The Bourgeois Bicycle Caravan

Del da Foster has thrown in the towel. The eternal optimist has crumbled and the falling debris will send ripples and then surges of terror throughout the caravan.
“May-bee - just mabee - there ain’t no ‘Wounded Gull’? Huh? Didyer every think of that?” slurred Del at Jimmy Bodean and Harold Hobart Hellybutt, who had been out shopping and searching aimlessly for the said ‘Gull’.
“Woah - Daddy-O!” yelled Bodean in disbelief, “You can’t say that!”.
Hellybutt picks up an empty bottle of whiskey, which has been rolling on the floor and has stopped against Del’s sweating head.
“Shee-it boy! You been moonshining up a goddamn storm!” Hellybutt tisks and sniffs the bottle.
“Ha Ha, Ho Ho. And there sure as hell ain’t no ‘magical carpet whirly ship caravan story to save the world’ Helly-butt! You stupid IDIOTS!” all out grief stricken laughter from a prostrated Del.
Apart from the drooling and regurgitation swooning up from the grounded Del, his words have cut the other two deeply. They sit and listen. Then they too turn to the bottle and the night turns into a journey of the purest self-loathing. Fleetwood Mac plays on and the darkest thoughts become all consuming inside the little flat in Capbreton.

Drip. Drip. Drippity. Then Bodean realises that he is awake. Lying half-outside the front door in fact. And a light rain is wetting his forehead. Instinct tells him to go down to the water. And there - through the haze of a wooden head - it is. The mammoth power of the ocean is one and the same with the wind and thundering clouds. At the crux of this whirring system objects are spun about. Wilting down, twisting and speeding towards the earth is the icarus of his eye. Seagulls, ganets, albatross, hooded plovers, the odd alarmingly large sea eagle, shags, even emperor penguins (God above only knows) are falling from the sky and are terminally wounded. As sad as this makes Bodean, he is equally overcome with joy. And he begins to take photograph after perfect photograph.   

Then Hellybutt, upon hearing his comrade’s shouts, runs down to the beach. And what is this? The shore break is singing like a clinking ginger ale factory. There is a hundred-million bottles washed upon the shore. Sheer delight as he scoops up the bottles - green, brown, clear and blue, all kinds! - and then the popping corks reveal tales - beautiful stories about loving and fighting, moving on and staying put, laughter and sorrow.

Del stands further back and puts his palms out to feel the rain. He wonders if he could try his hand at taxidermy and also what the
street value of antique bottles is.

The caravan thumps down on the gypsy wooden pegs for the last time in Capbreton - the port town south of Hossegor. Along the stone waterfront, which is being sured-up against the Atlantic, the nations awkward athletes stagger and wheel themselves about wondering whether they picked the right sport. They are all being housed in a red brick, monstrous sports rehab clinic which overlooks the ocean and the people who are playing in it, and the broken pole-vaulter can’t bare to watch the surfy kids having all that fun. Although it is serious fun, as the clean solid waves break hollow and rush towards the drooping old german war bunkers, now covered in graffiti. Del, Bodean and Hellybutt are dry and excited to watch the surf and then it’s all too much to simply just observe and down the street they run, in braces and farmer’s hats, yelling and grabbing the wet suits and surfboards. The bicycles sit patiently under a low slung, heavy branched tree.

The crowds are thick in the water in the very south-west of france. Everyman and his dog and his cousin and so forth. Many of the locals are sporting the brightest of hooded jumpers, some in matching tracksuits. And it would seem that brand names rule the cultural roost. Then you begin to worry as solid minded, solid bodied longboard riders pummel towards the sand, and the parades of sticker smashed boards twist and flick in the throngs of 60 or more. Unbeknownst to dear sweet Del, one young lady who had been thrashing around as if in a  raging tempest, attempted to lodge some spittle in his swaying portuguese face.
On hearing this story of putridity, Hellybutt announced “Deary me!”, and then discreetly exited the water.

One does not want to be too hasty, though, on passing judgement from these anecdotes alone. For of course, the water was empty before 10 am - nobody here is rising to greet the sun’s first blessings of the day, and there was Paul - French Surfing Champion back in ‘81. From an idle conversation he distinguished himself as a true gentleman and pirate of sorts. Taking Del in for a light meal and giving him a ride to a city in the south (after the expected, yet still sorrowful death of Del’s yellow, Australian-made girls bicycle).

