The flight in wasn’t horrible but we left my cousin’s house before 4 in the morning and didn’t arrive at CDG until 10:30am the next day. I slept marginally well and faced the task of assembling my bike airport side. I did ok but was struggling with the derailleur and the pedals until a very nice French driver came and helped me. He spoke no English but clearly knew about bikes. Turns out the largest size on my multi tool had the correct size and not only did I not need the larger pedal hex wrench I bought but looked foolish trying to use it. Not as foolish as we did, however, getting the bike stuck in a turnstile, of a type, trying to get on the train into Paris. We had to wait there about half an hour while multiple workers came and went none seeming concerned or able to help us. Finally one had a key to open the door sides it was stuck in but we still had a long way of staircases in subway stations ahead. So I guess the stereotype of rude French can be both supported and debunked.
But we did all that, and our friend Scott met us near the stop and we had a wonderful weekend in Paris. Sarah and Scott had a room made up for us in their beautiful apartment in the central and quaint Marais, which is the gay neighborhood as well as Jewish and hipster. Perfect.
Over the course of the long weekend we went to the Louvre, had fancy dinner with V’s dad, saw the Eiffel Tower at night when it had a light show (as well as a huge rat), ate pastries and cheese every day, had a picnic on the Seine with a gaggle of our friend’s friends, did a tiny bit of shopping, and in general had a great time.
V and I went to a really cool radical queer community space and bar/club on Saturday night that was hopping called La Mutinerie. We met a girl there with a Portland t shirt on. She wasn’t a Portlander but a local Parisian who had recently visited for a couple weeks and complimented our city’s friendliness while apologizing for all of Paris’ “moody people” which I found pretty funny.
Scott helped me fix the parts of my bike that I had not put together properly in my sleepiness and without all the proper tools, which was a huge relief and much quicker than a trip to a bike shop.
I’m sure I could go on about Paris, the adorable gay waiter with the huge lips who disparaged Trump with us, the amazing street art, but I have to get this up and get going, plus I’ve got a doozy of a post about my first day for you tomorrow.
I wanted to make a gallery but can’t figure out how to do that on my phone so it might be a “when I’m home” type deal. So stay tuned for more photos.
Ha ha, I know that feel. Everytime I touch my rear derailleur, I’m like, “did I ruin everything?”