The Wandering Idiot

This morning I woke up at about 9am. A perfect time, not too early, not too late…

It’s another day off for me.

I seem to be taking a lot of these….days off every couple of days. Perhaps the hardcore tourers see my excessive day off routine as a little ‘unconventional’ or maybe whisper amongst themselves…’this guy isn’t a real tourer’. If the hardcore tourers aren’t thinking that already, they will after I admit perhaps the gravest error at tourer can make;

I have been shaving.

Yes, that’s right – I admit it. I have been carrying a razor, and shaving cream, and every few days I have been shaving my face. At the beginning of the tour I thought ‘I’m going to be a real tourer…real tourers grow beards.’ Well fellas, I tried….and I failed. Now, I am only talking about the male tourers here when I say ‘real tourer grow beards’ – surely lady tourers can get away without growing a beard…I would not encourage that nor would I judge a beardless lady tourer, obviously.

So there, my secret it out. Judge me if you will. I can take it.

Anyway…back to the day.

It’s another day off for me.

I wanted to be a tourist today – do touristy things. So I got up at the above mentioned time – 9am if you don’t remember…cup of coffee..and Jerome and I set off for touristy things.

First we took a boat out to Le Friol. It’s an island just off the coast of Marseille. I really wanted to visit Château d’If, the prison island (featured in the Count of Monte Cristo), but the choppy sea prevented us from docking there…so we sped by it – and I took a picture.

Le Friol is just beyond Château d’If. I’m not sure what was more beautiful…the island or the view of Marseille from the island – I’ll let you decide.

We spent about two hours out there, hiking about and then visiting the only open cafe to drink over priced coffee.

On our return to Marseille we pottered about, meandering through markets, tiny streets, up hills and back down again. Bizarrely, it kind of reminded me of San Francisco in some ways, the multi-ethnic hilly neighbourhoods.

At sunset we climbed up to Notre Dame de la Garde. Beautiful absolutely beautiful. I’ll let the pictures of the city from there speak for themselves.

Overall – a great day.

So Jerome is officially out of the tour. There was talk this morning that he might try to get to Toulon with me, but really it’s just a silly idea…his knee is in bad shape and taking a risk like that could create serious damage – better to rest.

The good news is that after all of this – he now owns a bicycle and panniers…so it’s not over for him. I think the little taste of touring is all he needed – he’ll be trying again when his body is ready for it.

I’ve really enjoyed my time in Marseille. It’s a city I almost didn’t come to, because I didn’t want to navigate through another big unfamiliar city, but it was absolutely worth it – and I can definitely see myself coming here on a holiday one day.

At the very end of the day – just before we were all going to sleep, a thought crossed my mind. I had remembered how my rear panniers felt very unstable so I thought I’d best go downstairs and tighten everything up on the bike. As I started to work my way through the bolts I hit a problem. On of the bolts holding the rear rack in place had broken clean off – leaving half the bolt inside the bike. Shit.

Well – I tried to be clever, trying to cut it out, pick it out, basically doing nothing more than ending up with bits if metal on the floor and the screw no closer to being loose.

My father is a auto mechanic and so many time I have seem him fight broken bolts – I should have paid more attention as to what he would to do fix it!

Anyway – after 30 min. of achieving absolutely nothing, I resolved myself to the fact that I would cycle on with one of the bolts out. Not a huge risk – so I figured I take it, although I was worried about the excessive weight on the other bolts…don’t need another break…

But then I thought ‘no, I’m a genius. I’m a f**king genius.’ – you see, Surly has attached two braze-ons on each side of the Long Haul Trucker rear fork frame! And the other braze-ons where being used to hold my mud guards in place! Perfect. I quickly took the rear mudguard off – and with a new screw attached the rear rack to the other braze-ons and then used wire and to secure the mudguards to the rear rack.

This may seem like a trivial ‘fix-it’ job, but for someone as mechanically inept as I, this small ‘outside the box’ thinking was a triumph. I feel cool. Really cool.

So who cares that I shave – I can fix shit!

Well…I still need to find a shop to drill out the other broken screw…

I’m planning a few days off in Nice – so will try to find a shop there.

All good – going to bed now.

Tomorrow – Toulon!