The last day in Rome was a strange mixture: I had actually cranked out ten final exams on Friday, much to my surprise, and I think because I was starting the pile from last-in first, I was impressed by some of the excellent work I was seeing. Unless they were absolutely bullshitting me, these kids had gotten it on some basic points about both the Tour itself and their own experiences pushing themselves outside their comfort zones. I just felt a generally better vibe during the final exam than I had last year, and I have to say that was a relief.
Some folks headed for the beach afterward despite the threatening weather, while I retreated to the faculty lounge and began marking. With only two more organizational hurdles to go--the group dinner at a pizzeria on the Via Crescenzia, and the mass exodus the next day--I could smell the finish line. We didn't have to leave anyone behind (even though some of the beachgoers had to change quickly for our early reservation), and the restaurant probably thanked their lucky stars that we were there, because the rain and thunder and lightning just raged as we waited somewhat long for our pretty-average pizzas downstairs--almost no one was out and about by the time we dragged ourselves out of there, as the rain began to ease off, and I dumped my 700 euro in cash on the grateful proprietor.
Of course nothing is simple: I packed a little that night, and turned in as some of the ducklings went off to seek their destiny in clubs at midnight, but evidently some of them had a bit of a rough time--after my long long run along the wet riverbank I woke up at 5 AM to pee and encountered a few stragglers coming in. I learned later that the guys had spent much of the evening protecting the gals--"non-stop cock-blocking," as Fab Fabe the Communications Maven put it.
David the chronically late head-in-the-clouds philosophy student from Berkeley nearly missed his 7:30 van, making it only because I stuffed his suitcase after rousting him from fetal position where his fed-up roommate had left him, fully clothed and skunk-drunk. That was close, but not as hair-raising as getting the news that one girl's roommate hadn't shown up, as of 8 o'clock. I appreciated the fact that her roommate hadn't told me until after I had shoved David out the door--she actually had waited to tell me, figuring I didn't need the extra stress! It was at this point that I started having "Oh No!" flashes, of "I spoke too soon," since this person didn't have a cell phone and hadn't been seen since 4 AM. So much for the buddy system. I fished the emergency-procedure stuff out of the trash can (literally) and finished my packing so that I could put everything into the classroom downstairs as people dribbled away after their 9 AM out-of-the-rooms deadline.
As luck would have it, the missing duckling showed up at around 8:30, looking none the worse for wear (from her confidential health form I knew that she was on birth control, but please oh please don't let her have done something stupid-stupid), and by 9 the bulk of the students were on their way to the airport. After that it was a mix of paper-marking, sending off of a few stragglers, and a few errands close by, as one group of ducklings dozed the day away before a late train. This is the way the tour ends, not with a bang but a whimper, I suppose.
Figuring it was best to get to leave plenty of time to get to Termini for my train, I turned in my key and left early enough to have been able to grab a cab if there'd been a screw-up on the Metro; of course this meant that I was in the main station way early, without a track number to go to, so I sort of zoned out for a while and marvelled at the speed at which the month had passed. With only myself to take care of, moving around was eerily easy, although I wasn't doing what my students usually did, which was foraging for junk food--I already had some dinner materials, and was counting on being able to score more when I got to Milano, which turned out to be not such a great idea.
The "Freccia Rossa" or "Red Dart" left on time, and blasted north in well under half the time our sleeper train had taken a week before. I finished the last couple of finals, and began trying to compute grades. With half the class grade being participation / citizenship / in-class work, and the other half being the two papers and the final, I had quite a bit of latitude to reward the good and punish the evil, but one also inevitably balances a sense of who is likely to make a stink, and whose work grade didn't really capture his or her contribution to the health and success of the group as a whole. In the end I think I have assigned more A's and A-'s than I ever have, but I don't feel I am gypping Uncle Charles who pays the bills. So many of these kids so obviously got it in ways I hadn't noted with last year's group, not just experientially but on the academic side as well, that I didn't feel as I was selling out my standards.
The cavernous Milano Centrale was even more surreal this time around, especially as I cautiously passed under this amazing cherry-picker contraption. I honestly could barely tell that there was a basket on the end with a guy in it, pulling the plastic-wrap off this 20-by30-meter banner: For some reason this whole operation caught my eye, realizing even with my rusty knowledge of physics just how close to the edge these people were cutting it, both in terms of the thickness of the shafts and the sheer length of the levers involved: the dude was swaying back and forth each time he breathed, and the spidery legs seemingly too closely placed to provide a shred of stability for the whole thing.
Probably this was like the crazy climbers and their 6 mm ropes, the skiers blasting down glaciers trusting every snow-bridge, and the mountain bikers doing completely insane jumps and hops above cliffs (or, I suppose, like the wannabe Michael Schumachers treating the Autostrada like a Formula I racecourse), but it made an impression on my addled brain. I kept thinking, if it falls it will start really slowly, but will gather steam in a horrifying way.
Then it was onto the couchette for Dijon, this time with five other people including an American dad and his daughter, his French cousin, and a nice French couple. I was so tired I barely held on for midnight when the dude broke out a split of champagne to celebrate his daughter's 18th birthday, and I made sure I set my alarm for 5 AM so I wouldn't miss my stop. The A/C worked, I slept decently, and the condx woke me up for Dijon; luckily I kept an Aussie couple from getting off too early, and then it was into the train station for another bout with SNCF destiny, as I didn't have an official ticket, just my confirmation of online transaction.
By the way, file this under "Ads you won't see in the US of A."
