I had ordered a guidebook off Amazon.com a few weeks before, and, luckily, it arrived in time at the Chateau in Bordeaux. Not really knowing what I had bought, I opened it to discover several week-long bike trips through various regions of France, complete with maps, lists of accommodations, and descriptions of the sights worth seeing. I chose a route that began and ended relatively close to Paris so that we could save on travel costs and maximize biking time. The book seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. However, when I turned to the chapter on what kind of bikes to rent, I was a bit dismayed to find this advice:

If you haven’t already got a bike, make sure you buy one from a reputable bike shop.

It then continued with a long discussion weighing the pros and cons of composite aluminum frames, and extolling the virtues of getting a quality, well-fitted racing bike. “Uh oh,” I thought “maybe this is a bit over my head.” I tried work out the details over the internet; it was very difficult for two reasons: the city of Paris recently unveiled a new public bike sharing system, called Vélib. It is designed for short trips around the city; with the swipe of a card, you can take a Velib bike at any one of hundreds of bike stands, and return it to any other within an hour. It has worked very well, but it had the side effect of reducing the number of bike rental shops, since many tourists find the Vélib much simpler for the more typical intra-paris trips. The other problem: all the bike shops in Paris are run by Parisians. This means that phone calls will seldom be returned or answered, websites are rarely updated, and e-mails are usually ignored. My attempts to find a bike shop beforehand—necessarily limited by intermittent internet access—all failed.

So I showed up at Gare du Nord on Monday with a book in my hand and very little else. Luckily, just about everything that could have gone wrong did not. We found within the station a very inexpensive place to store the luggage we didn’t need. A tourist office provided me with a list of recommended bike shops and directions to them, and and inexpensive phone call verified that one of them was open. Of course, this bike shop, like all the others, was run by Parisians, so when we showed up 20 minutes later, it was locked and no one was there. I called again from a payphone at a nearby park, and someone picked up to say he had stepped out for a few minutes. Go figure.

Soon enough, though we were stepping of the RER into the Charles-du-Gaulle Airport station at the end of the line. By then it was around seven, so we had a little less than three hours of daylight yet. The highways around the airport had recently been upgraded, so the guidebook was out of date. After a few wrong turns put us on a four-lane road with 130 kph traffic, we stopped at a gas station to purchase a new map. Soon we discovered our error, and we were on our way.

We made it about halfway through the first day’s route when it started to get dark. We stopped for dinner at a truck stop, which, despite the manly paraphernalia on the walls and the burly drivers eating dinner there, was still amusingly French. The food and wine were inexpensive but excellent, and even the 300 pound men had impeccable table manners. We stopped afterwords at a “Formule Un” hotel nearby. I have never seen a place like this in the States. It was an entirely automated building; instead of a receptionist there was a machine that took your credit card and gave you a code for your room. The showers and baths were all self-cleaning. I think that once a day a maid stopped by for a few hours, but that was it.

As it happened we arrived at the same time as some bikers from the Netherlands who were doing the same thing as us. There were also a handful of french truckers who were already intoxicated. We stayed up late, talked, and played cards. Around midnight, one of the drunk truckers expressed (in French—none of them spoke english very well—his desire for some snacks and more booze). Since he and his friends were already wasted, he asked me to drive his truck into the nearest town a few miles away to stop at a convenience store. “Why not?” I thought. Luckily, he wasn’t driving an 18-wheeler, but it was still somewhat difficult to maneuver, especially when I was following contradictory directions in slurred French. We pulled into the centre-ville of Meaux, and he motioned for me to stop in front of a closed shop. Confused, I hit the brakes. He hopped out and started banging on the door. After a minute or two a bewildered store owner poked his head out of the alley to ask what he wanted. “Some beer and snacks.” We were allowed inside where we filled our arms with as many bottles and bags of chips as we could carry, and soon we were on our way back to Formule Un.  As we left the town, we passed a beautiful Cathedral, and my intoxicated copilot motioned again for me to stop so he could pee on the beautiful 12th-century structure. I wish I had had a camera.

The next day we started off early, determined to make us for lost time. The route paralleled the beautiful Canal d’Ourcq, below:

We completed the remainder of the first route by around 1 and enjoyed a 2-hour lunch at a pizzeria in Charly-sur-Marne

The next segment of the trip paralleled the Marne river of WWI fame.

