woken up several times through the night, gasping in panic after dreaming I was being run over and minced to bits by a combine.
The frigid mornings soon burned off to reveal gigantic days, warm and sunny and golden. Late summer shadows pulled flickering from dappled oaks and shock-red maples—trees that seemed to flirt with each other in the long antique light. Dry leaves crunched under my tires like sprinkles of water sizzling in a hot pan.
The majority of tourists had all but vacated the countryside. The tendrils of Autumn were just beginning to slither between the bucolic hills and cornfields. Along the rollicking landscape were vast, lusty vineyards, sun-kissed and dazzlingly sweet smelling. The syrupy piquance of the ripe vines swirled thick in the sultry cinnamon air.
At frequent intervals along the route were several stone fountains. The fountains were labeled “Non Potable.” Some were even decorated with a small skull and crossbones—warnings I happily ignored. The always running water was deliciously cool and cut through the oppressive heat of the midday sun. The water was somehow floral and sweet up front with a crisp, spring-fed mineral finish. Maybe it was hocus-pocus of exhaustion, but every quenching gulp from the fountains seemed followed by a wave of low electricity that gathered in an icy pool in my chest before shuddering through every capillary from my fingertips, up the back of my neck to my toes.
One evening, after the batteries for both my front and rear lights died, I kept on biking in perfect darkness, using the bumps along the side of the country road like braille to guide me from riding off the shoulder. I’d been following signs for a campground nearby. A campground sounded like an ideal place to spend the night, especially after the cornfield (which I was determined to give a scathing review on yelp). But when I arrived, the camp was closed for the season. A large locked gate blocked the entrance road.
Biking around the campground, I discovered something vastly different from the American camps with which I was familiar. Each space was reserved in what seemed like individual timeshares so that, while the campground was locked up and completely deserted in the offseason, there were no spots available. Each space was labeled by the owners and occupied by a storage unit or a tiny house or a trailer, presumably waiting for the next season to be unpacked and again come to life.
It was too dark to go on. And I was too hungry. Finally, I found a spot that had some room just behind a large metal storage shed. I made myself a little campfire there and enjoyed an unforgettable dinner of hard salami rolled in peppercorns, soft cheese, bread, and a full-bodied Bordeaux.
Late that night, I put out the fire and stowed myself next to the metal shed, spooning my bike in the thick bushes. Admiring the stars, I fell asleep instantly.
At about three in the morning, there was a tremendous explosion, like a gunshot just inches from my head. Something, an asteroid maybe, crashed into the side of the metal shed. I struggled to free myself from the bivouac and, with my knife still smeared with brie, leapt out of the bushes bracing for a fight.
I shouted into the empty night, “Come on you motherfuckers! I’ll fucking kill you!”
My heart was pounding in my throat and I was drooling. But there was nobody, just my bike shoes crackling in the popcorn gravel. I stopped to listen, still nothing. There was only a hush from a light breeze and a far off bird calling in the night. Underneath that—only silence. I returned to where I’d been sleeping, expecting to find a sizable dent in the side of the shed. Nothing there either. Did I make the whole thing up? Was I hallucinating in my sleep? It seemed implausible since my ears were still ringing.
Deliriously tired and gnawing with adrenaline, I tried to go back to sleep imagining monsters with gnashing jaws waiting and watching from the thicket. Eventually I gave up. Feeling around, I packed my bag by the dim light of the stars and got back on my bike. Returning to the road I was swallowed into the impossible dark of the moonless night.
Family
I’d been standing at my sister’s kitchen window, steaming up the glass for almost fifteen minutes.
I was shaking from holding the scariest expression I could—eyes bulging and mouth open, teeth bared, and fingers clawed in a frozen scrape at the window. Not that I needed to look any more frightening after having biked over the Alps early that morning, and later thrown myself bike shoes, helmet and all into Lake Geneva.
Alissa was sitting at the computer writing an email and not seeing me. Her kids, my two nephews and niece were happily playing in the living room. Eventually, finally, the dog saw me and barked at the window. When Alissa finally looked up from the computer, she jumped out of her seat, clinging to the ceiling.
She opened the door and, kids screaming and dog barking, invited me inside with a promise that she was going to smother me in my sleep. I gave handshakes and salutes all around and, after a long hot shower, hugs.
The next day, Alissa gave me the lay of her home. Coffee pods are here. Cookies, if I should need cookies and other treats were here, etcetera. She had several errands to run and I was more than happy to help out with childcare while she was gone. When I thought all the kids were securely screwed into the television, I snuck out to the kitchen for a little treat. In the drawer was a box of sweet biscuits. They were wrapped in crinkly cellophane. Like a surgeon, I removed a sleeve of biscuits from its box and slowly unwrapped the top.