And so it goes - the waves arrive, and there are people coming and going all day, and it is warm on the back patio and this is fine. Is it enough? Oh lingering sweep of the sub-concious! What are you trying to say? Is there some deeper omnipotent force brewing - wishing to be revealed?

No waves, no seagulls and no stories. Not a sign of that wounded gull and Bodean has been going out of his mind - this was the adventure to capture the image perfect and the seabirds had either been stone dead and ten days rotting in the wet sand or flying high and free. Yeah maybe there had been the odd funny story, maybe a stoush of inspirational verse here and there, even an intriguing tale about a lost Raj in London, but Hellybutt realised all he had was more crap poetry about demi-gods and Jack Nicholson movies scribbled down on napkins. Del was ready to lift the caravan, ready to ‘pump the jam’ so to speak and believed there to be salvation in the deep south - in the Basque, and so he roused the dejected and made calculations and plotted the road from Biscarrosse to Hossegor. Phillipe waved goodbye to the three cycling off in the rain with feet pointlessly mummified in bin bags.

The rain drove down like never before and it sometimes felt good because there was nuthin’ left but to go for broke. Everything was now wet and those greenest pharmacy signs read 6 degrees and on the road went. As it got too dark to ride the caravan had done over 80 kilometres and all’s any of them wanted to do was sleep. After being rejected by a crow eyed campsite owner,  the caravan met some canadians in a white van - they were equally lost and so everyone laughed about it and one of them had a most heavy accent - but they suggested some side forestry spurs. And that’s where the caravan slept on that night.

Hail the conquering caravan. Let us wake and roar amongst the raining pines like that dying Gaul at the feet of the cunning roman Rex. Nothing to stop us now, here was the desperation and joy for the destination. Loaded and wheeling out of the spur in more heavy   rain. Southwards into the wind and the abuse of the one-eyed pensioner - “You’d better drive straight on down to Spain old man!” - or the beginnings of constant passing ‘murphy the surfys’ who beep and yewl! and that lifts everyone riding.

Into Hossegor! There seems to be some sickly looking birds drooping on the groynes and the best stories suddenly become explicit. This has an aura of satisfaction, this place.

Here the caravan will pitch its final stand. And so it goes, but O’ great ironies! To arrive on Remembrance Day and forget that this was that day and that this day is ferme anywhere in jolly old France. But we are here now and the Bourgeois Bicycle Caravan is expecting some fair trade.

The road is now straight and flat, more or less and give or take, except the suddenly most inconvenient Bassin D’Arcachon. Couldn’t the Germans have filled it in during the Second Great War? Or why not you, Boney? You lazy Corsican ladder climber. The caravan does really enjoy a good ferry crossing, but it is also that damnable time of year in the Southwest where anything of use is closed. No one around to ask apart from hunters and soes Del approaches an ol’ digger armed to the teeth - but he had and empty bag and tried to make excuses in sign language that there wasn’t anything to shoot. He was a nice man with no idea what the hell was happening and we hid from him, then once emerged from the bushes the caravan went in the opposite direction to his gracious yet bewildering directions, so as not to offend that morning sharpshooter. This day is great and glorious as the sun really shows the damp what for and makes warming apologies to those wet animals and if Hellybutt doesn’t quit trying to relive Dylan’s back catalogue then someone really will steal his flute and that won’t be very cute.

Cap Ferret has the jetty with the necessary ferry and Del sleeps in the sun on a rock wall and he looks so warm and rested. The ferry man is a nice chap - he has to be because otherwise the caravan has to ride back near 50 kilometres and what great story doesn’t have a metaphorical ferry man in it? None dear readers! Again the French just stand there when bicycles and trailers and boards are struggled up a skinny landing ladder, Hellybutt has lost all diplomatic sense and cusses when they not only fail to help, but stand in the “goddamned way and somebody’s gonna get a gosh darn punch in the mouth if they don’t move”.

Soul is soothed on the afternoon road into Biscarrosse, the cycle path was a set of piano keys, golden ground evenly spaced with pine shade. The caravan whistles into town, and then it starts to get cold - below 5 degrees, so it was guessed - so some wheeler-dealer called Jacque sends us shivering to a beautifully white palace and a man named Phillipe takes us in. He smiles at us and we go to the Rio de Jeinero room and try not to get anything dirty. Impossible, we be the filthiest travellers travellin’.