As we worked our way from town to town, it seemed that every cluster of more than 10 houses had three things: both a beautiful gothic or romanesque church, a monument to the soldiers from that town who died in the Great War, and at least two champagne vineyards, like this one:

We arrived at our next destination, a town called Dormans, with plenty of time to spare before dark. Feeling proud of our rustic adventure, both Jamie and I were enthusiastic about taking it to the next level by camping that night. We used the guidebook to find a campground near town, and rented a plot of grass for nine euros. The next stop was a French version of Big Lots where we bought a delicious feast of wine, cheese, chocolate, fruit, canned salade niçoise, and, for sleeping, a lawn chair pillow. The idea was to put on every piece of clothing we had, and sleep on the pillow, covered by a poncho. Great idea, right? If you replied “no, you idiot” to that last question, then congratulations, you’re right! I have never been that cold in my life. The temperature was somewhat deceptive, because even though we ate our dinner comfortably outside after the sun had set, there is a serious difference between the perceived temperature when you are moving around and eating, and when you are lying still. As soon as there was a little bit of light in the sky, we stopped pretending to sleep and started on the next leg. Unfortunitely, this segment began with a long climb out of the Marne valley into the open countryside. Maybe I should take a second to say something about my friend Jamie. I didn’t know him before joining the whiffs, but he’s a really fun, relaxed, practical and flexible guy. And its a good thing too because if he had any less of those qualities, this debacle surely would have ended the trip early.

We rode for a few hours before crossing over the LGV Est tracks. We stopped for a few minutes to see if a train would come by. Sure enough, a Strasbourg-bound TGV passed under us at full speed. I got a video of it; Jamie was joking about how we might be able to pick up a Wi-Fi signal from the passing train. It was a bit too fast, though, as you can see:

After a late breakfast, we took a small detour to see the Ainse-Marne American cemetary, which is the second-largest American cemetary in Europe. It was pretty moving to see so many dead Americans in a foreign country.

In spite of our occational disagreement, American and France really do a have a special relationship. The entire place was extremely well maintained—there were four gardners there trimming and grooming—though it was unclear which government was paying. There was a large monument at one side of the complex:

Within one of the sides of a monument was a room with a stone map that showed which peices of ground were taken by American troops. We realized that we had basically be traveling through the former battlefield for the entire trip.

I had never realized how close the Germans had come to taking Paris, but we could really feel how close we were because we traveled every kilometer powered by just our legs.

A few hours after the cemetery, we stumbled accross the ruins of an 11th century abbey that had been destroyed in the French Revolution. It was very beautiful, and very sad that it was desecrated.

On the way to our final destination, we took a wrong turn and ended up on a highway. We stumbled on a construction crew repaving the road, and they were very helpful in directing us to a safer route. I was proud that I was able to handle the entire situation in French, because none of them spoke any English. It made me wish that I had done a little more in school to develop my French, but it also made me hopeful that if I can remember so much five years later, maybe I can pick up where I left off sometime in the future too.

Finally aroud mid-afternoon we pulled into Villers-Cotterêts. There was enough daylight left to do another leg, but we were so tierd from the night before and from the hills that we decided to stop for good. No restaurants were open, so we stopped at a Carrefour to get supplies for lunch. You may have noticed from some of the earlier pictures that I have been growing sideburns over the trip. I did this mainly for fun, but also because in a variety of contexts, audience members have approached me after hearing me sing to tell me things like: “I can’t beleive you’re a bass” and “you just don’t look like someone who can sing low.” I was pleased that in our concerts in France, the comments changed to: “you remind me of George Washington,” “you look like Abraham Lincoln,” and, my favorite, “you’re like Wolverine from the X-Men.” These were the perks of having sideburns. In that supermarket in Villers-Cotterêts, though, I incurred the first cost. When I walked in, the burly security guards took one look at me and asked me to give them my bag while I was in the store.

We ate our lunch our lunch to the town square, then retired to our hotel at 4:30. I slept for about 15 hours to make up for the night before. On the way to the train station in the morning we stopped by the house of Alexander Dumas, the fellow who wrote the Three Musketeers.