When the cookie sleeve made a little crinkle, all three kids suddenly appeared in the kitchen.
“Are those cookies?!” said one.
Another repeated, “I think those are mom’s cookies. Mom said I could have one!”
“I can have one too,” another interrupted. “Mom said I can have two!”
“I get one,” shouted another. “I get a cookie! I get—”
Finally, I shouted, “Stoppit! Stop! Okay, quiet. Jesus Christ. You can all have a cookie. One.”
I wedged four cookies from the sleeve.
“There,” I said, holding up my cookie. “We all have a cookie. Are you happy now?”
In a way I could tell they had done thousands of times before, my nephews and niece all held out their cookies, comparing them with each other. Somehow it was decided my niece’s cookie was larger than the two boy’s. They howled at her, accusing her of having a larger cookie which, ears burning, she emphatically denied.
Since they were all screaming at eachother, it took some doing to be heard over the three of them. I said, “SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”
Horrified, they all looked at me with these huge eyes, brimming with tears.
I said, “Okay, okay. Let’s all take a deep breath.” I said, “You say she has the larger cookie?”
My niece flushed red. The two boys nodded eagerly, holding out their cookies as evidence, which I took. I asked for my niece's cookie, so I could compare them. Reluctantly, she handed it over. For a moment, I held up all the cookies. I displayed them so everyone could get a good look before I hungrily stuffed them all into my mouth.
I took my time eating them too, watching the kids whose jaws had dropped to the floor. They all looked at each other, bug-eyed and astonished, waiting for me to chew, swallow, and explain myself which, again, I took exceptional joy in drawing out as long as possible. Before anyone could say, I held up a finger, and went to the fridge, pulled out some milk, poured myself a glass and, again, took my time luxuriously drinking down the creamy milk.
“Maybe next time,” I said, before taking another long sweet pull of milk. “You’ll be grateful for the cookie you have, rather than the cookie that’s—”
When Alissa returned home, the kids were still hysterical, screaming and throwing themselves around the kitchen and living room as if they were being peeled alive. I’m in for it now! I thought as her three children were clinging to her, frantically trying to explain what their mean awful uncle had just done to them. Not a single one of them could say the word “cookie” coherently, it was just a sobbing jumble of vowels and consonants.
Alissa briefly examined the children for cuts and bruises. Finding none, she batted them away. Cookieless and sniffling, the children returned to the TV, fighting over the best seat on the couch. Alissa mechanically began to put away her groceries, noting she’d acquired enough supplies for tomorrow’s party which, judging from her deadpan distracted delivery, promised to be hugely terrible and exhausting.
Partytime
Apparently, they hadn’t gotten together in a very long time, hence the hubbub over this year’s to-do. Years ago my brother-in-law used to have an annual rager with all his high school buddies and friends from his now defunct hair metal band, Goat. The idea was, this year they would revive their grand annual tradition, so there was a lot on the line. Knowing only enough French to apologize and ask for rudimentary directions I called dibs on running childcare for the event.
Alissa confided she’d been dreading the party for months. “It’s just so much drinking,” she noted gravely. “And everyone will be chain smoking.”
With PTSD, she bitterly recalled the last time they’d all gotten together which was, thankfully, long long ago. She remembered how, when her husband and all his little boyfriends got together they tended to spiral out of control and transform into perfect monsters. On the periphery of this melee, Alissa would be lumped together with all the other wives and girlfriends, women with whom she had little in common.
The event began at a local park with a picnic area they’d rented. There was a massive barbecue, overflowing with meat, and several coolers stuffed with beer. I was very grateful for my role to temporarily act as a shepherd for the soon-to-be orphaned children of the partygoers. We sequestered ourselves in a sunny field nearby, away from the shouts and screams coming from the picnic shelter. The kids happily climbed fences, dug in the dirt and chased each other in a postcard alpine field, set about by the towering mountains, the Dents du Midi, on one side and the Portes du Soleil on the other.
Alissa’s grim prediction was quickly materializing. What began as a rowdy barbeque was gaining momentum at an alarming rate. From a safe distance, the kids and I were able to kind of ignore the shouting and shattering bottles coming from the picnic shelter. I cringed to imagine my poor sister trapped in there, probably bracing herself at one of the picnic tables, trying desperately to keep a lid on the situation.
As the sun sank below the Alps, the campground and picnic area became shrouded in a dark mountain shadow that quickly turned the park forbiddingly cold. The womenfolk came to fetch their children, to drive them home and set them to bed—but not because the party was over. It was simply moving locations indoors, to my sister’s house in town.
