Editor’s Note: I’m a little bit behind in posting, so I’m actually going to backtrack a bit and chronicle the end of last week. As I promised in my last post, I’m trying to increase the frequency of posting, and I’m aiming for five posts this week. Check out this itinerary: Wednesday, 11:00 PM Pacific […]
Editor’s Note: I’m a little bit behind in posting, so I’m actually going to backtrack a bit and chronicle the end of last week. As I promised in my last post, I’m trying to increase the frequency of posting, and I’m aiming for five posts this week.
Check out this itinerary:
Wednesday, 11:00 PM Pacific Time- leave San Francisco International Airport on Alaska Airlines flight 6092, arrive JFK 7:24 AM on Thursday. I sprung for the extra $25 and purchased access to the business lounge, where I could catch a few z’s in silence, make a few phone calls, and have a few complimentary Sam Adams’. As the business crowd started filing in around 2pm and the lounge swelled with their pinstriped ranks, I looked around and guessed that I was probably the only one there with a broken nose from playing French baseball. Just a hunch.
Thursday, 5:05 PM Eastern Time- board Air France flight 23 to Paris CDG. My travel planner*- whose performance in this matter is worthy not only of firing but also keelhauling- somehow neglected to procure an aisle seat on this 8-hour transatlantic flight. As a result, I spent it wedged between an Italian man who peered intently at my personal TV screen while I watched Brokeback Mountain but refused to watch it on his own and an older Greek woman who draped herself across most of my legs, lap, and left arm. I found this latter situation distressingly common upon my arrival in France, as the European’s conception of personal space is sort of akin to the American affinity for cheese for desert; that is to say, it doesn’t really exist. This goes for perfect strangers as well as team members and friends, and I frequently find myself slowly giving ground during conversations to maintain at least twelve inches between our faces. The result is a ridiculous half-waltz, where my increasingly uncomfortable retreats in the face of unrelenting advances mean that conversations can be measured not in minutes but in meters. During my time in France, I’ve tried to adapt to pretty much everything out of my desire to avoid being the “ugly American,” but in this case, it’s something I still struggle to do as the Romans do. As far as I’m concerned, I just flew 9,000 miles to see the only person I want six inches from my face, and I only flew back because there was baseball to be played. In any case, this Greek woman, otherwise perfectly friendly and amiable, spent roughly two-thirds of the flight draped across me like a blanket.
Friday, 5:55 AM, Paris Time: Arrive at Charles de Gaulle and once again breeze through customs. I was slowed only by the long line at the passport check line, and when I say “line,” I use the term loosely. When you arrive at 6 AM on a Friday at CDG, you find yourself surrounded by denizens of nearly every nation across the globe: many French, to be sure, but also Chinese, Americans, Japanese, Australians, Italians, Russians, and in my case, a boisterous crew of Mexican soccer fans planning to take the train to Germany for the World Cup whose impromptu cheers during my second consecutive redeye flight had added to my jet lag and overall disorientation. In this harmonious melting pot of world cultures, one quickly finds that many of said cultures do not believe in lines. Rather than an orderly, one-at-a-time file towards the passport windows, the pressing mob soon more closely resembles the old USC Trojans’ Student Body Left play, where they’d send everybody but the waterboy to a designated spot on the left side of the field and hand off to Marcus Allen or OJ Simpson in the hopes that they would slash their way through the sea of red and gold jerseys to the goal line. I make like Jim Taylor and run to daylight, baby**.
7:00 AM: Having once again slipped unchecked through customs, I decided to try something new and hop an Air France bus direct to the Arc de Triomphe. It cost a bit more (12€ versus about 7€) than the standard train to Gare du Nord, but I felt that the risk of falling asleep on the train and missing my stop merited the extravagance.
7:28 AM: The Air France bus finally leaves CDG after stopping at every terminal as I begin to revisit my decision to take this more expensive option.
7:55 AM: I arrive at the Arc and walk a block to the nearby Metro stop, waiting about 5 minutes for a cramped #1 Line train.
8:12 AM: I switch to the #13 line towards St. Denis Universite, which takes me direct to Gare St. Lazare.
8:31 AM: I purchase my train ticket to Rouen.
9:15 AM: Train boards.
10:42 AM: I arrive in downtown Rouen. Realizing that Matt will likely still be asleep and without a functioning cell phone, limiting his ability to pick me up at the train station, I try to decipher the local bus routes and find a way to get back to Aldo’s place.
10:48 AM: High school calculus wasn’t this hard. Matter of fact, high school chemistry wasn’t this hard for me, and that, my friends, is saying something.
11:02 AM: I hop on the #13 bus towards Mont St. Aignan and hope the fact that it looks like the #13 and the #40 lines cross on the map means that they actually do, you know, cross. You think I’m joking, but then, you’ve never spent a night at Hotel Austerlitz.
11:18 AM: I overshoot my bus stop, because the buses only stop in France if someone is waiting there or if someone requests a stop in advance. Sadly, requesting a stop requires knowing where the next stop is and whether it is desirable, an area of knowledge in which I am completely deficient. By the time I could scrutinize the roadside map indicating that the #40 line stopped there as well, we were well on our way to the next one.
11:20 AM: I walk back the 200 yards or so to the right stop and patiently await the next bus, hoping that my transfer card will remain valid.
11:31 AM: Victory is mine! Not only is my card accepted, but the bus takes me (almost) directly to Aldo’s house, with the caveat that I once again overshoot the stop and have to hike about 300 yards up the hill with my baggage.
11:40 AM: Some six hours after arriving in France, I reach my final destination. To get from San Francisco to Bihorel, I have taken one car ride, two airplanes, three buses, two metro lines, and one high-speed train. I ring the doorbell at Aldo’s place, and he and Matt are happy to see me, or at least the Skoal that I had agreed to bring back from the United States. If French baseball were prison- which fortunately, it is not- Skoal would replace cigarettes as the de facto jailyard currency in about 2.3 seconds.
11:42 AM: I sleep the sleep of kings.
*i.e., me.
**My favorite story about the old Packers tailback was that it was said that “Jim Brown would give you the knee and then take it away. Jim Taylor would give you the knee and then try to drive it through your spine.” A straight-ahead, north-south running back from the old school.
p.s. Thanks to my buddy Coops, I’ve recently discovered The Dugout, an occasionally hilarious parody site proclaiming its status as the “official chatroom of Major League Baseball.” It’s hit or miss, but I found these two entries particularly entertaining.