In Pau you can eat Indian food prepared and served by gay boys on a terrace while gazing upon the very active lesbian bar across the street --not at all what I expected from a far-flung provincial town in France. Having my preconceptions challenged or shattered is one of my favorite components of traveling, so I liked Pau a lot. We had a restful, restorative couple of days in this small, elegant capital of the Bearn region. The daytimes were spent wandering around the labyrinthine streets, doing laundry, computing and napping. Evenings were devoted to eating and bar hopping. By far the best of Pau's three homo bars is a little place called \"Le GoWest\", run by the very welcoming Manu and Regis.
Our first night there I got caught up with a trio of funny young Spaniards in town for a friend's wedding, with whom I worked on improving my Castilian Spanish. Francois was less amusing. After telling him my fresh impressions of Lourdes, he told me that he used to work there as a volunteer pushing around wheelchairs. He said that every four years or so a bona fide miracle occurs in Lourdes, though he'd never seen one personally. He took personal offense at my skepticism and used the lame Catholic argument that God's existence is increasingly undeniable as science discovers the universe to be larger and larger; who but God could have created such a wonder?
I also met an unlikely American boy living in Pau, a half-Japanese, half-Mexican lawyer named Steve who moved down there from Paris for the love of one boy before getting involved with another. He seemed happy living there at the base of the Pyrenees. It's actually a place I could probably live, too, and it was with some sadness and nostalgia that Fred and I left this morning. Our goal for the day was a rather surreal one: the chapel of Notre Dame des Cyclistes (Our Lady of the Cyclists [**[NDC]{.underline}**](../../mnt/user-data/uploads/glfrandc.htm)) near Labastide d'Armagnac and Roquefort (is this where the cheese comes fro?
I still haven't found out). I had learned about the cyclists chapel in a book and was thrilled to find it on the map near our intended route. Unlike Lourdes, this would be a pilgrimage we could make in earnest. We started the day backtracking by train to Tarbes, since the route from there northwards looked more appealing on the map. Our intention to do so caused a bit of a stir at the train station, since bringing bikes on the train wasn't really allowed. We lucked out with a friendly conductor, though, who not only permitted us to board, but actually helped us getting our bikes up and down the steep stairs --living proof that not all the French are assholes.
Forty-five minutes later, we were back in ugly Tarbes. Today's route was not so much a road as a country lane, a narrow ribbon of bumpy asphalt meandering through a string of microscopic villages which dot the broad valley of the Adour river. Practically the only other vehicles we saw other than bikes were the traveling butchers and bakers who sold their goods out of the backs of their trucks. Not long past our miserable lunch of microwaved café fare, we entered the department of le Gers, synonymous with deepest, darkest France. On a nearby hill we saw a strange-looking structure reminiscent of Coit Tower in San Francisco, and figured it was a fancy water tower.
Only afterwards did I learn from our guidebook that it had been a \"lantern of the dead\", a hollow stone column built in the eleventh to twelfth century. The top would hold a beacon symbolizing the eternal life of the soul, and a priest would recite prayers for the dead at an alter inside, built above an ossuary (i.e. a place for bones). Further down the road we mistook another ancient structure in the distance --La Tour des Thermes d'Armagnac---for a grain elevator. In reality it had been a chateau, though not a very beautiful one. The chateau/fortress marked our first climb of the day, out of the Ardour valley and into the hills of Armagnac.
The region's famous beverage was heralded by the numerous vineyards that suddenly surrounded us. Some had signs beside them advertising a new brand of pesticide. In the center of Nogaro, the largest town we'd seen since Tarbes, we had our second lunch of the day in a boulangerie, contemplating the fifty k we had to go before reaching our intended destination and the big black clouds that were gathering. We hadn't even made it completely out of town before big fat drops began to fall on us. Right in front of us was a hotel touting a sauna and a pool; it didn't take us long to alter our plans and dig our heels in for the night at four-thirty, after only three and a half hours of pedaling.
We thought we'd do some yoga, but opted for a juicy nap followed by an unexceptional dinner in our hotel's dining room, which was occupied by several Parisian-looking yuppies at tables by themselves, pounding away at their laptops and gazing lovingly at their shiny Westons. Next to us were an odd-looking female couple smoking little cigars. One was so butch that Fred thought she was a man at first, while the other was all dolled up in a turn-of-the-century sort of costume of velvet and lace. After a while, the two of them disappeared behind a heavy curtain at the end of the room, from whence horrible sounds began to emerge.
One of the woman (presumably the one in costume) was singing while the other one ground her organ. It sounded like a cat undergoing unanesthetized surgery, and Fred and I theorized who comprised their audience; possibly the Gers chapter of the National Masochists Society. I couldn't resist ordering Armagnac as a digestif, which I sweat out in the sauna afterwards. It was so hot in the little box that I'm still sweating while I write this, wrapped in a towel with one eye on the t.v., which is showing Bertolucci's latest disaster, \"Stealing Beauty.\" We never did get around to doing yoga.
Maybe tomorrow.