travelogue3

France, day three

The morning goes wrong. After oiling the new drive chain and

checking fluid

levels before setting back off into the sun, the bike

crashes over as I strap

luggage to the rear seat. It takes all the

strength I have to lift it back up

onto the stand, blood and sweat

boiling with anger more than anything else.

Anger at myself. I know

how top-heavy the machine is, the stationary accident

all my fault.

It’s happened before with this bike and I should’ve been more

careful, careful enough, but my mind was already on the road,

sailing at speed,

even though I’m still in the hotel car park,

fucking about with luggage straps

and bungee cords. Biking is all

about being in the moment, ever there, ever

ready, and anyone whose

attention wanders shouldn’t go near anything with this

much power,

and if everyone’s attention wanders from time to time then no one

should ride, and though this is the truth, it’s one we choose to

ignore for the

thrill ignorance brings. Gravity never sleeps, which

is why no biker is ever

safe, why biking is Quixotic full-stop. And

all the poetry and appropriateness

of place makes the injury no less

insulting.

I bear the failure without managing a grin, the road out of town a

set of

unsteady curves and roundabouts. I’ve only bent the clutch

lever and warped the

left handlebar half an inch out of shape, but

it’s enough to unsettle my riding

rhythm. Dropping a motorcycle,

even at standstill, feels like a betrayal, like a

relationship gone

wrong.

Getting

back on, you’re angry and mistrustful, the

honeymoon

over, the dream gone sour. You try to recover what you had

before,

the

innocence, but it’s hard. You want to believe it was

just a one-

off, a momentary

loss of self-control, but you know

better.

Machines, and people.

I rejoin the motorway, the damage to the bike apparently

superficial, but in my

heart the earlier incident has poisoned the

road ahead. I blast past Narbonne

and Perpignan, watch land rise as

I approach the border. The sea is invisible

from between the

mountains, but the heat never lets you forget you’re all the

time

nearing the Equator.

Blasting along the coast, my eyes turn right and meet the

unexpected. Twenty,

thirty miles off, the Pyrenees appear out of the

grey-blue sky. The spectacle is

breathtaking. While the foundations

remain hidden in the distance, the snow-

laden peaks, reflecting

sunlight, glow a silvery white, thousands of metres

above sea level.

Mountains have always had the power to stun me, but the image

those translucent monsters suspended mid-air as if by some mystical,

foreign

force, is hard to accept without platitudes getting in the

way of description.

I will be there soon, my mind says, over and over again (even the

imagination

gets repetitive after two and a half days of motorway).

I can’t wait to race

those sky-humbling incisors, every twist and

turn a blessing, a mystery

revealed, a buzz almighty.

Between France and Spain

High up on a mountain pass, as cars queue for the passport control

booths, I

line up behind them and remove my helmet like I would when

boarding ferries

across the Channel. Easier for officials to match

my passport photo to my face.

Another mistake. All they want to do is wave people on, but when

they see me

approach bare-headed, the pull me over like a criminal.

I knew my first stab at

Spanish would be hard, but I didn’t expect

it to turn ugly. They go through all

my papers, accept no

explanations, no smiles, refuse to listen to obvious reason

– no

fucking way would I have been riding on the motorway like that, no

way

would I have flaunted it before them. Still, they keep me

waiting in a sun-baked

customs car park with a couple of Albanian

car smugglers, waiting to be told

what I

already

know, that all my

papers

are ok and that I should never try to stick my

neck out when

bureaucracy is involved.

After fifteen minutes of steaming in the mountain sun, I pack my

documents away,

swallow pride along with a moronic bollocking,

ride

on into a new land I may

yet one day call home.

Somewhere before Girona the rev counter starts going mental.

Sitting

at eighty

mph, I know it should be showing around six

thousand rpm,

but suddenly it’s

stuck at five. When I gun the

engine, the needle

drops instead of rising, and

when I slow back

down again, it rises

instead of falling. Then

crashes down to

zero

as if I’d hit the

kill switch, even though I’m still sitting at

eighty.

Then wakes and

bounces right back to five.

Mad, and very disconcerting. Most of the things that go wrong with

machines are

easily explained and usually easy to fix, but then

there are the gremlins, the

strange half-faults that defy remedy.

Hiding deep in the wiring or somewhere

else in the bodywork, they

usually appear at speed and not when in the mechanics

garage, or

come and go at will, or like this one, affect

ing

nothing other

than

my mood. What’s causing this fault? Oil pressure dropped? The

heat?

Something in the electrics? Dash lights gone, indicators still

out,

now this?

What will go next? I can do without the rev counter,

but

what if the speedo

follows? Hard enough to constantly be

converting

miles into kilometres without

having that die as well.

I have arranged to meet an English couple in a place between the

border and

Barcelona. Found them on the net, while researching the

whole Spanish business.