When all was said and done, we had rode 160 km in about two full days. It has been three days since, and my thighs still feel like a block of lactic acid.

It began with a big jazz band from Tokyo University performing what would have constituted an entire concert by American standards. Next was an Okinawa-style drum dance group. This was quite fun to watch, but, again, quite long. The dancers have varying sized drums, and stand in rows, doing very athletic dance moves and banging along to the music that is playing over the speakers. It reminded me of Bangra, except with drums. After that, there was a smaller jazz quartet, but we didn’t see them because we had to go get changed.

We came on last and sang the longest set I have ever performed in an a cappella concert. Our portion of the set lasted over an hour and a half, and we sang almost all the songs we know. Afterwords, there was a reception with lots of sushi, gyoza, buffalo wings and beer. They asked us to perform a few songs at the reception, and then we really did exhaust our entire repertoire–they heard literally every song we know except for Rachmaninov’s Ave Maria.

Here is a picture of us rehearsing before the concert:

After the reception, we all parted ways and headed back to our home-stays. Each whiff had his own host because the houses are too small and no family has enough room for more than one guest. My home-stay family is very nice, although sometimes we have trouble communicating. The father is an urban planner, so we have some common interests. He spent his childhood from age two to age eight in Chicago, so he is very interesting to speak to. When he does know what to say, he says it in a Chicago accent. But his command of English has faded some over the years, and he sometimes thinks to himself in Japanese or asks his wife for help. So his speech alternates from what sounds like perfect fluency to the broken English that is more common. (Of course, knowing hardly any Japanese myself, I am extremely grateful that the entire country has taken the time to learn my language, even if it sometimes less than perfect).

Today was a free day with no concerts. I had intended on meeting with a group of Whiffs at a nearby train station, but the station was bigger than I realized, and for some reason, I was unable to find them. It would have been nice to meet up with a few other people, but I decided to make lemonade, and I started out on my own. I decided to make my way to the Imperial palace (why not?). The first step was to figure out where I was on the train network. I have had a lot of experience wrangling it on my own on the train networks of London, Bangkok, Paris, Rome, and New York. None of that prepared me for Tokyo. I knew that Japanese people liked trains (I had even taken a few in Kyoto when I went five years ago for my brother) but the Tokyo train network is truly colossal. There are more trips made in a single day here than in an entire year on Amtrak, and the map of all the lines cannot be contained in a single drawing.

This is a picture of the map in my guidebook. It looks like spaghetti, yet it does not even contain all the stations on the express lines, much less the local ones:

I made my way to Shinjuku station, which I believe is the busiest in the world by traffic. After a few wrong turns, I managed to get onto the circular Yamanote Line and make my way to the Palace grounds. I was proud of myself, but still a little sad that I was all alone–many of the signs were in English, but I wished that there was someone to ask questions.

As I thought this, a group of four Tokyo University students approached me and asked if I spoke English. “Yes,” I replied. They were looking for someone to practice their english with, and they offered to show me around the Palace and the city. We spent the rest of the day seeing the sights and getting to know each other. We walked all around the Palace and the garden, explaining everything as we went, and then they took me to the Meiji shrine across town. At the end of the afternoon, we exchanged e-mails and parted ways.

Here is a picture of my new friends at the Palace gardens:

At the Meiji shrine we came across a Japanese wedding procession:

The Grove is organized into about 130 “camps,” and each member belongs to one of these. They have weird names like “Aviary,” and “Hill Billies,” and vary greatly in size and aesthetics. Some are very rustic with hardly any permanent structures. Others have posh cabins. A few have teepees. The most important feature that they all have in common is an open bar. In the evenings everyone wanders from camp to camp. There are no boundaries once you are inside, so little, in fact, that you are allowed to obey the call of nature on any tree except the ones that are marked with what looks a “No Parking” sign but whose meaning is slightly different.

When we walked in, the CEO of Wells Fargo was giving a speech about the economy to a large gathering of people around a lake. After settling in to our camp, Aviary, we enjoyed a few cocktails at some nearby camps, and then went to dinner. This meal and breakfast are eaten collectively at a central dining area. On the walk over we could hear organ music, which I later found out was coming from a large outdoor theatre built into the hillside where they stage an annual musical. After dinner, we sang at a variety show that included a really good saxaphonist, an big-band jazz orchestra, a comedien, a troupe of people who had done a really funny voiceover for a John Wayne movie, and a guy who juggled on a unicycle while playing the guitar. For the rest of the night, we wandered around and enjoyed the hospitality of various camps.

