Day 2: Troyes to Annecy

We woke early in the morning and headed out to look for a boulangerie. The morning light was soft and golden, and the air was already hot. We found a bakery that sold us some particularly greasy croissants. Some people outside still in evening clothes at 6am having come from a discotheque somewhere. One girl still with a glass of something in her hand. One young man, shirt untucked, chewing the end of a long baguette. We ate our buttery breakfast with a cafe au lait and then headed back to the bike. Our destination today was the Lac d’Annecy. 

   
 The interesting thing about being the driver on a trip like this is that you are concentrating hard on the road and don’t get to enjoy the view as the pillion is able to. Peripherally aware of the changing country that flashes past, one’s main sense becomes smell. The hot air amplifies this so that smells get funnelled into your nostrils up through your helmet. You feel exactly like a dog that sticks its nose out of a moving car window. Different places smell differently. The sappy smell of green barley fields; the warm, sweet smell of manure – distinguishable between cow and pig. At one point the central dividing line between the carriageways was planted with roses that were intensely fragrant in the heat. Now in France the landscape was finally changing from flat agricultural fields to something else. The first clue was the smell of Cyprus trees, and then the road began to undulate and the first mountains began to rise up around us.  Finally the inimitable, fresh, mineral smell of the Alps and we knew our adventure had begun. 

   No sooner had we had this thought than the roadside petrol station we had planned on stopping at revealed itself as a construction site and we were in trouble. The next one was more than 50km away and we knew we were running close to the end of the tank. No choice for it but to continue on. A few more kilometres further and we switched to onto the reserve tank. An important part of our mad improvised system is a TomTom, tied on with safety pins and shoelaces onto the back of my leather jacket that Dani can operate from her control-centre position as pillion. It was precisely at this moment that Mr. Tom decided to go completely haywire. Offering us tantalising promises of petrol stations at estimated distances that fluctuated by the minute and then changing view at crucial moments, it did it’s utmost to have us begging for help on the hard shoulder. In the end the sweet, reliable motorcycle carried us there, aided by some downhill stretches where I could engage the clutch and coast in the slow lane. We vowed never to let it get so close again.  

 Apparently there is a lake at Annecy, but we were too tired to bother when we got to our hotel. Too late for the early supermarket opening times we found a place that sold us some suspect looking pasta sauce that promised ‘tender and tasty meat’. Cowpig. We cooked it in our hotel room and practiced being bikers. Sprawled in front of tv. Cans of beer. Eating meat. Bellies out. Relaxing. When the novelty of watching Joey from Friends speak French wore off, we watched a reality tv program called ‘C’est quoi, l’amour?’ about a young, terminally ill, gymnast negotiating relationships with his family and friends and creating memories which eventually had us both in tears. Crying into our beers and onto our bellies, the illusion that we were real bikers was once again in question.