As luck would have it, this being Sunday, none of the guichets was open, but the information desk was, and though the lady tried hard, my chip-less credit card wouldn't satisfy the ticket-retrieval machine and things were looking slightly dicey for me. But I had told the lady how nice people had been the previous summer in Dijon (when one of her colleagues had helped Amelie and Alex and me cope with our botched connection to Clermont-Ferrand and another of Julius' summer rentals after our night train had run late--not only had they figured out a route for us, when they realized the train we needed was going to leave without us, one guy walkie-talkied the dude on the train and walked us three platforms over there himself), and even though nothing was open, she couldn't annul this ticket and issue me a new one, and just as I was sure that I was going to end up in Gallic Shrug Land (where the time is always, "Yes, this is a problem, M'sieur, but it is . . . your problem"), she looked up and saw a slightly tired looking woman with her daughter, asked her, is this e-mail confirmation thingie OK? and when the woman looked it over, saw the seat number and the credit card digits and everything and nodded, the thought crossed my mind that this was some sort of elaborate joke on tired American tourist guy. However, SNCF lady smiled widely and responded to my unworded "Who's she?" with "Elle est La Dame" (the queen, the lady), and if she says it's OK, it's OK. La Dame was on her way to starting her vacation down in the Midi (it was August 1st after all), and when I saw her a half-hour later she was in full SNCF regalia with her official purse and punch and all that, her daughter tagging along behind (like a duckling, I thought). Nice information-desk lady gave me a nice little wink-and-nod from the platform as the train pulled away, and when I left in Valence I wished the conductor a very bonne vacance and threw in a few mercis for good measure. Chalk up another one to smiling and not being pushy, say I.
Once on the train I sprawled quite comfortably and didn't moan too much from the hunger, figuring I could grab something from the Valence station. I amused myself with my grading spreadsheet and some other paperwork, and was at the futuristic station before I knew it. Again, hats off to French transit infrastructure, and this station was light and clean and open, with working escalators and ramps and parking that seemed totally logical to my untrained eye. Get thee behind me, Amtrak--and the pain-au-chocolat at the little resto / bar was fantastic to my hungry palate. The train actually had arrived a little early, so Julius met me as I was waiting in the tiny line to buy my reservation for Charles de Gaulle for Friday, the dude noticing that I had a first class railpass so my charge was a whopping 3 euro. Too bad I hadn't been Johnny On The Spot when I had gone from Rome I suppose--I'd had to make do with non-Eurail fares because of the seat blackouts, but what the heck--a hundred bucks here or there in amongst this trip was not as important as it used to be. So strange to think that way after so many years of impoverished-student travel (as in, taking the gondola up to a hike in Chamonix, and then walking the 5 miles and 4000 feet down to save a few francs so I could stay another couple of nights in my illicit campsite up the hill from the highway).
Twas great to see the Big J again, and as we made our somewhat tortuous way back to the gite--there was some road construction (I always like the French "Deviation" instead of our "detour")-- we started planning rides and he caught me up on the improvements to the bike. It was actually kind of funny to experience disorientation the first couple of days, as our gite was located in a fold of the big old Michelin map that Julius was using, and neither of us could quite figure out just where on the crapped-out void our little place was--it turned out that the "town" of Rochefort-en-Valdaine is really just a couple of houses including ours, and that the map actually did correspond to on-the-ground reality once you realized that basic fact. I confess I was pretty tired, and after lunch we did a slightly warm ride, then a swim, and I zonked out into a nap before 15 minutes had passed, much to the amusement of Emily, a gifted mimic who finds the susurration of my napping particularly risible.
What Julius and I did on Wednesday the 4th was one of the best rides of my life. Googlemaps this one: Rochefort-en-Valdaine-> la Begude-de-Mazenc-> Sallettes-> Soyans-> Saou-> Col de Lauzens-> Saillans-> St. Nazaire-en-Desert-> Col de Roustans-> LaMotte-> Col de Pre Guittard-> Bouvieres-> Crupies-> Vesc-> Dielefit-> la Begude-> Rochefort. 171 Km, about 107 miles. 
Rolling in this country is so amazing--so much variety, so much terrain, and nothing too too hard or sustained. We worked it pretty well, with plenty of water breaks, stopping in Saillans at a bakery for a delicious whole wheat nut-and-chocolate bar thingie, a leisurely lunch in St Nazaire, and some well-traveled ZonePerfect bars toward the end of the day when we needed a little extra burst of energy. 
As usual, the end of the ride was a mixture: looking forward to the swim at the end, but a strange sadness that the ride itself had to end. These interludes sustain my soul somehow--the connection to family, the shared workout, the sense that we are so fortunate to love doing these things together, and make the time to do so even with the logistical barriers we face. I've got to keep this in perspective and seize the opportunity, damn the airplane ticket prices and jetlag--life is too short not to do this.
[Crazy to be going 200mph on the ground with the power stanchions flipping past like a picket fence. Why can't we do this in California? I don't even want to think about how many miles of high-speed rail we could install of the price of just a month of these stupid wars we're fighting...]
(one of my dad's impatiences was with airports that insisted on calling themselves International when they had a couple of flights to Mexico or Canada, thank you Fresno or Reno) and schlepping over to Terminal 2A and an intimidating but decently moving American Airlines line (only half an hour to get through, then baggage and security, with the whole process from train to gate taking an hour total), all the time enjoying the fact that I was not traveling in a big group, and could talk or not talk to neighbors (lots of 'merican being spoken, always a bit jarring). I don't know whether you can tell from the photo, but the destinations go from Amsterdam and Brazzaville to Yemen and Zanzibar, practically.