The coolest experience for me was the walk to breakfast the next morning. By the same lake that hosted the speech the previous afternoon, there was a full orchestra set up playing Tchaikovsky,with the forest in the background. They were mostly old men, and amateurs, but they were very enthusiastic and quite good. Unfortunately, because the club is quite secretive, I couldn’t take pictures outside of Aviary, although I would have liked to snap one of that lake. Here is one of the Aviary camp from a distance, showing our sleeping quarters.

This is one of me standing in the common area of Aviary.  The bar is directly in front of me (behind the camera). The posters in the background are posters for shows and performances that had been put on by the men of Aviary in the past.

For reference, here is a rough summary of the itinerary:

May 27 - June 1: San Francisco
June 1 - June 6: Queenstown, New Zealand
June 6 - June 11: Auckland, New Zealand
June 11 - June 20: Japan (several cities, including Tokyo and Kyoto)
June 20 - June 24: Beijing, China
June 24 - June 27: Shanghai, China
June 27 - June 30: Bangkok, Thailand
June 30 - July 3: Phuket, Thailand
July 3 - July 7: Kathmandu, Nepal
July 7 - July 11: Udaipur, India
July 11 - July 15: Mumbai, India
July 15 - July 20: Capetown, South Africa
July 20 - July 27: France (several cities)
July 27 - July 31: GROUP BREAK (I’ll probably spend this in Paris or Brussels)
July 31 - August 4: Greece
August 4 - August 8: Istanbul, Turkey
August 8 - August 13: Israel (several cities)
August 13 - August 21: US Northeast

Because I have an (unfortunately) high tolerance for dealing with tedious and buggy technology, I have taken on the role of group photo-uploader. I purchased a pro account on Flickr, and will upload edited sets of photos to the following address:

flickr.com/photos/andrewstegmaier/collections/72157619028954698/

The edited sets contain what I think are the best photos. But because everyone has different tastes, I am also uploading complete sets that include every single photo taken by every Whiffenpoof–those in the edited set, plus many others. The complete sets are available here:

flickr.com/photos/andrewstegmaier/collections/72157619054318910/

There will be one edited set and one complete set for each place we visit on tour. So far, I have uploaded all the photos from California; the first New Zealand photos should be up soon too. Because I am uploading what I can, when I can, you will probably notice that sets will grow over time. So even if you’ve already looked at a set, there may be photos there that you haven’t yet seen. Also, free to share these links with anyone you know.

A few technical notes about Flickr: First, the the best way to view any set on your computer is to click on the “slide show” link. Second, you can also download the full-sized version of any photo that you like by clicking on the “all sizes” link above the photo, clicking on the “original size” option, then clicking “download original size. Finally, for some odd reason, the photos seem to look better on Safari than they do on Firefox or Internet Explorer on Windows or Mac. I think this has to do with the way that the browsers deal with what is called a “color profile” (I’m new to this too). I’m working on sorting this out, but in the mean time, if you have a choice, look at them in Safari–the colors will be more vibrant.

That’s all for now! Check back later for stories.

(it doesn’t get truly otherworldly until the end, so read it all the way through)

