Europe Day 7

 On day 7, we found out that parking in the hotel garage is extra and some other bullshit, honestly I stopped listening after a while when the receptionist continued to explain how awfully snobbish her hotel was, charging for laundering towels and for "opening the phone line". I thought i could at least get my bike ride done, so I went to the bike rental store (~30 min. walk, no free cabs) and found out they wanted a credit card to be able to reserve the bike. Then I walked back to the hotel and my parents urged me to try again, this time with their credit card, so we all started walking down the promenade. My dad and i continued on while my mom, sister and cousin stopped to sit by the pebble beach, and when him and I finally made it back to the rental place, we found out it was closed. From 12 pm to 3 pm in the afternoon. What a bunch of lazy sons of bitches. The one thing I was looking forward to doing in Europe and I didn't get to do it, and now I'm gonna get dragged on to Rome and Venice and all these other places to go around "seeing" things that I don't really want to see because it would just be unbearably exhausting to do so. I know I sound like I'm whining, but the honest truth is that I don't actually have the stamina to walk all over Paris (or Rome, for that matter) in a day just to see these historic things that I would read about in books or watch documentaries about on TV. I barely know anything about them. I would be content to get a map, cross out the supposed "bad areas" and then just go walking through the city, and of I stumble upon something then fine, if I don't then fine. On the way back to the hotel, I stopped by a bike store (something the rental place told me did not exist around here, what a bunch of morons) and the bike shop owner impressed the hell out of me. The manager of my bike shop in Toronto is obese, always concerned with whatever is going on at his computer, and doesn't look or sound like he has done a lot of riding either recreationally or professionally. He's a good guy and he's tried his best in the past to hook me up, so i respect him for having those qualities for sure, but he's not this guy. This guy looks like he's put back a few hundred thousand miles on his custom carbon bike (which was hanging in the shop, i instantly picked it out as being radically different from the other stuff he had hanging there), and he actually admitted that the French aren't as into cycling as they would like to believe. He said that the functionality of cycling, the attitude toward cycling, and the style of riding in France has not impressed him at all when he compared it against that of two other countries in the Union: Holland and Germany. Looks like those are where the next European vacation should be. Or I'll just not go there because this vacation was so shitty. He showed me his bike, and one thing of which I can be proud is that, when he asked me to guess the weight of the bike, I was off by only 200 grams, (i said 6.8 kilos, he answered that it was 7). I went back home to a dark empty hotel room, resting my feet on a sofa bed. At least nothing bad can happen if I don't try to do anything.

I eventually regained the energy to go back out, and ended up buying goat cheese, caviar, prosciutto, black tapenade, smoked salmon and crackers at a nearby carrefour. I made an assortment of hors d'oeuvres in the room, and my family was presently surprised upon returning to the hotel. Later that day, after the internet connection was made, I sheepishly searched on the internet for a bike rental place in Mestre, the town in which we are staying which is near Venice. I found one, and fired out an e-mail. The next day (Day 8), I called and actually got someone on the line, and he said he would get back to me with a quote by the end of the day. He has not yet done so, but still, there is hope. In these parts, that sort of unconditional hope can be a terribly dangerous thing.

At the grocery store, I wanted a plastic bag and asked for one, and the cashier answered that it was 12 centi. The man in line behind me offered to get it for me. That was, quite literally, the highlight of my day. That and guessing the weight of that retired pro's bike. That cannot be taken from me. As under 15 lbs. is the unofficial, unspoken yet understood standard for any race bike, that I guessed correctly is also honestly worth basically nothing.