Day 23 Finally arriving in Lille France

Today we made our way to Lille. It was 45 miles there and most of the time it was overcast. Actually I’m surprised it didn’t rain on the way there because the wind was picking up quite a bit and it was sprinkling a little also. On the way to Lille we ran into a couple of pissed off people. For some reason this crazy woman in a car rode past both of us honking and waving her hands at us. She had her turn signal on like she had wanted to get onto the highway but then didn’t because we were in the way. It was on a circle but she didn’t even go back around on the circle to try to get on again. Fucking crazy. That’s what breaks are for; slow the hell down. The second person was pissed at David because he was in front of a bus and was going slow because of the trailer so he honked also and yelled something in French. The two crazy people both were in the same town so I’m not sure why there were more crazy people in this one area. Speaking of riding in the road and bike trails… bike trails suck. If a city wants bikers to actually use the bike trails to get bikers out of the street, the city should maintain the bike trails just as it would a road for cars. I would rather ride in the street and hold up traffic than ride over all kinds of broken glass, avoid huge potholes, and have to go over curbs every couple blocks. Dumb dumb dumb and fucking ridiculous. Theres no point. Anyway we had an easy entry into Lille and found our next house to stay in rather quickly. Our host, who we met on couch surfing, is Charlotte.

Charlotte and her house-mates that we met - Gilliam and Marianne - were all very nice. We were starving and had been carrying around the ingredients to make some pasta with spaghetti sauce so they let us use their kitchen to cook it. We all ate together and were invited to go have a beer with them and their friend across town. We rode to a place where there were four long dirt courts where they played the “old man’s game” called petanque. It turned out to be a lot like bocci ball. We played a few games and ended up doing very well. I believe that together, Alyssa and I, would have been a petanque-ing juggernaut! Maybe I’ll trade bike polo for petanque so that I don’t have to face not being the best at something when I return….