NG : replaced the black ink cartridge. Black text no longer appears in my printed documents. However, black text appears properly on diagnostic page.
[An agent will be with you shortly.]
[You are now chatting with Harpreet .]
NG : hello
Harpreet : Welcome to HP Total Care for IPG. My name is Harpreet. Please give me a few moments while I review your problem description details.
Harpreet : As per the records with me you are referring to HP Deskjet 6980 printer, with WIN XP installed as an operating system on it. Am I correct?
NG : yes
NG : can you see my responses? I attempted another support chat earlier and the technician could not view my responses.
Harpreet : Nathaniel, please let me know more on the issue so that I may be able to assist and get the issue resolved at the earliest?
NG : ok, I replaced the black ink cartridge because it was empty
Harpreet : yes, i am bale to see you r responses..
NG : i tried to print several documents
Harpreet : sorry able to see
NG : from different programs (microsoft word, photoshop, etc)
NG : and the black text portions of the document do not print
NG : occasionally some “shadow text” appears that is very light grey
Harpreet : make sure the cartridges are filled?
NG : yes, all the cartridges are filled
NG : when i print a diagnostic page
NG : (by holding the power and cancel buttosn on the printer)
NG : it is fine
Harpreet : did you tried with another set of new cartridges?
NG : but when I print any documents from any software programs, the black text does not show up on thepage
NG : yes
NG : 2 different sets
NG : i have also tried cleaning the cartridges
Harpreet : ok, since when are you facing this issue?
NG : 2 days ago when I first attempted to replace the black ink cartridge
NG : i have rebooted the printer and the computer several times
Harpreet : please power off the printer.
Harpreet : unplug all the cables from the printer.
NG : ok
Harpreet : Press the power button for 35 seconds and plug back the cables.
Harpreet : turn on the printer.
Harpreet : try to print a test page and let me know.
NG : the microsoft word document still has no black text, except some very small blocks that look like the tops of words on 3 random lines
NG : however
NG : a diagnostic test page
NG : (by holding the power and cancel buttons on the printer) prints properly
NG : with color and black text
Harpreet : ok, please give me a moment
NG : ok
Harpreet : i am sending you alink, please open it and check how to know ink level, please tell me i am waiting. In the page, please check step 5.
Harpreet : http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00584666&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=467982&rule=22398&lang=en
NG : The print cartridges I’m using are remanufactured
NG : so they do not properly show the ink levels
NG : but they are both brand new
Harpreet : you mean to say are these cartridges refilled?
NG : THey were purchased as “remanufactured” ink cartridges, which I assume means recycled or refilled
NG : when I inserted them, a message appeared explaining that because these were not original HP cartridges, the ink monitors would not be accurate
Harpreet : this is what exactly happens when you use inferior quality cartridges in you Good HP printer
NG : I would blame the cartridges
NG : except
Harpreet : I am afraid if you continue to use it further it may permanently damaeg the hardware of the printer’
NG : when i print the diagnostic page, everything is correct
Harpreet : thats only because the printer is of superior quality
Harpreet : and as the stand alone prints due to internal memory of the printer
Harpreet : & it does not require a driver so it is printing
Harpreet : this indicates that still now there is life in the printer
Harpreet : which will soon go out with this inferior quality cartridges
NG : i have used these cartridges before with no problem
Harpreet : its my sincere preyer to you that please dont damage your beautiful printer for the sake of saving few dollers
NG : i appreciate your time and advice, though I must admit I am not convinced that this is the source of the problem
Harpreet : This means that you are trying to kill your printer gradually
NG : i will procure genuine HP catridges
NG : but if the problem remains I will be very upset
Harpreet : however its the best time
Harpreet : to stop
Harpreet : using refilled cartridges
Harpreet : THANK YOU

The sympathies of this type of outlook [one that rejects modernity root and branch] tend to be rather narrow, and their reading of the varied facets of the modern identity unsympathetic. The deeper moral vision, the genuine moral sources invoked in the aspiration to disengaged reason to expressive fulfillment tend to be overlooked, and the less impressive motives—pride, self-satisfaction, liberation from demanding standards—brought to the fore. Modernity is often read through its least impressive, most trivializing offshoots.

…

A penetrating book like Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue can create the impression in some readers [me!] of dismissing the Enlightenment Project simply as a mistake.

In many cases, like between DC and Richmond, there is a good economic case to made for spending money on rail.  It is impossible to expect private money to fund rail to compete with our socialized road system, and there is sometimes reason to beleive that increased rail infastructure is what the free market would provide if it existed. However, the money-holes that are Amtrak’s long distance trains provide no such reason. The political nature of Amtrak’s funding insures that it will continue to make descision based more on bringing home the bacon than on effecient investment. This is why Amtrak should die and be replaced by inter-state cooperation on a more flexible, ad-hoc basis, and maybe, after de-socialization of roads, by private investors.

