Athletic Anecdotes and Another 10K

post 10k, part deux
5/19/2009
New Personal Best : 65 minutes, 51 seconds
(nearly 6 minutes faster than the first one)

When I am running, even when I am running inside, at the gym, I see many interesting things. I suspect that many strange things also happen at gyms in the US, but here in France, gym culture is especially peculiar:

(1) yesterday, when I got to the gym and went to the locker room, I watched as a young lady who was changing out of her work-out gear into her street clothes
removed a large set of hoop earrings from her ears and replaced them with a larger set of hoop earrings. She has designated exercise jewelry.
(2) also yesterday, a large asian woman -- who is new to the gym-- was working with one of the personal trainers. she was wearing a very small leotard with no...erm... supportive undergarments. the trainer tried to get her to run on the treadmill next to me, but when he increased the pace, she fell. not stumbled. fell, all the way down, and then rolled all the way off the treadmill to the wall. She didn't seem hurt, and I was impressed that the leotard remained intact.

Have you seen strange things like this happen at your gym? Feel free to share your anecdotes in the comments.

2000 km later...

My rear tire, which has been replaced after covering around 4500 miles since last August.

Our first visitors have come and gone and our next guests are a few weeks off. Rebecca's students are on vacation for their trimester break and the weather has been mostly sunny. With the free time and nice weather, I have been trying to cram in as much biking as possible. Some to get in better shape, but mostly to keep exploring the hidden corners of the Poitou-Charentes Region.

I won't be entering any races anytime soon (edit: apparently I will be entering races), but being able to go a little farther and faster allows me to cover more ground and keep expanding the territory available for exploration.

The town of Le Blanc, which I visited for the first time on a recent 140km ride (not my photo)

After riding the same routes for much of the winter, I've been trying to map out a new route at least twice a week. The spring greenery and sunshine have also added new life to old routes.

The thing about riding around Poitiers that I will miss the most is the infinitely varying terrain. The gently rolling hills with the roads that gracefully twist and turn to find the path of least resistance across the undulating landscape. A road system diametrically opposed to the rigidly numeric grids of Central Illinois.

Champaign-Urbana, IL
Those boxes aren't lines of latitude or longitude, those are ROADS!

So, while Rebecca was charting her increases in speed, distance, and incline on foot, I decided to set some goals of my own. I came up with the relatively arbitrary goal of cycling 2000km during the month of April.

This didn't sound too bad, it is more than I've ever done in one month, but there seemed to be enough free time in my schedule and the sunshine was becoming more frequent.

I got off to a slow start, with rain and the threat of rain keeping me off the bike for a few days each of the first two weeks of April. If you've seen pictures of my bike in earlier posts, you know that it is equipped to handle the rain with full fenders and a mudguard. These are fine for running errands around Poitiers in the rain, or sightseeing in Berlin, Paris, Toulouse, or Bordeaux in winter showers, but the prospect of riding for 3-4 hours in soaking rain makes it seem more like a job than a pursuit of happiness.

My bike rides during the month of April

I barely made it to 2000 km for the month. The last few days were a little rainy and I wasn't able to ride as much as I would have liked. The last day was overcast for the first two and a half hours of riding, then it started raining and I had to keep going for another hour and a half to make it 2000 km for the month.

In pushing the boundaries of my cycling universe, an unexpected hurdle was consuming enough food to sustain me for the occasional 140 km ride. Eating breakfast, lunch, during-ride snack, post-ride meal, pre-dinner snack, dinner, and making sure there are enough calories in all those meals to replace the ~3300 burned during a 5 hour ride (plus the 1600 burned when I'm not on the bike) can be a little disconcerting.

After riding for a few days in a row, I found myself very lethargic. I mentioned this to Rebecca and we did a few calculations and found that I was not eating enough to replace the calories consumed during 4 days of riding. This came as a bit of a surprise since I eat a lot of food, snacking throughout the day and consuming 4-5 normal portions at dinner.

So now I've been trying to eat a little smarter by consuming more fat (hooray, duck fat, butter, cream, etc.) and protein (beans and meat) and fruit.

This has worked out great so far. I'm not nearly as tired after multi-hour rides and can actually accomplish things around town shortly after getting off the bike. Now that I feel more comfortable going longer distances the train+bike adventures will continue farther afield. We are going to visit Tours tomorrow. It is an hour away by train and 116km (4+ hours by bike). We picked Tours partly because one of Rebecca's colleagues from ESIP lives in Tours and has volunteered to steer us to interesting sights (thanks Ann!), and also because it is the right distance away through the interesting terrain of the Indre et Loire department.