I walked home with my niece and nephews, happily discussing comic books and cartoons along the way. By the time we’d arrived, the party had transformed their home into a depraved frat house. Outside, we could hear the incredible din of thumping music and muffled shouts as more friends from the park arrived, carrying more beer and wine inside.
Frazzled, Alissa met us at the door and whisked the children upstairs to bed. Relieved of my childcare duties I was left to join the party downstairs. In part due to my extremely limited vocabulary and unfamiliarity with anyone other than my savagely shit-faced brother-in-law, I happily transitioned to running security for a pack of rioting drunks who, left to their devices, would inevitably begin chewing on the furniture.
I scrambled to set out coasters under beers, sweep up broken glass, and when someone ordered something like thirty personal pizzas, rushed to set out paper plates, napkins and silverware.
One of the friends, a very emotional man who didn’t mind crying and hugging strangers, was shocked to discover I’d never heard any of Goat’s music, or seen any pictures of their old band. He sat me down at the computer and, opting to forgo the search option, tic-tacked a lengthy and convoluted URL by memory. The party raging behind us, he guided me through a photographer’s gallery of the band, explaining what was in each of the photos, and pointing out the musicians, and their older counterparts at the party.
The photos were not bad, as far as promo shots for a Swiss hair metal band in the early nineties goes. There was a lot of leather, angular, neon guitars, and a lot of stringy hair. In several of the shots the musicians were really hamming it up for the camera. A guitarist was caught bending a high note, thrusting metal horns in the air. The sweaty drummer menacingly pointed at the camera with a drumstick. The lead singer was caught in an acrobatic leap, jabbing with the mic stand, he was backlit by glittering rows of lights.
My nostalgic guide was especially interested in showing me several pictures of himself. Flipping through a carousel of hundreds of promo shots he’d stop on his and say, “Voila! C’est moi.” Pointing out his tight leather pants and cowboy boots he said, “Je suis un pédé, non?” And another picture, he pointed to his flowing feathered hair, “Est encore, vois ici. J'ai l'air d'un pédé, non?”
“No,” I said encouragingly, trying to calm him down. “C’est cool. It looks like you guys had a really fun time.”
But he didn’t hear me. He was now obsessively skimming through the pictures, tears welling in his eyes. Seeing my opportunity, I slowly backed away from the computer and slipped away from the party, escaping to the guest bedroom. Exhausted, I dove in bed with my clothes still on and fell asleep to the sound of the partygoers smashing several of the framed pictures on the walls.
Borders
I was supposed to meet Scott and Elizabeth in Zurich the following day until there was a sudden change of plans.
At the time, my parents were in the process of moving to Switzerland. The first volley of their stuff—six or so unuseable beds in various states of disrepair, other furniture, papers, appliances, antiques, and dishes—were being shipped by freight from America. The shipping container had already landed in Germany and was presently on its way to Switzerland by truck, driven by my other brother in-law, Tibor and his friend.
By a freak coincidence, the trailer would be arriving in Champery the day after I was to leave. Since lifting heavy things is one of only three things in life I’m any good at, I offered to stay an extra day and, when the trailer arrived as scheduled, I could help unload and afterwards take the train that evening for Zurich and arrive roughly the same time it’d take to bike the route.
I thought, what’s an extra day? Especially with everything Alissa was going through, I imagined she could use all the help she could get. Alissa admitted she did have a lot on her mind lately and could use the help unloading the trailer which was likely to be packed to capacity.
But the next day, when the trailer was due to arrive, there was a hitch in the plans. There was a weight limit for shipping containers passing across the border from Germany to Switzerland. The trailer was too heavy and the agents at the border would not let it pass.
For a brief, hilarious moment, an idea was floated to remove one or two of the big ticket items from the trailer, a washing machine perhaps, or a bomb hoist. Tibor could drive the marginally lighter trailer across the border, while his unfortunate friend wheeled the heavy item across the border after him, return it to the trailer on the Swiss side and they could be on their way.
But the trailer wasn’t over the limit by the difference of a couple hundred pounds. By some estimates, the trailer would need to lose just over a quarter of its overall weight to be allowed to cross the border.
This meant Tibor and his friend were effectively stuck at the border with only several unfortunate options ahead to continue the mission. They could not turn around, since there was nowhere to go with the trailer. But they could not convince the border patrol to let them by. For me at least, precious hours were rapidly ticking away. I still had enough room to catch the train to Zurich, but time spent waiting for the trailer to arrive was time lost for some last sightseeing. Meanwhile, one third of the hotel room I’d reserved with Scott and Elizabeth was going unused, again. And I still needed to find a great deal of packing materials—which I assumed would not be easy to locate—and then re-pack my bike for the flight home.
