Sunday, June 14, 2009

Another one...

Oh my, here I sit in my pajamas, wild hair going every which way, hand grasped around my favorite colbalt blue coffee mug, and dreaming as I soak in every word of this article in the New York Times about biking in Provence. Some day, some day...

And to get you in the mood:

Touring by bike is different from touring by car — you see more, for sure, but in a deeply sensory way, you experience more. There was nothing on this route that was especially earth-shattering — and yet from the vantage point of our bikes, it all was. The perfectly rolled hay. The acres of sunflowers. The stone walls. The sweet farmhouses. We passed our first farm, and remarked to each other how happy Provençal cows looked up close, well-fed and well-tended. We stopped to inspect our first olive grove. We pedaled past a lavender field, and soaked in the sweet aroma. We biked through Graveson and Maillane, two small Provençal towns, taking pictures of churches and cemeteries, where we read the inscriptions and wondered about lives lived. She had brought some cheese, and as we passed a farm with pear trees, she jumped off her bike, and grabbed two pears. That was lunch. Within an hour on the bike, the travails of Avignon were forgotten. We were happy again.

4 comments:

MamaVee said...

nice.

I have it set in my mind that we are going to go to copenhagen next summer. I plan to hook up withthe Sorte Crew and rent one and bike around town. I wish I had made plans to do it this summer, but I look forward to it. Wanna come?? There is a New Haven ex-pat in Copenhagen with 4yr old twin girls and an older 6 yr old boy there... I should let her know I plan to actually come....

sara said...

I still need to work on getting the new passport I promised myself for my 40th... Ohhh, there are so many places where I want to travel.

Andrea said...

Take me with you! Take me with you!

Lovely Bicycle! said...

Thanks for posting this, it is so true. The first time I got on a bicycle after 12 years, we went on the Charles River trail in Boston and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. It was an unbelievable, fairy-tale-like experience to ride for miles underneath them; it made us feel that the world was such a magical place.