How cold the vacancy
When the Phantoms are gone and the shaken realist
First sees reality. The mortal no
Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.
The tragedy, however, may have begun,
Again, in the imagination’s new beginning,
In the yes of the realist spoken because he must
Say yes, spoken because under every no
Lay a passion for yes that had never been broken.

Only about one third of transit’s revenues come from customer fares. The remainder comes from taxes and federal grants (often funded by road users)

A pretty powerful statistic, but one that I think is fundamentally misleading. Whether automobiles, buses, light rail, subways, bicycles or pogo sticks are the best choice for any given route should ultimately be a question for people to decide for themselves, through a free market. But what we have now is anything but. Roads are paid for by taxes, just like transit. So it means nothing to say that 2/3 of transit budgets come from taxes–the same applies to roads.

The first (correct) response to this observation is that a large chunk of road spending today is from the gasoline tax, which is very much like a user fee for roads. Of course, depending on the state, a significant amount still comes from general fund revenues, sales taxes, and property taxes that have nothing to do with driving. And historical road spending is far worse in this regard. But the main point is probably correct: a larger chunk of road money comes from gas taxes than transit money comes from fares. Problem solved, the argument goes—people are paying most of the cost of their driving through gas taxes, and the fact that transit tends to be more luxuriously subsidized by unrelated money proves that its prospects in a free market would be dim. So we should oppose increased transit spending across the board.

Not quite. The error lies in the absolute distinction between “roads” and “transit” as two different goods. Roads and transit are two means of providing the same thing: transportation. Distinctions between one set of transportation routes—which might happen to be rails, roads, or a mixture of the two—and any other set of routes are arbitrary.

Norm’s argument goes like this: travel on one set of routes (railroads) accounts for only a fraction of the total passenger-miles. Yet some of the cost of maintenance and construction of these routes is paid by people who never use them. This is an unjust transfer of wealth, and it probably leads to inefficiency, too.

However, there are thousands of miles of pavement in the Commonwealth, of which I only drive a small fraction on a regular basis. There are many sets of road routes that, taken as a whole, cost more to maintain and build than the people who drive them are paying in taxes. Is this also an unjust, inefficient transfer of wealth, too? Well, actually, it is. Realizing this does not give rail as a whole a free pass. But it does teach two important lessons: (1) the question of whether road or rail is the most cost-effective investment must be determined on a route-by-route basis, not in a summary fashion, and (2) even taking into account the fact that much road money comes from the gas tax, the current system still really bad at figuring out what makes sense and what does not. Bureaucrats are left to guess about what to build with the aggregate money that comes from taxes, gas and otherwise.

Imagine we purchased food the same way. The Virginia Department of Lunch was responsible for feeding people, and it funded itself by charging a calorie tax. What would happen? For one, it would be quite unfair. A calorie from fois gras is not the same as a calorie from fritos. Second, it would not take into account the tastes and preferences of the citizens. Suppose I really enjoy fois gras and would be willing to pay more to eat it. When bureaucrats run the show, there is no way to express my preference through a market–I am reduced to begging. Worse still, even if a well-meaning VDOL employee sincerely wanted to satisfy my preference, how would he go about figuring out if the investment in goose farms was a wiser choice than, say, investment in deep-frying equipment? He couldn’t.

Getting back to the immediate case of roads, VDOT is in the same position as VDOL. Like fois gras and fritos, a lane-mile of road in NoVA at rush-hour is a much more coveted possession than a lane-mile in Bristol at midnight. But it costs citizens the same in gas taxes to drive it. The soviet-style approach to pricing these goods does not take into account their scarcity. How are we to know what people’s preferences would be if they had to weigh the market price of driving on the beltway compared to the market price of taking the subway? Under the current system, we simply can’t. Consider, too, the fact that transportation decisions impact the pattern of growth in the long term (10-30 years) and that this pattern of growth is also something about which people have varying preferences. New developments around the Metro stops in Nova are totally different products from developments around the new 288 interchanges. Many people like the urban one-car or no-car lifestyle. Where are they going to live when command-and-control transportation policy restricts the supply of the kinds of areas that they enjoy?

All this does not at all prove that we should increase or continue tax funding of rail infastructure in all cases. But it does explain why we should not expect rail to pay for itself from the farebox until we fundamentally change the way we pay for roads.