There were options of course. I could skip sightseeing in Zurich with my friends. Alissa could drive me directly to the airport for my flight. Or, I could pay a tidy sum to change my flight altogether and leave at a later date. This was further complicated when we got word Tibor was going to rent a moving truck. They would use the moving truck to unload enough weight from the trailer, drive the two vehicles the two hundred feet or so across the border, repack the trailer on the other side, drive the moving truck back across the border to return the rental and walk back across the border. But the rental truck was not available until the next day. And there was a real question as to whether the rental company would even allow the truck to be driven across the border.
Descent
Maybe it was a bad look, leaving just hours before Tibor arrived with the trailer, but the time had come.
Alissa and I shared an awkward goodbye as she was in a salon getting her hair cut and styled. I said nothing about the party since Champery is a very small town, and this was a busy hair salon and hair salons are the cerebral cortex for any community. Instead, I thanked her for a wonderful stay, noted how lovely it was to see her and the kids, and I loudly wished her good luck for a swift and painless divorce.
I took one last look at the Dents du Midi, committing to memory this raucous archipelago of chaotic blue-black rock, cut against the blazing sky in an imposing, yet somehow comforting cauldron.
I waited at the roadside of the Route De Champéry—the long, steep, winding road out of town—for a break in traffic. After the last car passed in what looked like a lazy line of dawdlers, I gave crank and, heads down, sunk my teeth into the road at the highest gear.
In an instant, the wind was howling in my ears.
The descent from Champery is highly recommended, especially if you’ve no sense of self preservation and a lust for gobbling down mountain air in huge, chortling mouthfuls. Weighed down with bags, pushing through hairpin turns and churning breakaways I could feel my poor bike bending and flexing like warm licorice.
I’ve heard the best way to avoid speed wobbles and getting thrown from a road bike at high speeds is to, counterintuitively, relax the arms and barely hold onto the hoods. It actually seemed to work. The more rigidly I tried to command the handlebars, the more jittery and skittish the bike. But limpwristing the controls was like gliding along on a cumulus cloud, wide and sturdy.
Here I’d waited so cautiously for a break in the traffic—worried some hotshot motorist would be crowding me all the way down the alps when, after only three or four turns, I was braking hard against a long line of cars, steering conservatively patiently downhill.
Obediently, I maintained a safe distance behind the last car until, finally, enough was enough.
With a thrill, I jumped the median lines and kicked frantically at the pedals, passing the geriatric line of cars at a delicious pace. Faster and faster I fell past car after car with a whom, whom, whom, dipping back into the appropriate lane to dodge an oncoming lorry. Here and there, I’d elicit a scolding honk from a motorist stuck in line. Courteously, I held up a hand, offering an apology (for what is anyone’s guess) before jumping out of my saddle, and again chomping into the heaving purchase of a bike that was, at long last, allowed to revel in its intended design.
Surprisingly, I made my way past the whole line of cars until I passed the cork at the head of the line: an elderly man wearing a white hat, driving a small tan Fiat.
His expression! You’d think I’d pedaled past him nude.
Beyond the Fiat was revealed suddenly the open road laid bare. There were several miles yet of winding pavement falling down an impossible alpine grade. With no more cars to dodge, I was finally free to take it a little slower and romantically, easing into each turn with a knee-out keel, jumping out from a thick lean into another breakneck sprint until easing back again to push hard through a gorgeously shaded gully.
At last, I came back into my body somewhere around the milky, lazy jade waters of the Rhone river where teeming swarms of gnats pelted my face, embedding themselves into my teeth and eyelashes. Some even flew right up my nose. To continue any distance required holding out my hand to form a puny shield against the onslaught of suicidal bugs.
I arrived at the station at Aigle for the train to Zurich. Again, I seemed to be involuntarily causing a scene among the gathering crowd of commuters waiting along the platform, some of whom were openly disgusted to encounter this conspicuous American, decorated head to toe in the pulverized, still-twitching wings, streaked guts, and decimated legs and thoraxes of thousands of Switzerland's juiciest insects.
To these horrified gawkers I offered a cordial, “Bon jour!”
The phantom strains of the roaring wind still whispered indelibly in my ears.
Outro
Thank you for joining me for this episode of “Don’t Remember Me Like This.”
I hope you enjoyed this stressful story about what was actually a very nice bike ride across Europe.
All episodes of Don’t Remember Me Like This are penned, performed, produced, and published by me (for better or worse).
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