We've been told that Tours leaves a little to be desired from the tourist perspective. Perhaps this is because it was bombed heavily during WWII and its Palais de Justice was the site of the Nazi headquarters for central France. Nevertheless, it is a little larger than Poitiers and hopefully we'll find some interesting things there to tell you about.

Paris from the Perspective of a Non-French Person

The purpose of this post is to give guidance to tourists and visitors to Paris (and other French tourist towns).  If you want to add to our commentary or dispute some point we've made -- please do so in the comments!!  

Thanks --ARAD

image from smh.com.au

We hope you've been well as we've been traipsing around Poitiers and Paris with Jefe's family.  (And thank you if you are still reading...)

Now that we've been to Paris three times as "resident aliens" (i.e. not counting the times we came before moving to France), we feel like we're beginning to know our way around, which areas we enjoy and which ones to avoid like the plague. 

When people visit Paris, they think all the people they see (at least all those who aren't looking at maps) are Parisiens. Well, that probably isn't the case. While exact numbers are hard to come by, Paris is host to at least 9 million non-French tourists every year, and at least that many French tourists.

Some people (e.g. us) try and hide the fact that they are tourists so that the waiters don't start speaking English before you even sit down. To be hired in a restaurant or cafe in Paris, it's clear that you must prove that you are fluent in French and English. I think preferential treatment must also be given to applicants who have cultivated a special blend of hackneyed "bad English" pronunciation, patience, and a side of caffeine addiction. Unfortunately, Jefe and his backpack and unfashionable coat are usually a give-away. But that's ok, because we ride bikes, we go places most people don't, avoid the places that most people flock to, and we even save some cash at lunch by packing a snack to eat in the numerous parks and gardens (when it isn't raining/freezing).

Paris can be a little intimidating because it feels like everyone is judging you, and they are, the French being an especially opinionated people. The way you dress (she's not wearing black?! OMD --"ouh mon dieu" the French equivalent of OMG), where you eat, what you drink (a Pinot Noir from Alsace with veal liver?!?!?), how you tie your scarf.

Correct:

Incorrect:

Even which hand you hold your fork with. It's very difficult to switch from the zig-zag style of eating to the Continental style. Almost as difficult as learning to write with the opposite hand. But, it's worth it to teach yourself, especially if you are the type of person (e.g. me) who thinks that the patrons and waitstaff in French restaurants are surreptitiously watching you cut into your food and silently judging you. Maybe if you learn to eat properly, they won't think you're a tourist. Oh wait, everyone is a tourist.

Nowadays, we don't have to look at the map quite as often, and even I know which way north is and how to get to the airport (I'm even getting good at helping out lost tourists). I could also give pretty good directions around Le Marais, one of the trendy shopping areas in the 3rd and 4th arondissements.

We're always looking for weird art, and Paris is happy to oblige with many controversial exhibits (which they've conveniently labeled as such). Since the worst minority oppression takes place in the suburbs, Paris has to import their controversy. In this case, from the U.S. in the form of David LaChapelle.

One photo from the series "Jesus is my homeboy" by David LaChapelle

And since I like making lists, here's another one:

How To Look Like a Tourist in France: Top Ten

1. Ask someone for directions.  Extra points if the person turns out to be another tourist.

2. Wear jogging shoes.  Extra points if they're white.  (I still walk to the gym already wearing my gym clothes.  I also--gasp--leave the gym, visibly sweaty, still wearing said gym clothes, and walk home.  I know that it identifies me as a foreigner, I just don't care.)

3. Sport multi-colored eyeshadow, fake bake, or cakey foundation.  French girls typically go for "le smoky eye" look with neutral face and lips.

le smoky eye

4. Wear anything that is visibly optimized for comfort.  Fleece is an excellent example.

5. Count with your hand incorrectly: the French start with the thumb, not the index finger.

6. Hesitate for more than 10 seconds when someone asks you a question in French.  You will know that 10 seconds have passed because he or she will repeat their question in English.

7. Only order a plat instead of the whole formule. Extra credit if you order the wrong kind of wine, too. 

8. Stop in the middle of the street to take pictures of a building.

9. Travel in a group of more than 5 people.

and of course...

10. Start speaking.

WTF?

We've been fortunate to be hosting a few visitors lately. We're trying to impress them as much as possible with our intimate knowledge of Poitiers and French culture. This can be a little time consuming. So while we gallivant around Poitiers and Paris, pointing out French quirks and foibles, here are a few photos to keep you entertained until we get around to writing again...