They have a house near the coast, a couple

of craft/design businesses and a

garage full of motorcycles. Way

before Barcelona, I swoop off the motorway and

get closer to

something akin to new country.

Now I’m on local roads, long stretches of flat, straight tarmac,

cutting through

fields of arid earth and sparse wheat and towns of

white, subtly decorated

architecture. After more than two days of

non-stop motorways, this slower,

smaller landscape is perfect relief.

I stop for petrol. The station is very different to the motorway

services I’ve

got accustomed to. A smiling woman, chubby yet firm

with warm energy, says Hola!

and fills up the bike for me.

I buy an ice cream and smoke a cigarette round the back of the

station building,

just to spend a little while

t rest

. The land is

empty and the sea is in the sky,

the coast almost tangible a couple

of miles off. Dry grasses flutter in the

breeze. A kid with a broken-

down scrambler hides in the shade behind the

building, sad and

silent. His bike is half the size of mine, but we smile to

each

other anyway.

It is hot, but not oppressively so. I’m tired, yet happy to see some

land close

up for a change. The crickets are crackling in the heat,

the breeze just about

audible, the sun calling for siesta. I don’t

want to move. Like everything in

sight, I want to be completely

still. Movement robs you of shade and energy, but

the ice cream and

the cigarette are gone all too quickly and the bike is

waiting,

hungry for a proper break, Victoria just a few kilometres up the

road.

I get lost in Torroella de Montgri, east of Girona. Done nearly a

thousand

miles, never missed a turning once, not even round Paris,

and now I’m not in the

mood. I circle round the town, time and time

again off the bike to chat to

locals, then on again, riding along in

the midday sun, never sure if they

understood my questions or I

their directions.

I finally find Victoria on my third pass through town. Her town

house is

fantastic - massive garage, endless staircases, terracotta

and glazing

everywhere (she’s a graphic designer, her man a

sculptor/stonemason) and a huge

balcony with a view of the nearby

mount and its haunting, derelict castle. We

sit on the terrace,

drink beers and find conversation flows just as quick and

easy as

time, in spite of the heat and my tiredness.

Only I can’t relax. After almost three days in the saddle, I can’t

pause knowing

I still have however many hours of riding left. I’d

like to find a hotel here,

set off in the morning, only in the

morning I have to be a couple hundred miles

south of here for my

first property viewings, so no chance. And anyhow, I want

to reach

Tarragona today. It will be my base for the next week or so and I

want

to reach base camp tonight, to unpack and wash and stay

still

for a while.

Not hungry for home, not in need of stillness,

just

physically close to whatever

limit.

Victoria offers me another beer, but after what feels like several

hours of

amazing conversation (she’s lived all over the world, the

States, Russia,

Seaford in Sussex amongst others, all places close

to my history and heart), I

have to move. I put a brave face on,

climb aboard the overloaded Triumph and

fire off south, sorry

business has once again got in the way of pleasure.

Girona slows me down, so I bypass Barcelona altogether and reach

Tarragona

around seven. My cruising speed’s dropped along with my

stamina, the last few

hundred miles a real struggle. By the time I

ride into town, I’m a mean,

whingeing heap of bad vibes. The bike is

tired, the rev counter still playing

up, the traffic heavy and I’ve

no idea where to find a hotel. I thought there’d

be plenty around

the suburbs, but only when I reach the centre do I see a sign

for a

four-star place with a name that sounds posh and expensive, even in

Spanish.

At the top of a wide, quite boulevard, I stop just outside the Old

Town’s

medieval fortifications, the place stunning in the setting

sun, me heart not in

any of it.

he tourist

booth is closed and the

street

map plastered to the window only

shows three hotels. Three?

In a town the size

of Brighton?

I ride back down the hill, instantly fall in love with Tarragona’s

imaginative

one-way street system.

Ten harsh minutes later, I pull

up in a narrow, cobbled street, the

sea just

visible at

far end.

The Urbis Hotel gets my vote for

sounding like Orbis, a

Polish

travel agency, and for only having

three stars, one less than the

competition. I don’t want to pay more

than a hundred Euro for the

privilege of

finally being able to stop.

The tiny reception is air-conditioned and the friendly guy behind

the desk

speaks great English (every night there is someone new at

the desk and every one

of them is friendly and speaks great English.

And is called Jorge, young or

old). There is a group of mean-

looking, chain-smoking Russians in the lobby, but

I receive the news

of forty four Euro and available rooms with perfectly

contained joy.

The are no flower prints or patterns in the room. It’s clean and the

air-con

works. The window looks out onto an inner courtyard of dirty

roofs and lines of

washing, but even these details have enough of

Spain to them to charm rather

than repel.

I spend the next half hour trying to pick myself up off the bed, a

delicious

struggle. Should I stay here and crash out, or should I

spend the evening

eating, drinking beer and exploring before coming

back here and then crashing

out?