Jefe and Josh eating dessert from Claud Lafond, the local high-end pastry shop (by Rebecca)


La Serrurerie (by Josh)


Parc Blossac at Night (by Josh)


The town of L'Isle Jourdain along the Vienne River (by Jefe)


The Grand Prix de Buxerolles, 12 laps totalling 155km (by Jefe)


Eglise St. Pierre in Chauvigny, immaculately restored (by Jim)

***Just wanted to clarify that Jefe meant that the picture was taken by Jim.  

Jim did not immaculately restore the Eglise St. Pierre.

-Rebecca's edit 4/1/09

Travel Math

Now that I've been riding a bike through the countrysides of Poitou-Charentes for nearly five months, new roads and towns are getting harder to come by. I've covered some of the smoother, more scenic routes dozens of times. In order to expand the limits of my cycling universe, exploring more routes and towns farther from Poitiers, I've decided to combine the two most convenient forms of travel here, bikes and trains.

Instead of biking in loops, always ending up back home, I've decided to try riding one way and taking the train back. The weather has been improving and I'm in much better shape than when I got here, making longer rides much more enjoyable. In addition, I can eat lunch and spend an hour or two exploring a city before hopping on the train back to Poitiers with my bike.

First destination: Niort.
Niort is around 80km from Poitiers, and is almost the same size. Biking there takes about 3-3.5 hours. Since Rebecca's students don't have class this week (because of Carnaval? Or Ash Wednesday? We're not really sure) she decided to take the train to Niort so we could have lunch together and explore on foot.

First step: Wake up early. Normally, I ride in the afternoon, but to make it to Niort in time for lunch, I'd have to leave by 9:30am. The trains stop running before I would be able to finish dinner, so I have to stick with lunch.

Wake up Jefe!

I got to Niort a bit before Rebecca's train was scheduled to come in, so I rode around a little to familiarize myself with some of the parts of town. Then I went to the train station...

...where I met Rebecca and got to change into real clothes (which Rebecca had kindly brought for me).

We found a nice place for lunch. Actually, we were looking in the window of a random place and then a customer came out to smoke his post-lunch clope, and he pretty much forced us to go in.

We sat down to recount our adventures of the morning. Rebecca *just barely* made it to the train on time thanks to the self-service ticket kiosks and their convenient option to "buy a ticket for a train that is departing immediately." Jefe found a really nice route from Poitiers to Niort with lots of smooth roads, nice scenery and not much traffic.

The part between Mothe St. Heray and Chavagné is especially nice, with views down into the neighboring valley.

Rebecca ordered une salade de thon, and Jefe had the plat du jour: roast chicken with spanish rice. We had just about finished up when...

--ok, now I have to recount an exchange I had with the waiter at lunch. It's embarrassing for me, but I feel that it bears an important lesson about French café culture--

...after the meal (in french)

Waiter: Vous êtes terminés? C'était bien? Vous voulez un dessert?
All done? How was it? Would you like some dessert?

Me: Non, merci, euh... {il donne un coup d'oeil a Rebecca} un dessert, peut-être?
No thanks, uh...{glancing at Rebecca} how about a dessert?

For some reason, I thought he had asked if I wanted the bill (l'addition). Perhaps it was my fatigued state, I'm not sure. Besides the obvious humor in rejecting and then asking for the same thing in a single sentence, Rebecca reminded me of two things one must understand about French waiters: (1) they will never offer the bill, and will wait until you ask for it (unless you're just getting coffee or drinks, or if you're in Paris & are perceived by the waitstaff as incompetent to do such things properly) and (2) they will always offer dessert. How I could have mis-heard and failed to take into account these two cardinal rules of the café, I will never know.

Giggling, we wandered through the streets of Niort, stopped by the Donjon, and island hopped in the middle of the Sèvre Niortaise River. We also saw this interesting alternative to standard bollards.

Serpent guarding the pedestrians from the evil cars

When it came time to leave, we got tickets for a local (TER) train to Poitiers. I packed my bike up for the train ride and covered it with a fitted bedsheet that Rebecca got that morning just for this purpose.

So much easier than taking it fully apart!

Everything worked out great. I got to try out some new roads, and we both got to explore a new place. This leads me to my new Theory of Travel Math:

more sweet math, for all you nerdfighters

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

I sewed curtains and painted a picture of a goat instead of doing real work

Patricia Highsmith once said, "My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people."

Although I am inclined to agree, I have mixed feelings about self-sequestration.  It's not that I'm afraid of being a cliché (such as the antisocial jerk or the solipsist in the ivory tower).  I think the problem is that, left to my own devices, I tend to be imaginative, but unproductive.  At least not productive in tangible ways.  

For instance, I might sit for hours, just reading through old seminar papers (or even worse, my bachelor's thesis). I might read reviews of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart's album, marveling at how famous my old Brooklyn friends are getting.  I might decide I need to watch all of the brotherhood2.0 videos, trying to understand the way fame happens gradually, memetically, and how it changes people.  I might walk around the shops of Poitiers, not buying anything, just listening in on French people's conversations.  I might follow Jefe around random galleries, helping him collect interesting flyers and free postcards.

I found this painting on a flyer in an architecture gallery

the woman looks uncannily like my mother

For me, productivity has always been unpredictable.  My dad once put it perfectly when he said, "for someone so ambitious, I find it interesting that when there's something you really don't want to do, you put all of your energy into finding ways not to do it."

I suppose this is a circuitous way of fessing up. 

I've found it difficult to be consistently productive since we moved to France.     Of course, I've really thrown myself into the teaching and the students, but in terms of "my work" (I gagged when I wrote that)...not so much.

It's been ages since I've even singly-authored one of these posts.  Sorry.

BUT, around the beginning of January, this sluggishness started weighing on me.  Maybe it's the timing (and I certainly wasn't the only one) but I suddenly had a burst of energy.  A big one. Basically, in the last two months, I've drafted two dissertation chapters, sketched out a journal article, outlined two conference proposals, created two new special topics courses, applied for two jobs, and written a fellowship application.  Oh, and started training for a 10k (March 22).

The question now is how to maintain my momentum.  Any suggestions?  What do you do to keep yourselves productive?  How do you keep from oscillating between frenzy and stupor?  Or is maintenance a myth?  I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this.

You can't win 'em all...

As evidenced by our recent run of "nyah-nyah" posts, we have been perpetually surprised by the tastiness of things that we've never tried before: duck fat, foie gras, roasted beets, cured donkey sausage (not to be confused with ass sausage--see below), vin chaud, and aged goat cheese among other things. But we feel it is our duty, dear Reader, to admit that we've had some failures, too. Yes, we have tried a few things that someone with decorum would describe as "acquired tastes" (ones we have clearly not yet acquired).

The first of the missteps occurred when Jeff went to the grocery store looking for sausage for a meal of hors d'œuvre. Occasionally, we make a whole meal out of grazing on assorted cured sausages, cheeses, roasted beets, fresh pears and apples, cornichons, artichoke hearts, french bread (for Jeff), and corn cakes (for Rebecca). So, Jeff decided to get some andouille sausage. The concentric circles made it looked a little different than the cajun andouille he had seen back home, but always the adventurous fellow, he got it anyway.

He brought the sausage home and opened it, and was immediately struck with a strange smell....a vaguely barnyard smell. And as anyone who has visited a barnyard knows, the main component of this smell is manure; pig manure in this case (North Carolinians will appreciate the special nastiness associated with the smell of pig farms). Turns out French andouille (specifically the andouille de Guémené that Jeff bought) is made entirely of *gags* pig intestines and rectums; this would be called chitterlings sausage in the U.S. In any case, the smell was unsettling, and only got worse when he tried to cook it. I opted not to have any.

Jeff has tried his share of offal, from chicken gizzards and sheep's head, to sweetbreads, and cow tongue (including delicious cow-tongue tacos in Chicago), but this was a little much. In a final blow to his ego, we discovered that andouille also means 'fool' in French.

Another recent mishap concerned an impetuous decision to buy a bottle of soupe de poissons (puréed fish soup) from the Saturday market. I remember eating something like this back when I was in France as a tweenager. I remember it tasting good, kind of like a French version of New England clam chowder. So I persuaded Jeff (who, despite his aforementioned adventurousness, is always a little tentative when it comes to things of the sea because of his land-locked upbringing) to buy this:

We decided to heat it up, and to add leeks, carrots, and spinach. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, it wasn't. It was VERY fishy, so fishy that Jeff "the Iron Stomach" was only able to eat a few bites. When someone says "something smells fishy," it was that kind of fishy.

It's a good thing I also made a cornbread to go with it or Jeff might have starved.

I'm still not exactly sure what went wrong with the soupe de poissons...should we have mixed it with something else? Maybe a strong soup base like cream of potato? Or something acidic like tomato? Well, the "leftovers" (can you call them "leftovers" if you didn't eat any to begin with?) are burning a hole through our fridge, so if anyone has any suggestions, speak now or we'll have to throw them out...