Can’t remember if it’s hunger for adventure or just plain old hunger

makes me

dress again after a shower and take the lift down to street

level. Jorge advises

me to eat in Place de la Font, the hub of all

social activity in town. I nod and

set out to follow the map he

gives me, but crossing the Rambla Nova, a wide

boulevard lined with

lawns and endless bars, I’m distracted by a distant statue

right at

the top

. Though tall trees and buildings line the avenue, there

seems

to be nothing behind the caped figure save blue sky.

I stroll up the buzzing avenue towards it and so discover the

Terrace of the

Mediterranean. Another stunning surprise. Nothing on

the map Jorge gave me

prepares me for it. A cliff edge, a beach

hundreds of feet below, palm tress

everywhere, villas surrounding

the bay and the sea just starting to melt into

the night.

Whatever hunger I felt is forgotten instantly. I sit at one of the

many tables

set out the Terrace and order a beer from the ugliest

waiter I’ve ever seen.

Short, fat, blond, bespectacled and sweating,

he looks like a German schoolboy

bullied by life into the

hospitality trade. Watching him bounce between tables,

talking

orders with a skulk, I wait for my Estrella

my attention wander

ing

back to the view. And there see something that makes up for all my

tiredness

and the waiter’s comic gracelessness.

A skinny mulatto is sitting on the steps of the

errace,

playing

guitar.

An even skinner white boy is fire-eating and sharing

his

fags. And with them,

holding the collection hat, is a twenty-max

girl, her long black hair and

matching

skirt and shy, silent smile

making me forget about everything I’ve passed

by and seen and

thought about in the last few days. I’ve always felt drawn to

long

tresses

and amazing smiles, but even though this country is over-

run

with them, there is something beatific about this woman.

The way she

sits, legs tucked in, hands under her chin, smiling to

herself.

ange string-strap top, cheap sandals and

that

way of moving, of

brushing aside

her hair that instantly makes me feel close to home,

close to the heart of any

journey. Even if she is not it.

The most beautiful woman in the world standing at the

railings,

smiling

to herself. Not at me.

Think I’ll have another beer.

Ah, the self-pity. Yes, I wish she would see and talk to me, and

yes, I know I

should do the same, but I know neither will happen.

She is with them and I am

alone and older and though I have a

motorcycle and a hotel room and money and

things to say, none of it

will breach the distance between us. She’s only here

for one, maybe

two nights, and the same is true of me. And nothing of what I see

her has to do with that kind of impermanence.

The black guy singing Wonderful Tonight, skinny white fella fire-

eating without

conviction, the girl just sitting there, singing

quietly.

Not to me.

With a beer and whole table to myself, I’ve nothing worse to do than

imagine

what I would say if I did get up and try something. Forget

the problem of

language, of her relationship with the singer and the

stuntman, of the slim

crowd getting in the way as she moves between

the railing, the steps and the

fountain. What would I say if I were

to interrupt her rounds? Seduce her with

the truth? Hi, I wanted to

talk to you because you’re beautiful, but the kind of

beauty I’m

talking to you about is nothing to do with appearances, speaks to me

of vulnerability and sensitivity and character and I’m talking to

you now

because I’d like to find out if you’re a siren or a muse, to

see if what I saw

from the safety of that table over there is even

stronger as I sit beside you,

to see if we can take some time out of

our separate trajectories and change

plans, routes, countries and

lives and see if home is here, in this time between

us, if the need

has got me now next to you will never need to be talked about,

any language, because you understand it anyway and us sitting here

like this

for years from now will quell it. Si? Puede comprar una

cerveza por Usted? No?

Mal, muy mal. Adios.

The slit in her skirt is like a tear in the ordinary,

showing me

something of the other, but bimbo with a couple of tanned

studs just sat down at

the next table means I can’t see beauty any

more.

I keep trying to look round my new, orange-skinned neighbour and her

two

boyfriends, see if somehow The Raven has noticed me too, is

making eye contact,

has felt me. I’m subtle in this, of course, like

a coward. I should be sad,

hurting, should need to be with her. I

should want to hear her speak, want to

find out what her skin smells

of, what she likes to do in bed, what she likes to

do in afternoons

when there is nothing and nowhere either of us have to be. But

this

not a movie and the ending is not for me to write. I am only here as

spectator. I write because I can’t speak, same as the guy running

the kebab shop

yesterday, him and his sketch pad, me and my note

book, both of us wishing

someone else would write our lines

beforehand.

If I decide to stay for another beer, they’ll go. But if I go, they’

ll stay.

Now he’s singing Wild Horses.

I’ll outstay them young guns.

Uno mas.

Travelogue 4

all site design, art work and words are mine

marek kazmierski

FORMER TEACHER,
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